In a wide ranging interview with IGN Hellblade 2’s developer Ninja Theory’s studio head Dom Matthews talked about the games length and why he thinks it’s the perfect fit for what they wanted to do.
“I think what we always set out to do is to tell a story and for the game length to be appropriate for the story that we want to tell,” Matthews said. “So it’s not really a case of setting out to make shorter experiences. I think it is… There is a story that we want to tell here with a beginning, middle and end and what is the right shape and size of experience to tell that story? So that’s kind of where we start.”
The original game, which released back in 2017, was about an 8 hour experience, which Ninja Theory has confirmed the sequel is about that length as well. Matthews went on to say that he thinks fans of their games really like these shorter experiences.
“So I’m really pleased to see that there’s a lot of people that actually enjoy a shorter experience, something that they can sit down on a whatever Friday night, stick their headphones on, turn the lights off and kind of sink into an experience and players who don’t necessarily want something that is 50 hours long, a 100 hours long, so it’s as long as it needs to be. And I’m one of those people, I like shorter games.”
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on people’s time these days and I think our fans, from what we hear from them, they enjoy a shorter game where our intention is that every step of that journey is meaningful… There’s an audience of people that want games that are focused.”
Also discussed in the interview is what Matthews and his team think success means for them. With the game launching day 1 on game pass it isn’t simply about sales anymore.
“I think success for us is, we would love for as many players to play our games as possible, but I think particularly with Hellblade we love and I love that magic that you can achieve by creating something that makes people think and feel. So if I think about the things that I want to achieve in Hellblade 2, once it’s released, the thing that will put the biggest smile on my face is to see fans of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and people who like those kind of game saying you’ve continued Senua’s journey in a way that is worthy of that character.”
Hellblade 2 is the first big game of 2024 for Xbox Game Studios and is releasing on Xbox Series X/S and Steam on May 21st.
