Where the first game felt like a journey of self-discovery, both for Senua and for the player, Hellblade 2 feels more invested in creating the myth of Senua: Senua as legendary giant slayer, as mystical seer touched by the underworld.
Considering that Lightfall’s story ends with many open-ended questions and is just the beginning of a year’s worth of narrative and gameplay content, which demands a level of time investment that many new players might balk at, it’s difficult to know whether the gameplay and the artwork — polished as they are — will be enough to draw in the uninitiated. Are they willing, once the campaign wraps up, to begin grinding, to devote themselves to this world that mostly ignores them, choosing to commemorate its “Veterans” (the title awarded to players who started playing six years ago) instead? There’s certainly something impressive about a game like Destiny 2, which has a history of its own, but also one that dates back to past franchises. But it leaves one wondering if there’s space at all for those who have no relationship with that history — who approach the game as visitors, witnessing just a sliver of what must feel like a lifetime of memories.
It will feel familiar to anyone who has picked up a controller and jumped into any of the past two dozen iterations of the franchise. More importantly, though, Vanguard is a Call of Duty game because of the role it proudly plays as a mythmaking vehicle.
Then, as your character nears their breaking point, a door opens to your side, revealing a small dark room with an arcade cabinet in it. It's a game of Kaboom!, which involves catching an endless cascade of bombs as they are dropped by a tiny figure at the top of the screen. Offscreen you can hear your handlers sigh in relief as Bell's stress levels ease back down to the baseline, absorbed, as you are, by a simulated arcade game from 1981. Even resisting the programming winds up being its own kind of programming.