Xbox studio Ninja Concept is engaged on a 3rd main Hellblade recreation, a brand new report has instructed — this time with extra interactive components.
Two Hellblade titles have launched to this point, that includes celtic warrier Senua in battles towards monsters and her personal psychological well being. Each have been extensively praised for his or her visuals and story, although have additionally caught flak for prioritizing cinematography over gameplay.
A brand new, third Hellblade title in improvement at Ninja Concept will reply to that criticism by specializing in being extra of a “recreation,” in accordance with Home windows Central editor Jez Corden, talking on the Xbox Two podcast. On the identical time, Corden stated that Ninja Concept was now not engaged on Undertaking Mara, an “experimental title” introduced by Microsoft again in 2020.
“From what I perceive, the subsequent recreation [from Ninja Theory] is Hellblade 3,” Corden stated. “And it will be a bit extra interactive than Hellblade 1 and a pair of.
“I do not know what the precise nature of Hellblade 3 goes to be like,” he continued, “if it is even going to be Hellblade 3, but it surely does sound like it will be within the Hellblade universe, and it does sound like they wish to make it extra of a ‘recreation’, y’know, and broaden the enchantment to a point.”
Undertaking Mara was introduced as certainly one of a number of titles being labored on at Ninja Concept again in 2020, alongside Hellblade 2, Bleeding Edge, and a separate R&D undertaking described as “an formidable mixture of expertise, recreation design and medical neuroscience.” The years since have revealed that the studio has been working with Microsoft’s generative AI mannequin Muse as a part of a undertaking that is generate clips of simulated gameplay.
“You guys should not count on Undertaking Mara to be a factor,” Corden claimed. “Undertaking Mara was only a idea, it is not a recreation — and it is not a recreation they’re at present engaged on. It is perhaps one thing they work on finally, however Undertaking Mara is just not a recreation that is at present being labored on at Ninja Concept.”
Corden has since doubled down through social media on his declare that Undertaking Mara was “solely ever an idea” fairly than a full recreation — so subsequently “the sport wasn’t cancelled.”
Again in 2020, Ninja Concept described Undertaking Mara as “our new in-development experimental title that explores new methods of storytelling.” To this point, there’s been no additional phrase on what turned of the idea or why it was seemingly been deserted. Final 12 months, it was publicly confirmed that Group Ninja’s vibrant co-founder Tameem Antoniades had quietly left the studio, one thing that Microsoft solely acknowledged to Polygon after his absence was famous on a press go to.
IGN has contacted Microsoft for extra.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You’ll be able to attain Tom at [email protected] or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social