Xbox studio Ninja Principle is engaged on a 3rd main Hellblade sport, a brand new report has prompt — this time with extra interactive parts.
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 broadly 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 Principle will reply to that criticism by specializing in being extra of a “sport,” in response to Home windows Central editor Jez Corden, talking on the Xbox Two podcast. On the similar time, Corden mentioned that Ninja Principle was not engaged on Undertaking Mara, an “experimental title” introduced by Microsoft again in 2020.
“From what I perceive, the subsequent sport [from Ninja Theory] is Hellblade 3,” Corden mentioned. “And it may be a bit extra interactive than Hellblade 1 and a couple 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 may be within the Hellblade universe, and it does sound like they wish to make it extra of a ‘sport’, y’know, and broaden the enchantment to a point.”
Undertaking Mara was introduced as considered one of a number of titles being labored on at Ninja Principle again in 2020, alongside Hellblade 2, Bleeding Edge, and a separate R&D challenge described as “an bold mixture of know-how, sport 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 challenge 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 sport — and it is not a sport they’re presently engaged on. It could be one thing they work on ultimately, however Undertaking Mara just isn’t a sport that is presently being labored on at Ninja Principle.”
Corden has since doubled down by way of social media on his declare that Undertaking Mara was “solely ever an idea” relatively than a full sport — so due to this fact “the sport wasn’t cancelled.”
Again in 2020, Ninja Principle described Undertaking Mara as “our new in-development experimental title that explores new methods of storytelling.” So far, 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 Staff 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 may attain Tom at [email protected] or discover him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social