Xbox studio Ninja Concept is engaged on a 3rd main Hellblade sport, a brand new report has instructed — this time with extra interactive components.
Two Hellblade titles have launched up to now, that includes celtic warrier Senua in battles in opposition to 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 Concept will reply to that criticism by specializing in being extra of a “sport,” in line with Home windows Central editor Jez Corden, talking on the Xbox Two podcast. On the similar 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 sport [from Ninja Theory] is Hellblade 3,” Corden stated. “And it’ll 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, however it does sound like it’ll be within the Hellblade universe, and it does sound like they need to make it extra of a ‘sport’, y’know, and broaden the attraction to a point.”
Undertaking Mara was introduced as one in all a number of titles being labored on at Ninja Concept again in 2020, alongside Hellblade 2, Bleeding Edge, and a separate R&D venture described as “an bold mixture of expertise, sport design and scientific neuroscience.” The years since have revealed that the studio has been working with Microsoft’s generative AI mannequin Muse as a part of a venture that is generate clips of simulated gameplay.
“You guys should not anticipate Undertaking Mara to be a factor,” Corden claimed. “Undertaking Mara was only a idea, it isn’t a sport — and it isn’t a sport they’re at the moment engaged on. It is likely to be one thing they work on finally, however Undertaking Mara shouldn’t be a sport that is at the moment 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” relatively than a full sport — so due to this fact “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 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