to Hellblade, but at its heart, Hellblade is about the journey and the struggle of Senua

on a mythical adventure.

In the famous book Don Quixote, the hero sees the world interpreted through madness, seeing giants instead of windmills, and in a similar way when you play

the game you experience the world through Senua's mind's eye. (Senua knows that there

is no going back to how things were) We like to think that we experience the world almost

like a high-definition photograph as it really is. Actually, a lot of the time what we're

doing is using what we already know to shape and govern what we perceive. If we recognise

that principle of how the brain functions. It may be that we can begin to understand

what happens in the context of psychosis, because psychosis can't easily be understood

as just some malfunction of the mind. It's actually a very creative process where somebody

constructs a world. (She has finally arrived at the land of mist and fog. The place the Northmen call 'hell')

In Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, I play a character called Senua,

who is a Celtic warrior who goes on a vision quest to the Viking heartland. It's a journey

of suffering, which can be quite dark and sometimes brutal. Everything that Senua sees

is shaped by visions from her own past, but also Viking mythology.

At the start of the project we researched as much as we could - Viking mythology, the art and culture, but

the more we looked into it the deeper we went, the more I started to feel like we were out

of our depth. So we reached out to Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, a leading scholar in the department

of Anglo Saxon Norse and Celtic from the University of Cambridge. We showed the game to Dr. Elizabeth

Ashman Rowe, and she gave us a lot of very detailed feedback on Norse art, culture and

myth. We realised that we could go a lot deeper on the Norse legend. She agreed to come on

board as consultant and presented a trove of reference materials to the team. I was

talking about idols, and we don't have a lot of them left. We hear many descriptions of wooden men, of sacrifices on poles.

The more we learned from Elizabeth, the more we wanted

to share these myths with you. So we created lore stones and scriptures that relate to

the Norse legend for you to find throughout Senua's journey. (The secret path along the

cliffs will take you to Gjallarbrú, the bridge that separates the living from the dead. The

roots of the tree of death will take you to new lands, where you will face the trials)

(Look around and you will see them. The drowned. The sick. Here they lie, rotting in the fields

and rivers of hell) I've often been struck by the sense that I get talking to people

with psychosis that they do feel themselves on a quest. It may be a figurative one, and

in some cases people actually experience a genuine physical quest. They're looking for

someone or something or some answer and with the feeling that if they can only achieve

that, there will be a release or a resolution to all of the things that are plaguing them.

(She will fulfil her vow. Whatever the cost) We've covered in previous diaries how we've

worked with experts, organisations and with people with lived experience to simulate

voice hearing and visions. Another lesser known aspect of psychosis is the ability to

see patterns and associations, and find meaning in them. One individual we spoke to told us in

vivid terms how this felt for him, where every day felt like a puzzle, the clues of which

were found in symbols, sounds, colours and visions in the world all around him. I and

my colleagues at Cambridge University have been doing a lot of work exploring how people

can use their prior expectations to increase their sensitivity to stimuli in their environment.

One of the very striking things that we found recently is that people with psychosis or

prone to experiencing psychotic symptoms may actually be remarkably good at that. Maybe

under some circumstances they're actually capable of using their prior knowledge to

really enhance the way in which they see patterns and put things together. The idea of illusion

and shifts in perception is common in both psychosis and Norse mythology. These ideas

form the backbone of the puzzle experiences in the game. But it's not just a gameplay

mechanic. Some of it is more experiential. Perhaps the wind is connected to your movement,

or just paying attention to something changes the way it sounds. A good example of where

perception changes gameplay is a section of the game where Senua loses her sight. She

must rely on sound and the barest of vision to navigate the world. One of the service

users we worked with told us about her experience with catatonia, where she felt completely

cut off from the world. So we put a section in the game where Senua can barely see or

hear anything, and as a player you have to try and find a way out of it. When I did the

body mocap for that section, I tried to perform everything with my eyes shut so that I could

get a sense of fear and anxiety. Hopefully you will feel this when you play the section.

We've now captured hundreds of animations to make Senua believable in both gameplay

and cutscenes. The decision to create a low cost mocap space in the studio has really

paid off, as otherwise the costs would've been prohibitive. Given the complexities of

intertwining mythology, backstory, art and gameplay, it took us longer than we expected

to get to this point. Now all of the story scenes have been captured, all of the VO recorded

and the gameplay is fully playable from start to finish. We now run dailies, where representatives

from art, story, sound, design, and gameplay are all present and we spend an hour every

day reviewing a section of the game, and that very day we implement everything that we can

think of to make it a polished experience. This is a process we're going to rinse and

repeat every single day until we've finished the whole experience. (She sounds too scared.

The breathing is good, it really gives you presence. The breathing has got to be timed

even when she's not scared) We've just completed our alpha milestone for Hellblade: Senua's

Sacrifice. That means that for the first time, you can now play the Hellblade experience

from beginning right through to the end. This however doesn't mean that the game is finished.

There's still a huge amount of work to be done, but all of the levels, gameplay and

story are now in place. It does mean that we can now focus on what really matters, and

that's the player experience. We look forward to bringing you another update soon.