“Every single sound has the potential to be binaural” in Hellblade 2

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is without a doubt one of the most anticipated games of 2024. It will be launching very soon on Xbox Series consoles and PC exclusively. Fans everywhere are eagerly awaiting its launch. There are a number of reasons for the hype around it, but the biggest one is that it is being made using some of the best technologies available to developers.

It is being designed on Unreal Engine 5. Its developers are literally scanning real locations to recreate their photos realistically in the game. Ninja Theory’s new motion capture studio makes sure that players get a look at one of the most expressive characters ever. But the best of them all is the audio technology being used in it. Developers are using binaural audio technology, so Hellblade 2 takes players to a whole new world.

Hellblade 2’s binaural technology alone would make this game worth a try

In its prequel that launched back in 2017, audio played a very important role. The game featured a protagonist who had psychosis. Senua used to hear voices in her head. Guiding her, taunting her, and sometimes even confusing her. To give gamers the best representation of that condition, developers used binaural audio technology.

Many gamers described how that game made them feel horrified. It made them relate to people who are actually dealing with this condition. Senua, who is a Celtic warrior experiencing a lot of trauma, has to deal with her psychosis too.

Binaural audio in Hellblade 2 is going to be much better than what gamers experienced in the previous installment. This would be a much more realistic representation of how people hear sounds in the real world.

For those unaware, binaural audio is created by recording a sound using two different microphones. These microphones are placed at a distance similar to that between a person’s ears. This way, they would push players further into the world of Senua and her illness. The game’s audio simulates 3D auditory environments. Pushing players further into the world of Senua and her illness.

According to Hellblade 2’s audio director David Garcia Diaz, throughout the game, Senua experiences a different reality than everyone else. The game’s audio allows for her reality and those voices she hears to come to life. He also suggested that binaural audio in the first game was limited to just the sounds, while in the sequel pretty much every sound can be binaural.

In the first game, we only applied it to the voices that Senua listens to in her head, but in this game, through spacial audio technology and some extra little things within the game, there’s music that is binaural, every single sound has potential to be binaural.

In Hellblade 2, this audio would serve several purposes; it would intensify the player’s emotional connection to Senua. This would be done by making her psychological experience close and personal to the person playing the game.

The developers have also suggested that this time the sound and other environmental features would play a major part in puzzle-solving and exploration. No doubt Hellblade 2 would be a visual and audio treat for every gamer out there with a decent enough sound system.

Hellblade 2 is not the first game to use this technology

While everything Ninja Theory is doing with Hellblade 2 sounds exciting enough, gamers must know that it is far from the first game to feature such technology. In fact, Ninja Theory themselves used this technology in the first Hellblade game.

Then games like Resident Evil 2 Remake, Phasmaphobia, and Hunt: Showdown too have used binaural. These games too cater a harrowing experience to the players through creative audio design. But there is no doubt Hellblade 2 would be the best implementation of this technology yet.

Sony PlayStation 5 might miss this spectacle, as Hellblade 2 would be Xbox exclusive at launch. There’s no news on its arrival on the PS5, but one thing is for sure: if it ever does, Sony’s 360 audio and binaural would make an excellent match.