Real or madness? It's all too real for Senua in Hellblade.
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Game boss interview: Tameem Antoniades’s journey into madness with Hellblade

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 21 min

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is one of the best games of the year, with its terrifying account of a warrior’s journey into the depths of the Norse underworld — and into madness itself.

The game from British game studio Ninja Theory came out on August 8, and if you haven’t played it yet, you ought to. I reviewed Hellblade in August and gave it a score of 95 out of 100, the highest I’ve given this year. But fair warning, it’s hard to experience because the depiction of psychosis of the Celtic warrior Senua is haunting, as she struggles with inner demons locked in a battle over her mind.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.