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Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades: “‘Hellblade 2’ will make ‘Hellblade’ look like an indie game”

Neilg

Member
Our new game is going to make you look back at our old game and think yeah thats a few steps behind this new one they've gone and done what literally everyone has ever done in video games when making a sequel and expand upon their first effort.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
This is going to be The Order: 1886 of this generation, right?

That’s what you really want, isn’t it?
Unlikely to happen.

Umm hellblade already looked like an indie game

HotUkDeals has several Specsavers deals. You might want to check them out.


but..... but.....hellblade was an indie game?

He said ‘look’.

Hellblade 1 didn’t look like a low budget game, that’s for sure.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Hellblade already looked like an indie game, and a bad one at that (which ironically was hyped up by PS fanboys and despised - with reason - by Xbox fans : what comes around goes around eh)
No it didn't Hellblade's claim to fame last gen was how great it looked. It just wasn't a good game. But visually it was fantastic.

I also don't remember "PS Fanboys" liking while "Xbox fans" despised it ... at all. I can't remember if I played it on PS4 or X1X first, but I do remember getting more than halfway through and feeling like I just couldn't be bothered anymore.
 

TonyK

Member
I played Hellblade 1 and always thought it was and indie game. I mean, it was their less ambitious game, and the previous ones were AA games. Hellblade was made by 14 people I think?
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Lol @ hellbalde being an "indie" game.

It cost $10 million, not the same as a game that cost $50,000 to make.
 
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JackMcGunns

Member
Move over, coming through...

He Hit Me Fight GIF
 

sainraja

Member
Given Ninja Theory has been around since the PS2/Xbox generation, can we really say Hellblade was an Indie game?
Sure, they had a small budget for it but it doesn't make their game indie. Although, looking up what is considered indie on Google, all you have to be is an independent studio who is small. So now that they have a big publisher behind them, can we still say Hellblade is Indie? lol

This all seems so silly to me.

EDIT
Even before being acquired, it's not like they were small. I guess what is considered small to begin with?
 
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Fess

Member
No it didn't Hellblade's claim to fame last gen was how great it looked. It just wasn't a good game. But visually it was fantastic.

I also don't remember "PS Fanboys" liking while "Xbox fans" despised it ... at all. I can't remember if I played it on PS4 or X1X first, but I do remember getting more than halfway through and feeling like I just couldn't be bothered anymore.
I don’t know who’s Xbox and PS fans but there was definitely lots of hype

Lots of nice scores too

I liked the first game and I’m looking forward to the sequel as well. As with the first one I don’t expect it to be on the level of God of War as a whole but I’m sure it’ll be a superbly cinematic game. Ninja Theory was awesome at transfering both motion and acting to game characters even back with Heavenly Sword 15 years ago, the king had some seriously impressive scenes, acted by Andy Serkis (Gollum) iirc, Enslaved had lots of great cutscenes too.
 

Evil Calvin

Afraid of Boobs
Given Ninja Theory has been around since the PS2/Xbox generation, can we really say Hellblade was an Indie game?
Sure, they had a small budget for it but it doesn't make their game indie. Although, looking up what is considered indie on Google, all you have to be is an independent studio who is small. So now that they have a big publisher behind them, can we still say Hellblade is Indie? lol

This all seems to silly to me.

EDIT
Even before being acquired, it's not like they were small. I guess what is considered small to begin with?
Ninja Theory is NOT an indie studio and Heavenly Sword, DMC, Enslaved and Hellblade are NOT indie games. People are stupid.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Lol @ hellbalde being an "indie" game.

It cost $10 million, not the same as a game that cost $50,000 to make.
They self-published it I think. It was their last ditch attempt at independence. Dozens of making-of videos came out at the time detailing how they're trying to make the first AAA indie game on the cheap with careful planning and limited project scope.

They got the game out successfully, but ironically sold the studio shortly after that.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
They self-published it I think. It was their last ditch attempt at independence. Dozens of making-of videos came out at the time detailing how they're trying to make the first AAA indie game on the cheap with careful planning and limited project scope.

They got the game out successfully, but ironically sold the studio shortly after that.

The classification system is really flawed.
Because people call $50k games indie, the same as $10 million games.

Same with AAA. A $50 mill game is going to be different to a $200mill game.

Enough with the indie/AA/AAA naming scheme. People should call it by dev costs, based on team size and dev length.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
The classification system is really flawed.
Because people call $50k games indie, the same as $10 million games.

Same with AAA. A $50 mill game is going to be different to a $200mill game.

Enough with the indie/AA/AAA naming scheme. People should call it by dev costs, based on team size and dev length.
Hellblade is kind of one of a kind. As far as I know it's one of the only bigger budget games published by the developers themselves. Platinum I think tried this with the Wonderful 101 re-release. Technically indie, in a sense.

But yeah, lots of people just assume it means low budget and call lots of low budget games indie even if they have publishers. It's not very accurate these days.
 

fallingdove

Member
He said ‘look’.

Hellblade 1 didn’t look like a low budget game, that’s for sure.

Hellblade didn't look like an indie but it sure played like one.

Also - I don't trust anything from Tameem. Dude is a dumbass. If Hellblade 2 ends up bombing, I wouldn't be surprised if he goes back on this statement and tells gamers that they shouldn't have expected a AAA game on an indie budget.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Hellblade was certainly marketed as such and was called an AAA Indie game by NT. It sounds dumb. Because its like "hey, we have this AAA Indie game and the sequel is going to make it look like an Indie game".

I kind of dislike NT. Heavenly Sword had great mocap and all but its gameplay was shallow and janky as fuck. Enslaved was also very janky and DmC was bad until Definitive edition fixed lots of things but even then DMC4 was still better.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Hellblade is kind of one of a kind. As far as I know it's one of the only bigger budget games published by the developers themselves. Platinum I think tried this with the Wonderful 101 re-release. Technically indie, in a sense.

But yeah, lots of people just assume it means low budget and call lots of low budget games indie even if they have publishers. It's not very accurate these days.

The point is

The term "indie" or independent, is not used correctly by most people. Including the hellblade dev here.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Perhaps the point is that it didn't look like one.

It didn't? Why, because it had facial motion capture? Aside from that it's pretty much what you would expect from a walking simulator.

Yes I really liked the game because of the whole mentally unstable gimmick. Loved it even.
 
Hellblade made Hellblade look like an indie game.

I mean the game WAS a literal walking simulator. Not that there is anything wrong with that genre, but they are pretty much only made by indie studios.
 

Zeroing

Banned
I played Hellblade 1 and always thought it was and indie game. I mean, it was their less ambitious game, and the previous ones were AA games. Hellblade was made by 14 people I think?
Correct it was a small project and they operated as a indie studio! There was tons of videos of them showing and talking about! Even trying to find a new cheaper alternative for face capture!
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Returnal had been considered an indie game in this forum with a budget of 50 million. Just saying.

Yes, and in that case we can say people were talking more about budget then the fact that housemarque were independent at the time.

People are better of saying hellblade 2 will be a $25 million NT game or returnal is a $50 million housemarque game.
None for this indie/AA/AAA nonsense.
 
It's funny that a dozen people commented on the fact that the first game was an indie game and yet people still come in here to post exactly that. I love it!
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
It didn't?
Not contextually so-to-speak.. I mean, it is a shame that within videogames the definition of the term "indie" has moved away from its original meaning of simply being independent, because it's clearly sort-of confusing. According to the original term Ninja Theory was indeed an indie studio, and thus Hellblade was indeed an indie title. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that the consensus is that Hellblade is out of the realm of the current videogame definition of "indie", whether it's the high-end graphics or the 10 million dollar budget.

Edit: On further thought I can't believe I'm discussing this.. It's a meaningless discussion around a meaningless term.. I'm probably just bored.. So I kinda retract my involvement in this crap, lol
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Is this official or speculation? I'd be surprised if it was that high.

Either way, phenomenal game and impatiently waiting for DLC

If there was about 80 devs and there average salary was $70,000

70000×80×3 = $16,800,000

Add another UE4 costs, rent, cleaning, electric, food + water, office expenses and marketing I could see it being in the $30-40 million range.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Never considered Hellblade 1 or Returnal as indie games. If you have a game with great gritty production values with a decent budget, it's no indie game.

These games to me are in the middle tier of games.

Indie game to me are low budget games that are either janky big scope games (they do the best they can with what they got), or small scale games or platformers which are modest enough to have some good production values (Hollow Knight). And the obvious indie games are those 8 or 16 bit retro pixel games like the millionth Metroidvania game for $19.99.
 
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Sacred

Member
I love how universally loved this game was, won many awards, and really captured an untouched subject perfectly. Now GAF is like it was trash, barely playable, ect.. Hellblade a fantastic game based around alot of innovative ideas that can be built upon. Let's wait and see what NT does before shitting all over it.
 
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