Microsoft has just released Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 on PC. For cinematic purposes, this game has some black bars that you cannot disable via its in-game screenshots. However, there is a way to remove those annoying black bars and force the game into full-screen mode.
So, to remove the black bars, Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain and Depth of Field, you’ll use the following commands. You must copy and paste them at the end of the game’s Engine.ini file. This file can be located at “Users\%LOCALAPPDATA%\Hellblade2\Saved\Config\Windows\”.
[SystemSettings]
r.NT.Lens.Distortion.Intensity=0
r.NT.Lens.Distortion.Stretch=0
r.NT.Lens.ChromaticAberration.Intensity=0
r.NT.DOF.RotationalBokeh=0
r.NT.DOF.NTBokehTransform=0
r.FilmGrain=0
r.NT.AllowAspectRatioHorizontalExtension=0
r.NT.EnableConstrainAspectRatio=0
We’ve tested those commands and we can confirm that they work. Do note though that playing the game in full-screen mode comes with a major performance hit. On our NVIDIA RTX 4090, we saw a 14fps performance decrease. Not only that but since the game does not have a FOV slider, it will feel a bit zoomed in.
Here’s a comparison screenshot at the exact same location. The game was set on Max Settings at 4K with DLAA and DLSS 3 Frame Generation. So yeah, make sure to use this workaround only if you already have high framerates.
In a way, this full-screen mode ruins the game’s cinematic feeling. So, I’m not really sure whether it’s worth it on big PC monitors. Yes, the black bars are annoying. However, if you have a 32” or 42” monitor, you won’t really care about them. At least I didn’t. On the other hand, those with small PC monitors will definitely appreciate it. By running the game in full-screen, they’ll get a bigger image. As such, they’ll be able to more easily enjoy the game.
Our PC Performance Analysis for this game will come out later this week. In that article, we’ll benchmark numerous GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA. So, stay tuned for more!
UPDATE:
Here’s how you can keep the same aspect ratio when removing the black bars. Add this line at the end of the Engine.ini file.
AspectRatioAxisConstraint = AspectRatio_MaintainXFOV
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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5 hour game.
$50.
No wonder Xbox is dead.
5 hour game.
$50.
No wonder Xbox is dead.
I don’t believe most are buying this game. It’s a GamePass game, you get to rent it for a month at a time for $15.
Which, if it really is that short of a game, and barely a game at that, maybe I’ll knock it out during a stream this week!
it was in development since the previous console generation. Thats crazy.
Also remember, this was the first Xbox Series games we saw too. They premiered it back in 2019.
I keep trying to tell people, Games can not take this long to make. We are headed for a Video Game Crash 2.0.
Hope for it for quite some time. But after the crash, the audience of mainstream people will probably stay.
AAA is therefore dead and will stay that way.
Dude, the game is free.
It’s not free, it costs 5 hours.
Time is the most valuable thing in life indeed.
You’re goddamn right!
WAIT, 5 ONLY?!!?!
Geeeeee
That’s what i read on the internet.
Confirmed!
Was there minding my won schizophrenia and then boom, game over!
Cool movie, but I wouldn’t pay for it, though.
How’s the game mechanics? One button combat and pixel search like the first game?
Exactly like the 1st, boring and dumb combat system.
Also, the audio got better but the voices now break the puzzles, since they will always tell you everything you need to do.
They did dumb down the game even more.
lol, impressive. More dumb, more ugly, and even more power hungry for the poor GPU’s.
That summarises it well.
Chromatic aberrations the worst sh*t i have ever seen in video games.
Somehow, they managed to have even less and dumber gameplay in an already walking simulator game.
The only thing it has going on is the visuals (thankfully you can remove that embarrassment of black bars made for consoles that can’t handle it ala The Order 1886/ The Evil Within). This should have been a CGI movie on Netflix and call it a day.
Ninja Theory is on the chopping block for sure after this joke.
maybe after hellblade 3 that apparently got the greenlight already.
Then M$ deserves all the sh*t they get.
Good Lord, the chromatic aberration is incredibly grotesque in this game. WTF were they smoking?
You don’t understand! Movies are so much more sophisticated and glamorous than video games! We need to make games more like movies! If only we could see the world through a sh*tty outdated camera, maybe people would finally believe that I’m a real woman!
You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone, embrace your femininity. I personally have a 20cm ding dong but it’s just an over protruding clit0ris.
Sure my hairy sack stick out of my skirt when I bend over, but you should ignore it and call me ms.dagoat.
what u dress up as for halloween?
A white straight man
ahhh i thought you was superma’am
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/54619
why would you play this garbage?
Cause yo mamma can’t entertain us 24/7.
We need another kind of garbage to pass the time.
Jk lad, please don’t report to the Pakistani police! =D
too late, i already reporteded yous to pakistani police, i am juanme555, my dedde is an Al-Con-Queso commander, consider your gay orgies days officially over mr. BT , you may hide the first two letters of your real nickname to disqus but i can smell the rainbow all the way down here.
Disgusting joke for a game!
Let em keep this walking sim Trash!
The original was exactly like this game so I don’t understand what people were expecting lol
yeah me neither.
I guess it got a downgrade in those voices in her head.
They keep telling you everything yo need to do, rendering the puzzles useless.
But I like walking sims, and this one is gorgeous.
Because you’ll expect improvements in a sequel, even on heavily “story driven games”, no regressions outside of visuals.
Going over the reviews, this is another overpriced “ciNeMAtIc ExPeRieNcE” just like Garbage of Tsushima. Xbox is now copying Sony’s trash. Consoles suck.
GameSpot — 6/10
“With too much focus on cinematics and too little on creating an experience that is engaging, Senua’s Saga fails to reach the same highs as its predecessor.”
Metro — 5/10
“A joyless slog of barely interactive entertainment and a muddled portrayal of mental illness.
Imagine if 30 years ago, you said to someone in an Arcade Hall enjoying an adrenaline filled rush, that the future of gaming on consoles would walking simulators. Games where watching unskippable cutscenes for hours is the content and where the most interactive elements are quicktime events designed for morons.
They wouldn’t believe you. Nintendo is the only console where the exclusives are ACTUAL GAMES! No wonder Sony and Xbox are bordering on irrelevance. At this point, $1 mobile games are more entertaining than what’s found on PS/Xbox.
“Kojima is a genius“. Kojima is a moron.
Overpriced? Both games are free to download if you know where to look.
* GamePass
Imagine if 30 years ago, you said to someone in an Arcade Hall enjoying an adrenaline filled rush, that the future of gaming on consoles would be walking simulators. Games where watching unskippable cutscenes for hours is the content and where the most interactive elements are quicktime events designed for morons.
They wouldn’t believe you. Nintendo is the only console where the exclusives are ACTUAL GAMES! No wonder Sony and Xbox are bordering on irrelevance. At this point, $1 mobile games are more entertaining than what’s found on PS/Xbox.
“Kojima is a genius“. Kojima is a moron.
did u just reply to yourself? you know u can edit right? you dont get bonus points for each comment.
I guess you can add ur name in there as well lol
People do this to prevent text truncation. Do you not understand I divided the post in 2 equally sized parts to prevent truncation?
And I know how to edit, my posts are literally edited, you can see when posts are edited because there will be an “edited” tag next to a user’s name.
Single-digit IQ failures like yourself should probably not be online without supervision.
To be fair, there was actual gameplay in Death Stranding.
Loved DS, but hated HB1.
Death Stranding was surprisingly enjoyable, the challenge of exploring a vast varied terrain and slowly connecting everything. i gotta hand it to Kojima, he can make a FedEx simulator enjoyable to play
Yeah, I got it free from the Epic store and had zero expectations, but ended up sinking loads of hours into it just connecting all the highways.
It shouldn’t work, but it does.
I can see why some would bounce off it though, but it’s far superior to HB. Couldn’t stand that moany b*tch by the end of the first game.
I guess you enjoy working at FedEx then.
Do you need to hide from poltergeits while working in FedEx?
Sometimes, when you go deep into Detroit you do.
Good thing Kojima made a game about the America in his head (Iceland vistas) instead of a hood rat ghetto.
Ubi made that with Shadows. Oops.
Dude, if you’re so against evolving, you can still play River Raid and be happy.
Just don’t think everyone wants to stay in 1985 with you.
There’s more shït than actual games today? Ofc there is, but that is just what the market became, saturated!
There’s still awesome things in gaming.
There used to be cinematic games back then, but they where full of challange and insta death scenarious.
“Kojima is a genius”. Kojima is a moron.”
He is often misinterpreted by it’s detractors and appreciators alike. A “game” like Senua more accurately represents a Kojima game, but without the mechanics he put so much work in… Then detractors see this game and blame the “inspiration”.
Shame on me, but I love these kind of games!
Even more when they’re free.
Ahoy!
Thanks John, I played the game yesterday (4K 32inch) and it looked so soft, like it was running it at 1440p.
I hope removing the ChromaticAberration and FilmGrain will help.
I kinda get why they were so heavy handed with these effects.
The game should feel like a nightmare/hallucinations and these effects help.
Dudes are like “fück the intended atmosphere”.
But I’ll remove film grain, though. That’s disgusting!
I used Reshade to strech the screen to remove the borders but will give this a go and see what the framerate diff is.
Can’t stand film grain!
The other stuff I’ll keep there.
Amazing the amount of graphical fidelity and horse power required to render such an ugly world (and woman). Compared to something like Death Stranding, where you take a virtual tour on Iceland aka pseudo america, then you have this game with ghetto like atmosphere…