YouTube’s ‘Cycu1’ has shared a video graphics comparison between Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’s gameplay footage that was featured in its dev diaries and its retail/final version. And as you may have guessed, there are some slight differences between them.
From the looks of it, these differences are mainly due to artistic choices. For example, Senua’s eyebrows in the final game are painted (alongside most of her face) whereas in the dev diaries they are not. And while we can’t comment on the quality of textures (since these scenes are taken from dev diaries that were already affected by YouTube’s compression), we can slightly comment about its lighting.
In the first scene, for example, we see stronger lighting effects than those featured in the final version. However, it appears that the bright light source is “fake” as there is nothing in that scene that casts it (you can easily notice it when the camera pans). Our guess is that it was used in order to make the scene ‘cooler‘ in the dev diaries.
On the other hand, in the second scene we see additional reflection effects on Senua’s knee in the final version (that were absent from the dev diaries).
In the third and fourth scene we see a better – or more accurate if you prefer – lighting system in the final version.
Again, as we’ve already said, these seem like artistic differences and nothing more. Still, it’s cool witnessing how the game has evolved during its development cycle.
Enjoy!
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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