How Ninja Theory created Hellblade II’s unsettling soundscape
Image by Ninja Theory/Microsoft.
Similar to the acclaimed Hellblade, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a narrative-driven experience that places players into the viewpoint of Senua, a damaged Celtic warrior grappling with psychosis. As a tale about learning to accept reality and Senua’s visions as intertwined, Hellblade II offers an experience that employs distinct visuals and, most notably, audio effects that enhance the protagonist’s mental landscape throughout her journey.
During the 2025 Game Developers Conference, Ninja Theory’s lead sound designer Daniele Galante delivered an in-depth talk on the audio design of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, highlighting how the original game’s innovative use of binaural audio was expanded for the sequel. Besides detailing how actors recorded their performances with binaural audio setups, the sound designer discussed the challenges and benefits of advanced sound design for video games.
Crafting a hallucinatory soundscape
Developer Ninja Theory has established a reputation for creating games with rich visual aesthetics and impressive sound design. The previous Hellblade received significant acclaim not only for being a game with a limited budget and scope but also for how the developers maximized their resources to create a visually stunning game with exceptional audio design and clever application of binaural audio – sound design that mimics spatial audio.
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For Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Ninja Theory secured additional resources and a more robust team to create a higher-quality sequel, with sound design being one area the developers aimed to improve. Throughout the game, Senua confronts enemies from rival clans and other disturbing foes—but her journey is laced with visual and auditory hallucinations that transform her already perilous situations into a terrifying ordeal. Ultimately, she relies on her survival instincts and awareness to ground herself, and by the game’s conclusion, she once again embraces her identity and comes to terms with her trauma.
According to Galante, continuing the use of binaural audio was essential as it allowed them to help players gain a deeper understanding of how individuals perceive auditory hallucinations, immersing them within Senua’s perspective.
“Many people assume that you hear [auditory hallucinations] inside your head, but that’s not entirely accurate.” In most cases, they hear voices around them, much like how I am speaking to you or when we refer to each other,” explained Galante. “Using binaural audio was an obvious choice because we want to recreate these voices around the player to draw them into this experience. Additionally, we could provide our performers with a unique tool, which is their physical body movement. They generally cannot utilize it when they perform in front of a mic. They need to project their emotions into their performance, and because of that, we found that actors with a theater background often excel with binaural audio.”
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As Galante illustrated through various clips in his presentation, the actors portraying the Furies (Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen)—the voices that Senua hears throughout the game—recorded their lines while also moving around a Neumann KU 100 Binaural Dummy Head mic during the recording sessions, treating the mic as if it were Senua herself and the player. This particular mic simulates an average-sized head and captures sound in a 3D environment, but Galante emphasized that the effectiveness of binaural audio can vary for individuals, and he stressed that the best way to experience the game’s audio design is through headphones.
Sound drives narrative, but narrative is “king”
One point that Galante stressed was that the game’s audio design had to support the storytelling. For Hellblade II, the lead sound designer treated the binaural audio recordings from the actors as if they were acoustic instruments. The reverberation created by the performers’ voices and the sound designers adjusting it in post-production with Visual Studio Technology (VST) helped immerse players in Senua’s mental space.
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Employing non-verbal vocal recording – to create unsettling noises and other disconcerting sounds—proved especially critical in establishing a disquieting atmosphere, all in service of Senua’s perspective. Actor Edward Spence provided vocal lines and non-verbal audio for a sequence where Senua traverses a submerged cave filled with the whispers of the deceased reaching out to her.
“Our voice is an especially unique tool, and we should utilize it more when we create sound design,” he stated. “We also capture non-verbal elements, so any noise you can conceive of, it’s possible we can express it.”
to emerge from your voice exists because we aim to be innovative and affect the player’s mindset, making them feel despondent. As a result, when we encounter a sound that isn’t expected, it can certainly make you feel unsettled by it.”
Image by Ninja Theory/Microsoft.
Image by Ninja Theory/Microsoft.
One of the key moments in Ninja Theory’s sequel was Senua’s encounter with the Tyrant—an emotionally intense and ruthless boss battle against the protagonist’s father. To portray this boss fight as a scene where Senua faces a significant source of trauma and mistreatment in her life, the developers merged the voices of six different voice actors to create the voice of the Tyrant. They employed 3D audio effects to give the sequence a suffocating and all-consuming atmosphere.
Galante later mentioned that, despite the considerable benefits of binaural audio for immersion, it also presents several challenges. Apart from being labor-intensive to produce, extensive post-production work is necessary to ensure that the binaural audio functions properly for a broad audience. Most importantly, Galante noted that you must have a clear vision of what you want to achieve when recording, as 3D audio is definitive.
One error made by the Ninja Theory sound designer occurred early in the creation of the audio design for the Tyrant fight because the rest of the team did not have a specific vision for what the confrontation would entail. When he revisited the main actor’s recording after the team had a clearer understanding of how the encounter would unfold, he realized it wasn’t quite right for the new concept, necessitating him to undertake the meticulous process