Mental health representation in entertainment media is a bit of a thorny issue, mired as it is in all manner of problematic tropes.  Horror properties in particular suffer here.  Whether they’re painting the mentally ill as gibbering lunatics in insane asylums or serial killers without a semblance of a moral compass, horror books, movies, and games so often are the place where subtlety and nuance about psychological struggles goes to die.

Enter Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a game which clearly wants to be a sympathetic, well-informed look at psychosis and how it affects people – so much so that the first names in the opening credits belong to mental health (as well as historical) consultants.  And dammit, if any development team should need to front-load their consultancy credentials, it’s Ninja Theory, aka the same folks who (in this reviewer’s opinion) utterly botched their handling of slavery in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Of course, then the question becomes: is Hellblade a redemption story for Ninja Theory’s writing?  The short answer is: … kinda.