Skip to main content

DmC creator’s Hellblade is ‘a game with a big world of long draw distances’

Updated on 03-15-2016 by Gabe Carey: ARM has backpedaled on its original statement that Hellblade is an open-world game, instead opting to declare it “a game with a big world of long draw distances.”

In a conference call with ARM subsidiary Geomerics last week, it was revealed that the company is working on bringing its Enlighten “real-time global illumination technology” over to open-world games. The goal is to make lighting look more realistic in a 25km² interactive world without putting strain on the GPU.

Recommended Videos

Without belittling the efforts of the engineers meticulously dedicated to creating some dazzling in-game assets, an even more enticing story emerged from our talks.

Apparently, the open-world iteration of Enlighten is the result of a collaboration between Geomerics and Ninja Theory, esteemed developer behind games like PS3 launch title Heavenly Sword and the 2013 reboot DmC: Devil May Cry. 

At last year’s Gamescom, however, the company revealed that its next project would be called Hellblade, described as an “independent AAA” title, and moreover a unique exploration of mental illness.

Of course, with the developer focused on an open-world technology while its next game is still in early development, there was an immediate connection to be drawn. Everything we’ve seen of Hellblade up to this point has appeared fairly linear, so then what would Ninja Theory have to gain from this partnership?

As it turns out, my suspicions were correct, and Geomeric’s Chris Porthouse confirmed to me that, in fact, Hellblade is now an open-world title in addition to its action RPG classification.

When asked if Ninja Theory was working on an open-world game, Doran responded, “Yes, they are. I don’t think it’s any secret that they’ve been working on Hellblade.”

“They’re a local Cambridge company, he elaborated. “We know them really, very well. They’ve got some beautiful assets. The thing we’ve done is take those assets and relight those assets with Enlighten.”

While Hellblade is slated to arrive at an undisclosed date later in the year, it’s not clear when we’ll begin to see Enlighten tech implemented in large open worlds. Nevertheless, Ninja Theory has evidently contrived a PC and PS4 demonstration for GDC, elusively titled Seastack Bay.

“Reproducing the beauty of natural lighting is central to the look and feel of Hellblade,” a Ninja Theory rep boasted in a press release. “In a world as rich as ours it is a challenge to achieve realistic dynamic lighting effects at our target frame rate, but this is something Enlighten will allow us to do, adding great value to the overall Hellblade experience.”

When Enlighten’s open-world variation does begin to surface, it will be available to developers as either a standalone SDK or as a pre-integrated feature in Unreal Engine as well as Unity 5.

Gabe Carey
A freelancer for Digital Trends, Gabe Carey has been covering the intersection of video games and technology since he was 16…
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 gets a visual upgrade but stays wonderfully familiar
THPS 3 + 4

The year was 2001, and I was flat on my back in the middle of the street after bailing hard from a failed ollie.

Once I dusted myself off, I decided to try again, but in a safer, more digital aspect. Two decades ago, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 devoured my free time, and now the remake is back and doing the exact same thing. An excellent remake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 brings two classic titles to a modern audience but adds little to the original experience in a way that leaves the game feeling curiously anachronistic.

Read more
The best PlayStation launch games, ranked
best ps1 games sony ps1

The most important time in a console's life is its launch. This is when a new piece of hardware needs to prove that it is worth investing in, which always comes down to games. Launch titles are rarely the best games on the system, although some of Nintendo's launch games buck that trend, but at least need to show off what the system can do. PlayStation always had a secondary selling point with its consoles, such as doubling as a CD player or DVD player, so it is interesting to speculate how successful those early consoles would've been judged solely on their games. We now have launch titles from the PS1 all the way up to the PS5 (and soon to be PS6) to look back on with fresh eyes to see just how good those first games were.

Air Combat - PlayStation 1

Read more
The Switch 2 is the perfect example of why console launches don’t feel special anymore
The Switch 2 being unboxed.

I will never forget the unbearable excitement I felt on that early morning on my 7th birthday. It was 1998, and Pokémon was the biggest thing in the world, especially for an elementary school kid like me. Except that I didn't have a single card or game to my name. In fact, I didn't even have a Game Boy. That, plus Pokémon, was the only thing I asked for that birthday, and I knew I would get it.

I can still remember lying awake half the night, unable to sleep while my imagination ran wild with unrealistic machinations of what the game would be like. I woke up just as early to the sounds of my parents and sister setting up decorations downstairs and bided my time before I could go down. It was a school day, but they could sense my excitement well in advance and agreed to let me open one thing before school.

Read more