Ninja Theory will demonstrate more gameplay from its upcoming action game Hellblade the week before E32015, the developer has revealed on its official Twitter account.
The studio has also released a developer diary video to accompany the announcement. It’s refreshingly honest, actually, about how difficult and time-consuming it is to market your game.
There’s a segment on creating a ‘Vertical Slice’, which is essentially a one of those 5-10 minute demos that companies use to show off what their game will eventually look like - rather than an absolutely accurate vision of the final product, it’s designed to give the press an idea of what the team is aiming for, a compact demonstration of the key mechanics and ideas behind the project.
Which is not easy to do when you’re still hard at work developing the thing; “It was best described as a disaster,” says creative lead Tameem Antoniades, “the combat was messy and unclear, the AI was really frustrating for players and the level was described as too small, too linear and too awkward to navigate.”
Ouch. Since then, though, the team’s been hard at work whittling the Vertical Slice into shape. The press will get their hands on it first, at a pre-E3 event this month, and then it will be shown to the public on June 10.
Hellblade will be released on PC and PlayStation 4 when it’s finally ready to go. Aside from the fact it’s based on Celtic myths and legends, we still don’t know too much about the project at this point.