Alan x Senua parallel
One day I'll have the proper data base and screenshots to prove that Senua is, a matter of fact, Alan Wake's greatest grandmother.
Hear me out and bear with me till the end it's fruiting I promise, they are so similar in terms of psychosis, and the whole idea of getting away from Darkness and staying in the Light
Their immense love to their partner.
The nordic background and symbolism
Their evil self/doppelganger
and of course their higher mental abilities in solving puzzles and cracking codes.
Everyone who played both games feels that they're the same person but can't quite explain how.
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Senua pushes away a world that conspired to cause so much suffering. There is nothing to go back to and worse to look forward to. Why don't you join us? Maybe you too have a part to play in this story.
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i think one of the most interesting things about hellblade: senua’s sacrifice is how the milieu of voices, that uneasy din of whispers punctuated by one clear narrative voice, makes you a constant stranger to the narrative.
the fact is that they all speak just as much to you as to senua, and this makes you aware of your position as an audience. the camera angles in the game, how they hold you staring at senua’s right shoulder, the slow pan of looking around, her movements astonishing when she fights and the way that your input always feels like putting pressure on things. there’s a real struggle, mechanically, to move around the map. it’s beautiful and seamless and you are not welcome there.
oh, and especially that unwavering, secret voice, maître d’ to our cold and unseen entrance to this world, watching senua guide her canoe along a river lined in corpses. the voice asking who you are and then remarking, softly, “… it doesn’t matter.” her next words chilling, comforting - “you are safe with me. i’ll be right here, nice and close.”
and this voice, like cold water on your tongue, speaks only to you.
there’s a sense, in it, that you have been picked up by the narrative even as senua has been abandoned to it. she’s lost, and you with her, but you’re not with her, are you? the voices, their clamour and disquiet, alienate you from senua. even with third person games there’s usually a feeling of closeness, of dual-bodiment with the character you control. play for long enough and you wince at every blow not out of pity, but because it feels like you’ve slipped quite by accident into their skin.
but this is never the case with senua. she’s always right there, close as a mouth and yet distant, slipping from you as she ventures into hela’s realm.
it’s really a very powerful statement, an experience that lets you walk with a character but out of step with her, encroached by the same darkness but also safe from it in a way she never is. you have that wave-breaking voice that can banish all the stray sound of whispers wisping at the edges of the screen. when things are too much you can walk away. i think, perhaps, no game has ever made me more aware of my capacity to walk back out of a story, of the fact that the characters cannot.
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