Hellblade 2 makes the jump from Xbox Series X|S to PS5 tomorrow, 12th August, and according to a quick Ninja Theory-led trailer, this porting effort was a relatively easy and painless process for the British developer.
Last year's base Xbox Series X|S version was made in Unreal Engine 5, and as technical director Gavin Costello explains, Epic Games already has a "very good" platform integration for PS5 available for the engine. With the PS5 build up and running, the tools team then worked to receive nightly builds of the game and bring its content team on board.
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"We also have a system internally called Self Play, which is able to play the game from start to end, as well as attaching profiling tools to this while it does it," explained Costello. "This meant that very early on, we were able to get the game verified as playing start to end and get a good overview of where our current performance was at. This was a great position for us to start on the platform."
The only real challenge Ninja Theory encountered was enhancing Hellblade 2 for the PS5 Pro, as the version of Unreal Engine 5 it originally shipped the game on hadn't been updated for the upgraded console. It ported back features into the current build, allowing the game to utilise PSSR.
"Ultimately, the porting of Hellblade 2 to PlayStation 5 went very smoothly. This meant that we could spend more of our time working on the new content as well as performance mode," Gavin Costello concluded in the video.
Senau's Saga: Hellblade 2 launches for PS5 on 12th August, and its new 60fps Performance Mode is one of the highlights of a cinematic spectacle that "offers little else". In our 6/10-rated review, we concluded: "Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is more enjoyable as a visual and auditory experience than it is to actually play."