Hellblade Permadeath Salt -

[Koalemos]

Independent video game developer Ninja Theory (Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, DmC: Devil May Cry) recently announced that in their latest game, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, death would be permanent and delete your save file.

This decision received a lot of backlash from people like TotalBiscuit and his contemporaries, who labelled the feature as "anti-consumer", since it wasn't advertised until a day before release. It's since been revealed that this was just a marketing stunt by Ninja Theory and isn't real, but it sparked a lot of conversation about "gamer entitlement" from the usual sort (games journos, twitter spergs etc.).

• Patrick Klepek, reporter for Waypoint.
• A NeoGAF thread

Spoiler: Some assorted twitter posts

EDIT:
Turns out there's also some salt over the way the main character styles her hair. So I present:

Spoiler: Whitey with dreads salt

 

[_blank_]

Pick a response:

1) Ninja Theory can never get a break.
2) The game is supposed to be about madness, and nothing says madness like permadeath.
3) Git Gud
4) Lol Vidya Games.

 

[Honeybunny]

but it sparked a lot of conversation about "gamer entitlement" from the usual sort (games journos, twitter spergs etc.).

In other words they're trying to cover their asses because they were the ones who believed it and reported on it

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

I've looked through tumblr and twitter but most people seem to love this game, which just makes TB's tantrum funnier.

 

[Koalemos]

Pick a response:

1) Ninja Theory can never get a break.
2) The game is supposed to be about madness, and nothing says madness like permadeath.
3) Git Gud
4) Lol Vidya Games.

Your first point brings to mind how similar this is to the release of DmC: Devil May Cry. Some people take issue with an aspect of the game (Donte's character/permadeath), that issue is spun around by people on social media (they just don't like Donte's hair/they just hate Ninja Theory's artistic choices) and it all comes around to talk of "gamer entitlement".

 

[Club Sandwich]

games have had permadeath since forever. haven't they played Zork or something? Nier uses it as an ending, and rogue-likes are everywhere and permadeath is a key part of the genre. Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, FTL, X-Com (which has a difficulty that allows a single save), Fire Emblem, and many others that have it as a selectable "iron man" mode.

sounds like some people just need to git gud.

 

[Alex "Idominatio" Figueroa]

Oh noes, you'll have to play from the start, surely we've never faced such unjust threatment in videogames before.

 

[Brandlebrundt]

Before the game even came out, the 'permadeath' was already debunked as a bluff.

Yes, the game promises you that the rot will increase with every death, eventually killing Senua permanently. It just, well, doesn’t. The rot will grow to a certain point - which we think is governed by how far through the game you are - and then stop. In fact, this happens fairly quickly after a couple of deaths. Details, and 50 of our own deaths, are in the video above.

Patrick Klepek's article is disingenuous at best, because he wrote it after already having learned that the permadeath isn't actually real yet still passes it off like it's a mystery he wasn't sure about.



In the end I think he was more sour grapes because it's the kind of thing he loves to write lengthy articles about and it was a wash before he started... not that it stopped him from writing a lengthy article about it anyways after complaining on twitter.

 

[Caddchef]

Since when were Ninja Theory an indie dev?

 

[Koalemos]

Since when were Ninja Theory an indie dev?

Hellblade is self-funded and published entirely by Ninja Theory, and they describe it as a "multimillion-dollar risk".

 

[Elysian]

Even with the permadeath being fake, I hope someone on PC finds a way to actually mod that feature in since I think it's a great idea!

Most of the peeps getting salty on twitter seem to be the tumblr types who were buying the game to ~support mental illness~ or whatever and were expecting it to be an uber-casual experience, which is obviously contradicted by the """permadeath""". The people salty on Steam seem to be ones that weren't mad about the permadeath, but because they went in expecting the game to be Dark Souls: Viking Edition and then getting salty when they realized it was more story driven.

 

[Tranhuviya]

lol it's just vidya niggas calm down

 

[Elysian]

lol

While searching for permadeath salt from yesterday I also found someone on tumblr who's salty about the protagonist of the game being white and having dreads, because of course.

 

[Lackadaisy]

View attachment 260144
lol

While searching for permadeath salt from yesterday I also found someone on tumblr who's salty about the protagonist of the game being white and having dreads, because of course.
View attachment 260141

White people lived in tribes and had dreads.

 

[Koalemos]

While searching for permadeath salt from yesterday I also found someone on tumblr who's salty about the protagonist of the game being white and having dreads, because of course.

Thanks for that tidbit, added it as its own section to the OP.

 

[vertexwindi]

>buying anything from Ninja Theory after DmC

 

[MarineN*423543]

Autism....autism never changes

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Surprise assholes,

Hellblade is based on celtic and norse mytholgy and the fucking celts had DREADS.

 

[Koalemos]

Surprise assholes,

Hellblade is based on celtic and norse mytholgy and the fucking celts had DREADS.

The Celts may have had dreadlocks, but here's a Tumblr "historian" ready to tell you why those don't count.

 

[Alex "Idominatio" Figueroa]

The Celts may have had dreadlocks, but here's a Tumblr "historian" ready to tell you why those don't count.

>and it was one ethnic group amongst MANY of ancient Europe.
>The more multiculturalism the more worthless every culture is. HAHA my sides
Also, I'm not an anthropologist but I bet that the proportion of traditional cultures/tribes/civs that didn't practiced dreadlock hair compared to those who did was far greater in Africa than Europe if just by number of them.