《地狱之刃》制作人专访: 游戏开发过程与设计理念分享

原作者：Dean Takahashi 译者：Vivian Xue

《地狱之刃：赛娜的献祭》是今年最佳的游戏之一，讲述的是一位精神错乱战士进入到北欧地狱的恐怖旅程。

这款来自英国游戏工作室Ninja Theory的游戏发布于8月8日，如果你还没玩过真应该试试。百分制的话我会给它打95分，这是今年我心中最高分的游戏。不过得提醒你，游戏的体验过程有些艰难，因为随着战士赛娜同内心的恶魔作斗争，她混乱的精神状态将萦绕游戏全程。

赛娜的故事是由Ninja Theory的首席创意总监Tameem Antoniades领导的团队创作出来的，这部诚意之作耗时四年，工作室在这部动作冒险游戏中真实展现了一个饱受精神病折磨的角色。主角赛娜会出现一些幻觉，无法分辨眼前的恶魔或脑中的声音是真是假。

为了让剧情更真实，英国的生物医学研究慈善机构维康信托基金会向Ninja Theory资助了395,000美金用于精神疾病研究，这使得Ninja Theory能够在调查研究的基础上独立完成这个艰巨的创作。工作室成员Melina Juergens制作了一个关于研究和游戏开发过程的纪录片，同时该公司还创建了一个网站，用于进一步发现了解精神疾病。

游戏中赛娜混乱的精神状态、地狱般的场景和极为真实的面部细节融为一体。当赛娜进入阴间与恶魔战斗时，你无法分别事物的真假。我和Antoniades就游戏的剧情、制作过程、内容的真假以及故事隐晦结局的含义进行了深入探讨。

对我来说，这部游戏如同一项艺术品，能够在体验游戏后采访到它的创作者、了解它的创作过程是一件难得的乐事。同样令人高兴的是，《地狱之刃》在发行几个月后就取得了商业上的成功。

以下是编辑后的采访内容。

注：内容含剧透。

GamesBeat：能总结下你们是如何在精神健康研究专家、剑桥大学学者和维康基金会的帮助下制作出这部游戏的吗？

Antoniades：我们先确定了游戏内容——关于精神病和幻想以及它们如何同神话联系起来。我们一开始就清楚这不是一个简单的项目。一旦出差错，我们可能会受到人们的强烈抵制。因此我们希望进行研究。

于是我们寻求当地的帮助，这时Paul Frethcer教授出现了。我们在谷歌上搜索发现他是一位精神病学领域的权威专家，因此我们与他取得了联系。接着他来参观我们的工作室。同时我们也联系了维康基金会，他们是世界上第二大慈善机构。

我们的会面进展十分顺利。Paul仅和我们进行了交谈，他为我们提供了一些指点并建议我们去学习理解一些相关内容。见面后我们希望他能和我们合作。与此同时，维康基金会为我们提供一笔合作开发资金，我想要么是五十万美元要么是五十万英镑。他们真这么做了，我们因此能够咨询Paul和其他的机构。他们鼓励我们和更多不同的机构联络。

通过这些人的介绍我们联系上了Recovery College East，他们成为了我们的主要合作者。机构经营者叫Tracey（Tingey），他邀请了一些人到我们工作室，这些人都患过精神病和心理疾病，并且愿意和我们交流和分享自己的经历。自宣布项目启动后，我们每隔两三个月会和他们联系一次。在项目的设计阶段，我们一直保持和他们见面，向他们展示我们的工作成果然后聊他们的经历。接着我们把这些全部融合进游戏设计中，一直到游戏制作完成。

游戏的开发过程非常顺利。我们一边学习一边创作剧情。在反馈中我们开始设计玩法、关卡和画面。同时我们还组织了一个声音聆听小组。这是一个非常有趣的小组，成员们能听到一些“声音”，但他们并不认为自己有精神病。我们还和一群认为自己存在严重精神病的人见面。最后参与研究的人群和专家变得非常广泛。

我们尤其要感谢维康基金会和Paul Fletcher教授。维康基金会的资助使我们能够进行严谨的研究，而Paul给了我们很多心理健康问题方面的专业指导。

GamesBeat：你们怎么想到创造一个赛娜这样的角色？在科幻作品中，患有精神病的通常是反派而非英雄。

Antoniades：没错，这正是大部分媒体希望展示的，但我认为这是不正确的。精神错乱和心理变态往往被人们混淆了。精神错乱是一种脱离现实的状态。而心理变态是同情心的缺失。这两个词经常被混用，甚至在一些关于这方面的学术著作中，当你听说某个人有精神病，你往往会认为他们是心理变态，而事实上这两者完全不一样。如果你出现耳语、幻觉或者产生幻想，你会被自然当作危险人物。这是问题引发的根源。关于二者的区分也是我需要学习和了解的。

媒体对此的传播是一个很大的危害。它很可能深深伤害正在经历这些的人们，使他们羞于承认自己出现了这些状况。对于我来说，这也是一个学习的过程。毫不惭愧地说我之前对此一无所知。

因此能够在制作游戏时接近其背后的科学和真理是具有启发意义的。制作过程对我们的影响与人们当初所想的不太一样。它是一场关于思考和反省的个人心路历程。

GamesBeat：你们清楚自己想通过游戏表达什么吗？

Antoniades：它是逐渐建立起来的。一开始，我想看看我们能否再现一个精神病患者的经历，让玩家去感受它。耳语、幻觉从表面上看源于人们自身。这种体验是可以描述出来的。人们讲述着他们遇到恶魔的经历，像真的一样。我一开始想到的是这类诡异的信仰体系——我认为游戏能够很好地传播这类事物。

随着我们进行更多的交流和采访，我们开始思考人的价值。接着，我们更多地进行角色研究，剖析她的人生。赛娜是许多人们经历的一个集中展示。她看到的世界总是与常人不同。她能听到声音。但她的父亲和其他人无法理解她，认为这是一种痛苦和耻辱，于是它逐渐变成了一种消极的经历，一直困扰着她。

这是许多人的经历的写照。这些精神病症状并不是造成人们心理问题的主要原因，如果你这么想的话。但是其他人对你的不理解、对待你的方式却会让这些症状变得无法忍受或者让它们变成消极的事物。

GamesBeat：你们把她这种能够看到不同世界的能力和解谜结合在一起，我觉得非常妙。这为游戏的玩法增添了非常有趣的成分。

Antoniades：这基于Paul Fletcher教授的研究结果，我们在测试时发现，当你让人们去倾听某一随机的声音，然后询问他们是否能够从这种声音中看到某种景象或者其他东西，那些精神病倾向的人们能比普通人更快地识别出来。

事实上，我认为许多这类能够看见别人看不到的图案或事物的能力——根本与心理状态无关。在这个世界上，总是有人比其他人更擅长识别图案。这并不意味着你有精神病。这是由于个体感受世界的方式不同而产生的一种自然现象。只不过极端的精神病案例中，这种现象被放大了。

GamesBeat：基于目前的游戏反馈，你认为大部分人能够理解你们所要传递的想法吗？

Antoniades：事实上我非常惊讶，人们的理解程度比我想象的要好的多。我原本以为这个游戏会非常有争议性，会有那么一群人坚决抵制我们所做的一切，并且会引发一场关于在电子游戏中展示这类内容是否合乎道德的激烈讨论，尤其因为这是一款具有暴力元素的游戏。但事实上，人们至今一直以一种非常成熟而理解的态度讨论游戏，无论是玩家之间还是在医疗健康专业人士之间。

你知道，当玩家们在互联网上匿名讨论东西时可能会变得非常偏激和粗鲁。看到人们如此成熟地讨论游戏，并且有些人还被游戏所触动——这比我所设想的结果要好的多。当初做这款游戏时，我确实严重缺乏信心，想着“这种游戏怎么可能获得好的反响？”但是谢天谢地，我现在已经知足了。有一些人持反对态度，但是和我们收到的积极反馈相比非常少。

GamesBeat：我在Polygon上看到了一篇来自一位心理疾病患者的剧情解析。

Antoniades：在我看来，这款游戏的隐喻性很强，这是很少见的。对于它的解读不止一种，每一种都是合理的，她的观点是其中之一。我认为应该还有更多的解读方式。

GamesBeat：人们认为这部游戏具有治愈效果，还是认为有心理问题的人群不适合玩这款游戏？你们得到过这样的反馈吗？

Antoniades：在开发过程中同我们交流的人群态度都非常开放。他们建议我们在游戏开头安插一个警示，因为如果你有过这些经历，它可能非常恐怖。他们虽然让我们做提醒，但完全鼓励我们按原来的样子做下去——展示真正恐怖的感觉。

GamesBeat：很多人都能对游戏有所触动吗？

Antoniades：最棒的是，游戏发行后我们马上收到了很多来自玩家的信息，我们把这些加入了我们的宣传片（游戏邦注accolades trailer，展示游戏的良好口碑）。我们制作这个影片时，感觉仅仅放入媒体评论或者其他积极评价显得太随便了。于是我们加入了真实的用户评价，我们收到非常之多。阅读这些信件时你很难不被感动。这个游戏真正影响了人们。

这游戏对人们最大的帮助似乎是——对于一些人来说，经历这些问题以及被贴上精神病的标签使他们感觉很孤独。而看到一个和自己拥有相同症状的角色，并且这个角色不是受害者，而是一名战士、一名激励人的英雄，能够不断地前行、永不放弃，是很难得的事情。这个游戏的存在让人们感到不孤单，或者他们不该为自己的问题感到羞耻。如果一款游戏能够反映他们的这些问题，或许证明他们并不是非常特殊的人群。我们受到很多的信件，人们说他们通过游戏使别人理解了们的经历，这对我们来说大概是最好的结果了。

另一个我所担心的主题是死亡，这是我们不常讨论的话题。但是在游戏中被多次提到。我想大概我们应该避开这个主题。那些有严重心理健康问题的人们会有这种困扰——这些想法长期存在、根深蒂固、反复出现在他们脑海中，它们的力量非常强大。并不是某一款游戏或某个事件就能突然把他们推向深渊的边缘。每当我思考该不该谈论这个、该不该把它加入到游戏中时，我总是选择忠于现实。
如果这是人们的经历、他们思考的方式、他们在采访中对我们描述的东西，我们就会在游戏中原原本本地展示它们，而不是把它浪漫化。

GamesBeat：你认为《地狱之刃》中的世界是真实的，还是赛娜的幻想？

Antoniades：游戏的主题之一就是，没有任何人的经历是“真实的”。当你站在赛娜的角度时，你看到的只是她所见的现实。你无法踏入其它的现实中然后说“这是这样，那是那样”。我会认为她的旅程是真实的，因为她从物理的层面上说在旅行。这并不完全是个梦，我之前提到过。

GamesBeat：游戏的很大一部分内容来源于历史，比如维京人登陆奥克尼群岛的史实等。

Antoniades：没错，维京人确实登陆到奥克尼，并且取代了当地的皮克特人。我们不知道这是如何发生的。英国和斯堪的纳维亚半岛有过贸易往来。我们请了一位来自剑桥大学的教授Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe——一位凯尔特和维京历史的研究专家作为顾问。我把游戏中的幻想部分比作一种堂吉诃德式的冒险，他把一座风车视为一个巨人，跟它决斗。游戏中的世界可以说是一种幻想，但是它是扎根于现实。

GamesBeat：我希望你们能够为人们实现一些东西。

Antoniades：我也希望如此。我已经对目前收到的反馈感到非常开心了。我相信这个游戏赋予了某些被忽视的群体一些话语权。我们对于游戏所取得的成果感到非常自豪。我很感激我们的粉丝以及喜欢这款游戏的人。这种感觉非常棒，特别是在成功发行了《鬼泣》之后。

GamesBeat：游戏中角色永久死亡引发了人们激烈的争论。我很好奇你对此的看法。这个话题最近在网上挺火的。

Antoniades：是的。我想这已经成为美国和英国的推特热门话题前五了。我们内部也讨论过，是否应该在游戏中运用这种机制。我们最后决定使用它，是因为它符合剧情以及游戏体验。我们并不是为了故意提高游戏难度而使用它。我们知道有些人会讨厌这种机制，但是考虑到它能增强这个游戏的体验，我们没有放弃它。

我们做了大量工作。去掉HUD，拉近了镜头距离，不间断的耳语——这些刚开始听起来是挺糟糕的主意。我们清楚我们首先要尝试制作出一种有效的体验。如果说这些元素对于这种体验有帮助，我们就把它们加入，即使知道有些人不会喜欢。这也是不走3A发行路线的好处之一，我们不需要让人人都喜欢我们的游戏。我们不需要取悦所有人。我认为我们已经和人们达成了共识。

GamesBeat：游戏人物的面部动画效果惊人。你们有没有注意到你们的人物脸部设计已经跨越了恐怖谷？（恐怖谷理论1969年由日本机器人专家森昌弘提出，当机器人与人类相像超过95%的时候，由于机器人与人类在外表﹑动作上都相当相似，所以人类亦会对机器人产生正面的情感。直至到了一个特定程度，他们的反应便会突然变得极之反感。游戏邦注）

Antoniades：这是团队努力的成果。你也到过GDC现场。这是3Lateral，Cubic Motion, Epic和我们共同努力的成果。我们扫描了我们的女演员Melina的面部，因此我们获得了真实的人脸作为参考。任何地方出了差错，我们都能马上纠正。

我认为当你看到一个掉进恐怖谷的角色时，准是哪方面出了问题。这些问题是可以被解决的。我们解决了这一点——虽然我不能说我们完全解决了这一点，但如你所见我们做的不错了。如果我们没有解决这个问题，游戏的效果就不会这么好。这关系到赛娜这个人物以及她的特写镜头。如果她双眼无神或者看起来很诡异，整个游戏效果会很差。这是一个关系到成败的重要方面。

因此，我们在面部表情上花了很大的功夫。Melina的表现也很值得赞叹。我们专注于把这件事做好，最终取得了回报。

GamesBeat：你们为什么选择Melina来演绎这个角色？

Antoniades：你也许知道，她是我们的视频编辑师。她是我们办公室的一员，平时非常善于表达，是一个天生的模仿者和喜剧演员。我认为这是她能演戏的好兆头。同时她也非常坦然地承认自己过去有过一些心理健康问题。她对谈论这些没有任何意见。我想只要她觉得做这个没问题就可以让她试试。她适应了在公共场合表演之后还蛮自在的。她很喜欢去非常黑暗的地方。我想她把这当成一种宣泄的方式。

从某种程度上，我认为这个角色是为她而生的。我们非常幸运能够拥有这位伙伴。一开始她尝试去表演，但是效果不怎么好。我让她停止表演。你不能教会一个人怎么去表演。这种能力是天生的。因此，我们不再让她表演另外一个人，而是让赛娜更像她自己，如果你能理解我的意思的话。这也许不是最好的拍摄方式，但是最后它奏效了。

GamesBeat：我觉得游戏里的声音效果也处理的非常好。你们怎么让这么多声音出现在脑海中？

Antoniades：蛮奇怪的，是吗？我最担心的事情是大部分玩家会觉得这很烦人。神奇的是人们很快就适应了这些声音。如果声音消失他们还感觉有点别扭，这也是那些出现耳语的人们所描述的感受。他们中的很多人说他们不希望这些声音消失。如果你没有这种经历你无法理解。

GamesBeat：你对于游戏的恐怖效果如何评价？你认为你们达到了什么样的水平？

Antoniades:：我和一位曾经精神错乱过的好朋友聊过。他描述道当时他在地上尖叫、认为自己要死了。他认为我们应该展现这种感觉。我认为人们不一定了解这些经历就像活生生的噩梦。某些情况下，它们就像经历恐怖故事。它们也可以成为非常自由和美妙的体验。但是等你真正看到和听到时，我想你会明白这有多恐怖。

我不觉得这是羞耻的，我认为这是游戏的一部分。并且我认为任何有理性的人看到这些幻象或者经历这些情况时都会感到害怕。有趣的是，我们认为那些有严重精神问题的人都是脆弱的，但是任何理智、意志坚强的人看到或听到同样事物，或者经历同样的事情时也会做出同样的反应。这是看待它的另一种方式，反过来看。

事实是，无论我们如何仿真，我们都只能再现这些经历的表面而已，真正经历它们的人们的感受要强烈的多。

GamesBeat：我认为最恐怖的是我在黑暗中移动、躲开那些生物时。我总觉得有什么东西会突然跳出来吓你一跳，但是一直没有。一切几乎都在我的掌控中。如果我避开了这些生物，我就获胜了。

Antoniades：但是那种紧张感让你觉得恐怖，是吗？

GamesBeat：这是玩家们常见的反馈吗？内心的不安比实际的情景要更为恐怖？

Antoniades：是的。一些人这种体验描述成——充满凶兆？这正是我脑海中一直构思的主意，一个被诅咒围绕的世界。当电视机开始传播一些信息或者电话响起，便预示着不好的事情将要发生。我们想要带来的是这种持续的紧张焦虑感，不是突然跳出来吓你的怪兽。我们根本没想把它当做一个恐怖游戏。

GamesBeat：你们想通过结局表达什么呢？

Antoniades：我不想回答——尽管我的心中对结局有一个明确的逻辑。但是它的解读是多样化的，因此我不想给出一个唯一的解读，这会让人们扫兴的。我只能说——内心的死亡与重生是一个反复出现的主题。

我想这和那些向我描述的经历的人们有关。他们从另一头挣脱了出来。你可能不常听说这些，但是很多经历过严重精神病发作的人，他们中的许多人在帮助下恢复正常，犹如重生了一般。他们感觉自己变成了另一个人，有人甚至为自己取了一个新名字，并且用第三人称谈论过去的自己。

这个新旧现实的概念是游戏中反复出现的主题。但是到最后，那个声音仍然在那里，幻觉也是。主角的症状并没有消失。但是她对现实的理解产生了变化，因此她记起她母亲说的那句话，“每一天都是一个崭新的故事”。“另一个故事”预示着会有明天。

GamesBeat：我猜想这就是隐喻之处了？你战胜了内心的恶魔或者从地狱逃脱了？

Antoniades：这些都属于剧透的范围了，但是主角内心的黑暗来源于她父亲的想法——她被诅咒了。最后她摆脱了这种想法。这无法改变Dillion死去的事实，耳语和幻觉仍旧在那里。但这些并不是她的过错，只要她摆脱了这种想法，她完全可以摆脱折磨。

一些人对此产生了误解，我不知道为什么他们会这么想，他们觉得主角到结局时受到了诅咒。她显然不是被诅咒了，因为她的精神病消失了。

GamesBeat：海拉，那个神灵，她代表着什么特殊之处吗？她只是赛娜旅程的最后一道障碍，还是她预示着更多的东西?

Antoniades：海拉是北欧神话中一个女神。她的母亲被绑在柱上烧死，她也被烧掉一半，因此她的身体一半是肉身一半是黑色的灰烬。她是黑暗的来源。她的记忆中融合了许多北欧神话。黑暗就包裹在其中。

游戏中有一些视觉隐喻。我发现人们认识世界的方式是通过寻找大量联系。许多的事物是有关联的。这一点Paul解释的会比我更清楚，但是你会在各处看到迹象。你会把看上去毫无相干的事物用一种有意义的方式联系起来。游戏中的大量象征从某种程度上存在关联。但是你无法确定地说“哈，肯定就是这样。”存在非常多的联系。这让你感觉自己仅处于谜团的表面，而这个谜团非常错综复杂。

海拉的形象也是有含义的，她所象征的东西，为何结局意味着死亡和重生。我认为如果让大家自由地去解读会更有趣。这一切背后都有逻辑。

GamesBeat：在故事的结尾赛娜实现了突破，包括意识到Dillion已经死了，无法再重生。以及她并非像父亲说的那样被诅咒了。

Antoniades：没错。她的父亲把这种想法塞给了她。Dillion几乎打破了这种想法。他告诉她她并没有被诅咒，这不是她的错。当Dillion死了，她父亲的想法重新控制了她。这场旅程就是为了返回到Dillion的现实，打破她父亲的想法。

GamesBeat：我很好奇为何她拥有一个如此残忍的父亲，Dillion为何会死，但似乎这些事情使得她的精神病变得消极。

Antoniades：没错。她的父亲是——我把他视为——德鲁伊特，德鲁伊在凯尔特文明中拥有非常大的权力，甚至超过了国王。他是权力的代表。凡事他说了算。他代表着神。而游戏中的父亲就是他在现实中的版本。我认为这部游戏涉及到人们对现实的不同看法以及他们如何影响别人的生活。他认为自己代表了神，他必须要控制她，驱散这种诅咒。当然，他对她做的每件事都是邪恶的，但他有自己的内在逻辑。

GamesBeat：剧情从某种程度上说有点令人捉摸不透，我想是因为它是以闪回的形式进行叙述的。我被搞糊涂了——为什么她掉落了悬崖？

Antoniades：这是故意而为之。当我们回忆过去时，我们的记忆不可能是完整的线性的，而是由一些时刻和片段组成。我认为故事的结构是否是完整紧凑线性的一点都不重要。这些事件塑造了她的人生。尽管我对打乱这些事件的时间顺序感到担忧，但是人们体验后却觉得顺序并不是很重要，除非他们想要把故事弄个水落石出。你可以去研究一下。这些是塑造她人格的时刻。尽管让人有点疑惑，但我觉得你能搞清楚。

GamesBeat：游戏中提到的“其它的冒险”有什么含义吗？这部作品会有续作吗？

Antoniades：就在主角说出这句话前，她想起了母亲或者听到了母亲说，“记得当你是个孩子时，每一天都是一个崭新的故事”。于是，她想了起来然后说，“跟我们来，另一个故事在等待着我们”，这意味着她又获得了另一天生命。这并不仅仅意味着如此。我承认它听起来的确像“噢，DLC来了”，但是这绝对不是其中的含义。我的意思是，我不知道接下来会发生什么，说实话，我真不知道。

GamesBeat：你们为何决定使用剑作为打斗武器？顺便问下，游戏中总是要反复打一些同样的恶魔，这有什么含义吗？

Antoniades：额，我不知道。设计这些战斗的目的是为了增添危险的氛围。即使你可以轻松打败他们，你也总能感觉到危险萦绕在身边。他们比维京人看起来要更邪恶，我觉的他们有点像一部英国电影《柳条人》，每个人都带着动物面具，有点异教徒的感觉。

但是为了展现她所见的不知是真人还是幻象——事实上她内心怎么想他们就是什么。他们的体型要比正常人要大，看起来更邪恶，像长着火头的怪物。他们比“现实中”更加邪恶。最后一战就像是一场狂热的梦，一场无尽的噩梦。

一些人认为这些恶魔都是她的幻觉，一些人认为她真的见到了维京人。我认为这两种解读都合理。我更倾向于认为他们是真实的人。

GamesBeat：这游戏的销量达到你的预期了吗？

Antoniades：它比我们的预期表现得更好。我们正在制作另一个开发日记，会详细提供开发过程中的数据和细节。我们希望为那些想要制作相似东西的开发者们提供这些数据，鼓励他们制作更多这样的游戏。

我认为我们几乎收支平衡了，或者几周后就能收回成本了。我需要强调一下。我们没有料到游戏能在六到九个月内就实现收支平衡。现在看样子三个月内就可以产生一些收益。当然，因为我们这次自主发行，这是我们第一次赚回这么多钱，真是太棒了！这次我们自己持有IP。它为我们带来了很多以往没有的机会的可能性。就模式而言，我认为是成功的。

GamesBeat：所以，事实证明，独立发行的选择是正确的？

Antoniades：是的。3A发行模式是环状的，某种程度上来说，它并不适合我们这样的中等规模的开发团队。开发者拥有很多的机会选择，3A模式是其中之一，但它很困难也具有风险。你无法完全掌控自己的命运。正如我们过去几年所看到的，许多的优秀开发者都消失了。你唯一能应对的方法就是另找一种方式。而这种方式对我们来说奏效了。

我们把一切都记录在了开发日记中，包括我们制作的过程，很快我们就会发布所有的数据。我们这么做是因为我们真心希望游戏行业能够重新成为一个令人兴奋、野心勃勃、富有创造性的行业。而现在那些优秀的工作室却以一种惊人的速度消失，这是不应该的，这一切只因为在这个数字化时代，我们还没找到行之有效的方式。

GamesBeat：我看到有人把这个游戏比作3A版《抑郁症探索》。你认为你们这种类型的还有什么别的游戏吗？

Antoniades：哈哈。我想人们很难对这种游戏进行分类。这类游戏通常被称作“行走模拟动作游戏”“抑郁之旅”之类的。我很高兴这个它突破了你对游戏的期待。它真的就是个试验品。我们也没有预料到它能变得这么有创造性。事实上游戏的开头有个八九分钟的过场动画，期间你什么也做不了——灰盒测试时，每个人看着你的表情就像在说“我们到底在做什么玩意儿？”但是在氛围、剧情和沉浸方面，它似乎确实起到了作用。

我认为这表明了只要你专注于游戏体验，任何东西都能起作用。60秒循环一次乐趣并不是唯一有效的游戏设计模式。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is one of the best games of the year, with its terrifying account of a warrior’s journey into the depths of the Norse underworld — and into madness itself.

The game from British game studio Ninja Theory came out on August 8, and if you haven’t played it yet, you ought to. I reviewed Hellblade in August and gave it a score of 95 out of 100, the highest I’ve given this year. But fair warning, it’s hard to experience because the depiction of psychosis of the Celtic warrior Senua is haunting, as she struggles with inner demons locked in a battle over her mind.

Senua’s story was created by a team headed by Tameem Antoniades, chief creative director at Ninja Theory. The labor of love took four years for Ninja Theory to make, and the studio infused the hack-and-slash fantasy game with a realistic depiction of a character suffering from psychosis — or seeing things in the world that aren’t real. Senua can’t tell whether the demons she sees with her eyes or the voices in her head are real or not.

To refine this story, Biomedical research charity Wellcome Trust gave Ninja Theory a $395,000 grant to do research on mental illness, and that helped Ninja Theory make such an ambitious and research-based game on its own as an independent studio. Ninja Theory’s Melina Juergens created a video documentary of the research and the game’s development, and the company even created a website to find out more about mental illness.

Ninja Theory combined that research about Senua and psychosis with the hellish environment and extremely detailed facial animations that looked completely real. As Senua descends into the underworld and does battle with monsters, you can’t really tell what’s real and what’s not. I talked with Antoniades for an in-depth postmortem on what the tale was about, how Ninja Theory made the game, what was real and what was fantasy, and what was the meaning of its cryptic ending.

For me, it was a rare pleasure to experience a work of art and then interview its creator about how it came to be. It is also gratifying to see that Hellblade is going to pay off commercially in profits just a few months after its publication.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Editor’s note: This story has narrative spoilers.

GamesBeat: Can you summarize how you made the game with the help of mental health experts, the folks from Cambridge University and Wellcome Trust?

Antoniades: Once we had decided that the game was about — it was more about fantasy and psychosis and how they relate to myth. Right at the start of the project, we knew it was not an easy subject to tackle. The potential for backlash, if we did it wrong, would be immense. We wanted to do our research.

We looked up who was local that could help us, and professor Paul Fletcher came up. We just Googled him. It turns out he’s a psychiatrist and a leading expert in psychosis, so we got in touch with him. He came to visit the studio. We also got in touch with Wellcome, the second biggest charity in the world, actually.

Both of those meetings went really well. Paul just talked to us. He gave us some pointers, some advice on what we needed to learn and understand. After meeting him, we wanted him to be on board as part of the team as a collaborator. Wellcome, at the same time, gave us a grant. It’s called a co-development grant, and I think it was either half a million dollars or half a million pounds. They did that, so we could consult with Paul and other groups. They encouraged us to meet with as many diverse groups as possible.

Through them, we were in touch with Recovery College East, the main collaborators. Tracey [Tingey], who runs this group, invited several people to the studio, all people who have lived experience of psychosis and mental illness. They were all willing to talk and share about their experiences. We kept coming back to them every two or three months or so, right from the time we announced the project. In the design stages in the project, we met with them, and we continued to meet with them. We’d show them what we were doing and talk to them about their experiences. Then, we folded that all into the game design and kept doing that until we finished the game.

The development of the game was very fluid. The story was developing as we were learning more. The gameplay and the levels and art were developed alongside their feedback. We also spoke to a bunch of other people. There’s a voice-hearing group called the Voice Collective, which is an interesting group. It represents voice-hearers, people who acknowledge that they hear voices but who do not subscribe to the idea that that makes them mentally ill. We met with a group of people who would describe themselves as severely mentally ill. It was quite a broad range of people and experts in the end.

This was largely thanks to Wellcome and Paul Fletcher. Wellcome gave us the funding with which to take our research seriously, and Paul gave us the guidance. He was like our mentor on the project with regards to mental health.

GamesBeat: Where did you pick up the initial empathy for a character like Senua? Psychosis tends to be attached to characters in fiction who are villains, not heroes.

Antoniades: That’s how it’s represented in most media, yeah. I think it’s not quite right. There’s a mix-up between the term “psychosis” and psychopathy. Psychosis is a break with reality. Psychopathy is a lack of empathy. Those two words are used interchangeably, even in documentaries about these subjects, and it effectively means that when you hear someone has psychosis, you think they’re psychopathic, which is a totally different thing. It basically means that if you hear voices, see visions, or have delusional beliefs, you’re automatically assumed to be dangerous. That’s where the trouble starts. It’s something I had to learn about as well, the distinction.

It’s a great disservice that the media has propagated. It’s probably caused a lot of suffering in people who experience these things. It makes them feel ashamed to admit that they have these conditions. For me, it was a learning process as well. I’m not ashamed to say now that I came into this from a position of real ignorance.

So yeah, to do a game where we try to get to the science and the truth behind it was illuminating. It didn’t take us, perhaps, in the direction that people would assume. It led us to a much more personal, introspective journey than we initially thought we would go on.

GamesBeat: At some point, did you know what you wanted to say with the game?

Antoniades: It developed. At first, I wanted to see if we could recreate the experience, to put yourself in someone’s shoes who experiences psychosis. On the surface, it’s a very visceral experience, being able to hear voices, to see visions. It’s a very literal experience. People talk about seeing demons, and they mean it. Strange belief systems, seeing signs and patterns everywhere, these are [things] that I thought — a video game is actually a good medium for this stuff.

As we did more and more talking, more interviews, the human cost came through. Then, it became more of a character study, dissecting her life. Senua is an amalgamation of a lot of people’s experiences. She could always see the world differently. She could always hear voices. But it took trauma, stigma, misunderstandings by her father and other people, to turn that into a negative experience, which then haunted her.

That mirrors what a lot of people experience. It’s not so much the symptoms that are the mental illness part, if you like. It’s the suffering at the hands of others that makes those symptoms intolerable or turns them negative in a way.

GamesBeat: I was fascinated by how you incorporated her ability to see the world differently into the puzzles. That was an interesting integration of the theme into gameplay.

Antoniades: It’s based on research that Paul Fletcher has done, where in tests, when you’re looking at random noise and you ask people whether they can see a hidden image or something in it, people that are predisposed to psychosis, if you like, pick out those patterns much quicker than the general population.

I actually think that a lot of those abilities to see patterns and stuff — it doesn’t indicate a mental condition at all. Some people are better at seeing patterns in the world than others. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re psychotic. It’s a natural part of who we are and how we experience the world. But in extreme cases of psychosis, it’s very evident in people.

GamesBeat: Did you find that most people understood what you were trying to get, as far as feedback to the game?

Antoniades: I think I’ve been more than — I’ve been very surprised, to be honest, at how understanding people have been. I thought the game would be very controversial, that there would be a camp that’s dead against what we were doing, and there would be quite a raging debate over whether it’s morally right to represent these things in a video game, especially a video game about a warrior with a sword, given the associations with violence. In fact, the discussion around the game has been very mature and understanding, amongst gamers and amongst healthcare professionals.

As you know, the gaming audience can be quite harsh and brutal when you get into discussing things anonymously online. To see quite a mature conversation surrounding this and to see people who have been touched by the game — it’s a better outcome than I imagined was possible. I did have some crises of confidence making the game, just thinking, “How can this game possibly have a good outcome?” But thankfully, I’m satisfied. Some people have a counter-view on it, but that’s remarkably minor compared to the overwhelming positive reactions we’ve had.

GamesBeat: I saw one story that ran in Polygon from a person that had mental illness.

Antoniades: That’s OK. In my view, the game is hugely metaphorical. It’s not usual to have a film or a game that tells a story that’s so metaphorical. It’s open to interpretation. Every voice in reaction to that has validity. Her view is just as valid as every other player’s view. I did think there would be a lot more of that.

GamesBeat: Did you hear back whether people felt the game was therapeutic or something that mentally ill people maybe should not play?

Antoniades: The groups we spoke to throughout development, they were extremely open. They suggested we put in a warning at the start of the game because if you have experienced those things, it can be frightening. They asked us to put that warning in, but they totally encouraged us to go down the path we were going and to show it as they see it, as it is — show it in its true horror, if you like.

GamesBeat: It was validating for a lot of people?

Antoniades: Well, what was great was, once the game was out, we got so many messages, which we put into our accolades trailer. It felt like it would be flippant, when we made that trailer, to just put in press comments or whatever saying it’s great. We put in actual user comments, and we received so many of them. You’d struggle to read these letters without being moved. It really was affecting people.

The best way it seems to have helped people is that — the experience of psychosis and being stigmatized is so intensely personal that it makes you feel so alone in the world. To have something out there, an aspirational hero, a hero that’s not a victim — she’s a fighter — a hero that has these things and is able to move on and press forward and not give up, it’s rare. Just by existing, I think the game has made people feel like they’re not alone, or they shouldn’t be ashamed of this. If a game, of all things, can represent these aspects, then maybe, they’re not so unusual. We’ve had a lot of letters and emails from people who have used the game to make other people understand what they’re going through. I’d say that’s probably the best possible outcome for us.

I was also very worried about the subject of death, which is another subject we don’t talk about very often. It’s raised quite a lot in the game. I think I was worried that perhaps we should avoid that subject. The issues people have when they have severe mental health issues — they’re long-standing, ingrained, repetitive thought patterns that are really powerful. It’s not one game or one thing that will tip them over the edge. Whenever I had that choice — should we talk about this, should we put this in the game or not — I always fell on the side of truth. If this is what people go through, what they think, what they talk about to us in our interviews, then we’ll represent that, rather than trying to romanticize it.

GamesBeat: To you, is the world of Hellblade real, or is it a metaphor for Senua’s imagination?

Antoniades: A theme in the game is that no one’s reality is “real.” When you’re stepping into Senua’s shoes, you can only ever see her reality. There is no other reality that you can step into and say, “Aha, that was that, and this is this.” I would say that her journey is real, as in she is physically traveling. It’s not all a dream. I’ve said that much before.

GamesBeat: A fair amount of it is rooted in history, facts about the Vikings coming into the Orkney Islands and so on.

Antoniades: Yeah. The Vikings did land on Orkney, and they did replace the Pictish population. We don’t know how. There were trading routes between Britain and Scandinavia. We brought on a professor from Cambridge, Dr. Elizabeth Ashman Rowe — she’s an expert in Celtic and Viking history — as a consultant. I likened the fantasy part of the game to something more like Don Quixote, where he’s fighting a windmill, but he sees it as a giant. There’s an interpretation of the world that’s fantastical, but it’s rooted in a real place.

GamesBeat: I hope you’ve accomplished something for people.

Antoniades: I hope so, too. I’m already super happy about the response so far. I do genuinely believe that it’s given a voice to some people that have been ignored. We’re all very proud of what we’ve accomplished on this game. I’m grateful to our fans, the people who’ve loved the game. It’s a great feeling, especially coming off DmC.

GamesBeat: There was a surprising controversy about the permadeath aspect of the game. I wonder if you could address that in some way. If anything made the internet crazy, it’s that.

Antoniades: Yeah, there was that. I think it made a top-five trending topic on Twitter in the U.S. and U.K. But it was there — we debated it internally as well, whether we should do that or not. We did it because it was in service of the story and the experience. We wouldn’t have done it just to make the game hard, needlessly hard. We felt justified that it added to the experience while knowing that some people wouldn’t like it.

We’ve done a lot of those things in this game. Not having a HUD, having the camera so close, the incessant voices — all of these things sound like terrible ideas when you first raise them. We knew we were trying to, first and foremost, make an experience work. If it was in aid of that experience, we put it in, knowing that it’s not going to be a game for everyone. We knew that. That’s one of the benefits of not going down the triple-A publishing route. We don’t have to be like everyone else. We don’t have to please everyone. I think the consensus is pretty good now. People get it.

GamesBeat: The facial animations turned out to be amazingly effective. Did you discover in parallel here that you could do faces that crossed this uncanny valley?

Antoniades: It was a group effort. You were there at the GDC session. It was a really concerted effort, with 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Epic, and ourselves just focusing on one character to make that the best possible character we can. We decided to scan Melina, our actress, and so, we had a real world reference we could always look at side by side. Anything that looked slightly wrong, we could address.

In my view, the uncanny valley — when you see a character that falls in the uncanny valley, it’s because something’s wrong. Those things that are wrong can be fixed. The fact that we could fix — I wouldn’t say we fixed all of the issues, but we fixed enough of them that you believe in the character. If we hadn’t done that, this game would not have worked. It’s so much about Senua and close-ups on her. The whole thing wouldn’t have worked if she looked dead-eyed or creepy. That would have gone very badly, given the subject matter.

So yes, we did put a lot of effort into that, into the facial expressions. Melina put an extraordinary effort into her performance as well. I think it was just focusing on one thing and trying to do it really well that paid off.

GamesBeat: Why did you think Melina was the right person for the role?

Antoniades: As you probably know, she was our video editor. She was in our office. She’s a very expressive character in the office, a natural mimic and a natural comedian. I think that’s also a good sign that she can act. But she’s freely admitted that she’s experienced mental health issues in the past. I don’t mean — she said it was OK to mention that she’s had some severe issues. I felt like she could go there, as much as she was comfortable in doing. I think she was quite comfortable, after she got used to it, performing in public. She was quite happy to go to very dark places. I think she found that experience cathartic.

In some ways, she was — in some ways, the role was made for her. We were very lucky to have her. She tried to act, at the start of the process. She tried to act, and it wasn’t working. I asked her to stop acting. You can’t teach someone to act. They just have to be. And so, we made Senua more like her, as opposed to making her be someone she’s not if you understand my meaning. Which perhaps isn’t the best way to do casting, but in this case, it worked.

GamesBeat: I also thought the voices were very well done. How do you function with all these people talking in your head?

Antoniades: It’s strange, isn’t it? The main thing I was worried about was just that it would be incredibly annoying to most people. It’s strange how people just internalize those voices very quickly. They start to feel a bit odd when the voices aren’t there, which mirrors what people say to us who hear these kinds of voices. A lot of people that hear voices say they wouldn’t want to be without them. You don’t understand it until you experience it yourself.

GamesBeat: How did you feel about the horror side of things, as far as how far to go with the representations of horror? Or whether you weren’t going far enough?

Antoniades: I spoke to a good friend of mine who had an episode, a psychotic break. He’d describe moments where he was screaming on the ground, thinking he was going to die. He said we should show that. I think what people don’t necessarily understand is that these experiences can be like living nightmares. They can be like being in a horror story in some instances. They can be beautiful as well, liberating and wonderful experiences. But when you see and hear about how horrific it is, I think it helps you empathize.

I wasn’t shy to go there. I think that’s a part of it. And I think any rational person who sees those kinds of visions in that kind of situation would be terrified. It’s interesting how we talk about people with severe mental illness as weak, when any rational, strong-minded person who also sees those things or hears those things or is living that kind of reality would act just like that. It’s a different way of looking at it, flipping it.

The truth is, no matter what we do, we can only touch on the experiences. However horrific we make some of these moments and scenes in Hellblade, it’s nothing like the intensity people who actually experience these things go through.

GamesBeat: I thought the scariest moment was when I was moving around in the dark, trying to get away from the creatures there. I kept thinking there would be a jump scare somewhere, and it didn’t happen. It was almost entirely within my control. If I avoided those creatures, then I succeeded.

Antoniades: But it’s the tension that’s horrible, right?

GamesBeat: Was that something you heard a lot, that the anticipation was scarier than the actual images sometimes?

Antoniades: Absolutely. Some people describe their experience as like — sinister? That’s what stuck with me. This idea that the world has turned sinister around them. The TV starts to send them messages or when the phone rings, they know it will be terrible news. There’s this constant state of anxiety and dread. It’s less about the monster popping up and scaring you. We didn’t really think of this as a horror game at all.

GamesBeat: What were you trying to communicate in the ending?

Antoniades: I don’t want to — I have a very specific logic behind the ending in mind. But it is open to interpretation as well, so I don’t want to give a specific interpretation that will spoil it for other people. What I will say is that — there’s a recurring theme of dying within yourself and being reborn.

I think that relates to people I’ve talked to who’ve come up through this experience. They’ve come out the other side. You don’t hear about this much, but a lot of people who have severe psychotic breaks, they recover, many of them, with help. They come out of it transformed. They come out feeling like they have reconstructed their reality to such an extent that some people give themselves a new name. They talk about their old self in the third person.

There’s this concept of the death of an old reality and the birth of a new one that’s a recurring theme within the game. But at the end, the voices are still there. The visions are still there. The symptoms are not going away. But her understanding of her reality has changed, and so she’s able to — she remembered her mother saying, “Every day is a new story.” The implication of “there’s another story to tell” means there’s going to be a tomorrow.

GamesBeat: I guess this is where the metaphor seems to pay off? You’re conquering your demons or emerging from hell.

Antoniades: This is all spoiler territory, but the darkness came from an idea her father gave her, that she was cursed. And she’s let go of that idea, of the darkness. That doesn’t change the fact that Dillion is dead, that she hears voices that are always going to be there, that she sees visions that are always going to be there. But she can let go of the suffering caused by the idea that it was her fault.

The important thing that some people have gotten wrong, and I don’t know why they’ve interpreted it that way, is that she’s somehow cured at the end. She’s certainly not cured in the sense that her psychosis is gone.

GamesBeat: Hela, the goddess, does she represent something in particular? Was she just one of the last obstacles in Senua’s way, or does she mean something more?

Antoniades: Hela is the Norse goddess who was half flesh, half black. Her mother was burnt at the stake, and she was half burnt, hence the black ash. From her has emerged the darkness. She’s conflated a lot of the mythology of the Norsemen with memories she’s had. The concept of the darkness is wrapped up in that.

There are visual metaphors in the game. It’s not quite — I think one thing I learned with the way people perceive the world is they make a lot of associations. A lot of things are linked. This is something that Paul could describe much better than I can, but you see signs everywhere. You link things that seem to be disparate in meaningful ways. There’s a lot of symbolism throughout the game that’s linked in some ways. But it’s never so clear that you can go, “Aha, that’s definitely it.” It’s lots of associations. It feels like you’re just on the edge of solving the puzzle, but it’s not quite nice and neat and bow-tied.

There is meaning behind why Hela looks the way she does, what she represents, why the ending has the concept of death and rebirth. I think it’s more interesting if that stuff is left up to interpretation. There is a logic behind it.

GamesBeat: The realizations that Senua makes at the end, they include recognizing that Dillion is gone. He can’t be brought back. And she isn’t cursed, as her father had said.

Antoniades: Right. It’s an idea, a reality that her father put in her head. Dillion nearly broke that idea. He had a competing idea, which was that she’s not cursed, not at fault. When Dillion died, her father’s reality took over and dominated her. It took this journey to come back to Dillion’s reality, if you like, and reject her father’s reality.

GamesBeat: I did wonder why she had to have such a cruel father and why Dillion had to die, but it seems like these are the things that turned her psychosis into something negative.

Antoniades: Yeah, yeah. Her father was — I see him as someone who — he was a Druid, and the Druids had a lot of power in Celtic society, more so than kings. He’s a seat of power. What he says goes. He speaks for the gods. This is another version of reality that he’s living in. I think the game does touch on these ideas of people’s versions of reality and how they affect other people’s lives. He thought he was speaking for the gods, that he had to maintain control over her, that he had to banish this curse. It’s not necessarily that — everything he did to her was evil, for sure, but he had his own internal logic behind it all.

GamesBeat: The story in some ways a little confusing, I think because it was told in flashbacks. I had trouble placing — oh, this is why she’s gone off the edge.

Antoniades: That was on purpose. When we remember the past, we don’t remember it as a nice, neat, linear story. We remember moments and fragments of our past. The structure — I felt like making everything neat and tidy and linear in terms of the story didn’t matter. These are the events that shaped her life. There are moments that are out of order in terms of time that I was worried about, but most people’s experience is that it doesn’t matter what order they were in, unless they want to work it out. You can work it out. But these are the moments that shaped her character. Although it might be confusing, you get the picture, I think.

GamesBeat: Did you mean something in particular by “other adventures?” Do you imagine a sequel to this?

Antoniades: Just before she says that, she remembers the voice of her mother or hears the voice of her mother saying, “Remember what it was like to be a child, where every day is a new story.” And so, she remembers that and then says, “Come with us, there’s another story to tell,” meaning there’s another day to live. It was more about that. I must admit it does come across like, “Oh, here comes the DLC,” but that’s definitely not what the intention was. I mean, I don’t know what’s going to come next, honestly. I do not know.

GamesBeat: How did you settle on the sword-fighting style, by the way, where you banish the same demons over and over? Did they also represent something in some way, the pattern of fighting those characters?

Antoniades: Hmm. I don’t know. The main thrust of the combat was to make it feel dangerous. Even though you can dispatch lots of enemies quite easily, the feeling of peril always had to be there. The fact that they look more demonic than Vikings — I imagine them kind of like — what was that movie? A British movie? The Wicker Man, where everyone has animal masks and it’s all quite pagan. I imagine something paganistic like that.

But for it to be never sure whether what she’s seeing is a real person or an exaggeration of a real person — the idea is that they are as she sees them in her mind. They’re bigger than a normal person. They’re more demonic, like the guy with the fire head. They’re more demonic than they would be in “real life,” if you like. And then, the final battle should feel a bit like a fever dream, like an endless nightmare.

Some people interpret the demons as all being in her head, and some people say that maybe that’s just how she sees real Vikings. I think either of those is a valid interpretation. I prefer to think of them as real people.

GamesBeat: Has the game sold well for you, though, given your expectations?

Antoniades: It sold better than our expectations. We’re doing one more dev diary where we’ll give out numbers and detail how it’s done. We want the data out there so other developers, if they want to do something similar, they have a data point, hopefully, to help encourage them to do more games like this.

I think it’s almost broken even, or it’s about to break even in the next couple of weeks. I’d have to check. We weren’t expecting to break even for six, eight, nine months on this game. It looks like within three months, it will have broken even and then some. Of course, because we self-published it, it’s the first time we’re getting the bulk of the money back, which is amazing. We own the IP this time. It’s opened up a bunch of doors and possibilities that we just didn’t have until this point. In terms of a model, I’d say it is a success.

GamesBeat: So, it turned out that going indie was the right move for this?

Antoniades: Yes, yes, I think it really was. The triple-A publishing model goes in cycles, sort of, but it doesn’t really serve developers like us very well, mid-size developers. A lot of opportunity is out there for developers, but the triple-A model is a difficult one, a dangerous one, where you’re not fully in control of your destiny. As we’ve seen over the last several years, dozens of good developers have disappeared. The only way you can counter that is find another way. This seems to have worked for us.

We’ve documented the whole thing with our dev diaries. We’ve laid out how we’ve done it, and soon, we’ll release the data as well. We’re doing that because we genuinely want games to be as exciting, ambitious, and creative as they used to be — and still are to an extent. But there’s a real danger in losing great studios at an alarming rate when we shouldn’t have to, simply because we don’t know what works and what doesn’t in the digital era.

GamesBeat: Do you feel like there’s anything else in your genre? The one comparison I’ve seen is that it’s like a triple-A Depression Quest.

Antoniades: [Laughs] I think people have had trouble trying to categorize it. They use terms like “walking simulator action game,” “depression tourism,” whatever. I’m just glad that it’s breaking away from the patterns of what you expect from a game. It really was an experiment. We had no idea whether it would work creatively, either. The fact that the intro is eight or nine minutes of not doing anything at all — you make a gray box level where this is going on and everyone looks at you like, “What the hell are we making here?” But in the context of the atmosphere, the story, the immersion, it really does seem to have worked.

I think it helps show that if you focus on the experience, anything can work. We break out of that idea that a game can only work if it’s a 60-second loop of fun repeated over and over again.（source：Venturebeat  ）