One of the most impressive-looking Unreal Engine 4 games of the last couple of years, Ninja Theory’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice seems like an unlikely choice for Switch conversion. Yes, UE4 has delivered some excellent Switch titles, but the sheer density of the original game would surely cause problems for Nintendo’s hybrid – after all, Hellblade is a game that was never in a million years designed with a mobile chipset in mind. And yet here it is: developer QLOC’s conversion work is fascinating, with some inventive solutions deployed to excellent effect.
The first data point to catch our eye was the sheer size of the game. Hellblade on Switch weighs in at a massive 19.5GB, which is within the same kind of ballpark as the PC and PS4 versions – and yet, it’s clear that the port features substantially pared back texture assets which should result in a much smaller game. And yet is obviously bulking up the download size.
Firing up the port, first impressions were of astonishment – our first look at Senua (captured in the first comparison image below) reveals a remarkably close match to the same sequence playing out on PlayStation 4. As the sequence continues, the compromises start to become evident – resolution takes a massive hit, naturally, while post-processing quality and texture assets are clearly impacted. And yet, many of the detail-rich cutscenes seem bereft of compromise and resolve much more cleanly than gameplay.
All of which brings us back to Hellblade’s 19.5GB download size and QLOC’s most impressive sleight of hand trick – a nigh-on flawless integration of FMV video sequences and real-time gameplay. Whereas prior versions of the game rendered the entire experience in real-time with Unreal Engine 4, Hellblade on Switch pre-renders taxing scenes and then literally blends the video into the actual game visuals. The effect is quite subtle – and quite hard to pick up in handheld – but there it is. This is the trick that allows Hellblade’s most striking visual moments and strongest narrative beats to play out in a manner that’s almost on par with the other versions. Call it sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors or whatever, the point is that it works.
By extension though, this means that when it comes to gameplay, something has to give to make Hellblade work on what is fundamentally a mobile chipset. The primary impact point is rendering resolution. QLOC uses a system similar to prior ‘impossible’ ports such as Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. Dynamic resolution up to 720p is deployed, with temporal anti-aliasing used to eliminate edge jaggies. When playing docked, our understanding is that the pixel-count varies between 576p and 720p, rarely hitting the top target. The window expands when running in handheld, from what we understand to be 400p to a maximum 720p. The impact is most profound when docked, because – as usual – the smaller mobile screen hides the brunt of the compromises.