Hellblade 2 is $50, digital-only, and about 8 hours long

Ninja Theory provided a healthy dollop of information about Hellblade 2 at today's Xbox Developer Direct, including confirmation that this will be a modestly priced, digital-only release that'll be similar in length to the original game.

"Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be a game crafted from the heart - a game similar in length to the first Hellblade, with a focused narrative, and sold digital-only at a price of $49.99 USD," the devs explain in a post on the official Xbox blog. The HowLongToBeat database puts the original Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice at anywhere from seven to nine hours for a single playthrough, so it seems we can expect a similar runtime here.

The devs aim to recapture the "independent AAA" ethos of the original game, "where we worked with the creative spirit and freedom of independent development but strove for the types of high-end production values often only associated with AAA games. We also took advantage of the freedom that digital-only distribution offered us to create a game of the length that fit perfectly with our intended experience but could be sold at a lower price to reflect the shorter length of our story."

Hellblade 2's "brutal" combat should make you feel the hero's "struggle in every step of her journey."

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.