I've been enjoying the Hellblade dev diaries quite a bit. It's great to have such transparency throughout the project. It's a trend I'd like to become more prominent in the game industry. Perhaps one day the traditional Japanese dev teams will feel comfortable with showing their beginning steps in creating new IPs (likely a long ways off).

In any case, the dev diaries can be found on Ninja Theory's vimeo page, and the latest one shows off some of their environment building techniques along with enemies and combat. The combat in particular looks very interesting. I'm not sure I've ever seen a "duck" option in a character action game, but more than that, they're playing with perspective in a cool way and implementing that into combat. No way of knowing for sure whether they'll stick with these ideas to the end (other than continuing to watch the videos), but for me, it's the standout aspect of the project so far.

The combat section starts at around the 3:30 mark.

Jesus.. I was sold on the game when I heard that Ninja Theory were making it, but this is shaping up to be a lot more than just a vehicle for their writers. Their approach to world crafting sounds deceptively simple. I wonder just how well that will work, as great environments have been such a staple in their previous titles. It's also clear to see that they're very much wishing they could be working on DMC 2, what with their continued devotion to messing with perspectives. Honestly, it's what made the set-pieces in DMC, and if they somehow manage to convey that lurching, overwhelming feeling into the gameplay, I think we could be in for something special.

Thanks for sharing this, man. If nothing else, it's a fascinating process. I hope they achieve their goal of making a triple-A-level game with such a small team, if only so that I can point and laugh at companies like Activision and Ubisoft.

Wow they're going about this development in a super smart way. It's cool to see some studios go back to the small team dev style that gave us some of the best games during the Xbox and PS2 days. I think he touched on one of the biggest things that could be the reason for why we've lost a lot of the creativity that we had in those days. The constraints that smaller teams cause, force each individual member of the dev team to be as creative and innovative as possible. I could also imagine that the smaller teams allow for much easier communication across every aspect of the game development so that each member has a good idea of where the rest of the game is at outside of their own work.

This makes me excited to see what Ken Levine's new team will come up with.

This also reminds me to give DmC a spin!

This was super cool. I had figured Hellblade, while the initial trailer was cool, was just going to end up being a God of War or Devil May Cry type of game. With the camera angle being so low and close, and of course the directional attacks and blocking, it seems like it will be more about fighting fewer, more complex enemies, which I'm way more interested in.

This definitely shot right up my list of games to look out for. Maybe I should go back and watch their older videos now.

Platinum has a dev blog where they've gone into that stuff.