@beardalaxy Well said.
Hellblade was a movie "game", like many AAA slop games these days, like Mixtape and 007 - First Light, with entire sections that play themselves and are there purely for spectacle.
And even the spectacle fails to land as the players aren't invested with the terrible writing.
@beardalaxy
I was seriously wondering that's the deal with hellblade, because when I saw it, it seemed to me like the dumbest game ever. A linear slasher with the most transparent bluff, that you can make to a player. They didn't show a single gameplay or a story hook worth biting.
And the game was paraded around as a gaming achievement. It just didn't make any sense.
(I mean, what kind of a hook is: "After a random death, we will delete your save, but we won't tell you when... 
" What kind of an idiot would fall for that outside of a ragebait game genre?)
ninja theory's history is basically being a studio that gets bailed out all the time with all of their games being commercial failures. they clawed back a little bit with their "independent AAA" idea for the first hellblade but the game only has the veneer of a triple A game. it doesn't play like one. it isn't fun. it's barely a game. it just looks pretty.
ninja theory's eyes are bigger than its stomach. their studio facing a shutdown is not surprising in the slightest. they should have pivoted to making budget titles that focused on really fun, highly replayable gameplay a long time ago but they chose to chase presentation instead. good lesson for other studios, hopefully some will learn.