So I just finished the game. Wow, that was really fun and not what I was expecting. So I wanted to discuss the ending as it was a little ambiguous to me. Senua is obviously still alive. But yet, still has the darkness on the right side of her body. Also, as she is walking away you can see the body of the final boss laying there. Is it dead? Is Senua still hallucinating? Also, it seems like the true enemy was her father, yet the final boss is in female form? Can somebody explain this? So many questions....

What do you guys think?

Just my take on it obviously and not something I'd try to defend as "correct". Pondering this stuff is the biggest part of the game!

I took it as a reveal that the character you were playing was the aspect of Senua's unwillingness to let Dillion go, while Hel is closer to what you could consider the "actual" Senua, and in turn the player character's god.

The implication of this would mean that the goal of the game was to die by the hands of Hel in order for Senua to let Dillion go - maybe even just temporarily. This would explain the loading tip as well, as ending her delusion is the victory condition and not a failure. You could even say that it's not about "curing" her delusion but only halting its progress, which is her continuous struggle similar to how the voices are still there after the ending. It's not about Senua curing herself, only how she has to fight on, one battle at the time.

What was the most poignant and "honest" to me - as the lady in the featurette puts it - is how none of the people in her life were villains, not even her father if you consider his intentions from his perspective. Most of the people in her life are good people and all of them mean well, but all of them end up hurting her in some way out of ignorance alone. Galena encourages her to nurture her ailment, Dillion makes her promise to cure herself, Druth gave her everything that has to do with her idea of the nords and is what gives her the idea to save Dillion from Hel.

While her father might be the closest to "the villain" based on his ideas of what has to be done about the curse, he's still the only one in her life that tells her exactly what she needs to do verbatim: she needs to let Dillion go.

It's a hard truth where those closest to you might be the ones that can hurt you the most, and how it can feed your denial of the truth if you hear it from the wrong people.

There is a ton of stuff I figured out only after starting my second playthrough and I'm keen to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Interesting interpretation. I can definitely see much of that.

Do you think they left the ending rather open to set up a potential sequel? I couldn't help to think that with still seeing the "darkness" still on her arm. I was expecting her to "return to the real world" without further hallucinations.

I see a lot of people wondering the same but that would come across as pretty tacky, I think. I saw it as another "honest" aspect where her condition isn't something you are supposed to beat.

The very last scene where she says you can come along if you want was probably the biggest gut puncher in the game for me. I could choose to be a part of her ongoing battle, but she can't. The way she says it so nonchalantly as if it's the most everyday thing in the world and how she doesn't expect you to come along really highlights how much of a warrior she is.

The closure of the game to me was that there is no end to her battle. Using that as a means to sell Hellblade 2: Senua's Vengeance or a collection of mini-psychoses in a season pass would be really weird to me. I'm not the designer though! Maybe they have something in mind.

I'd most definitely like "more games like Hellblade", for sure. What really drew me in is how everything in the game is so deliberate and you will see a payoff for investigating almost anything that stands out.

I believe everything was well explained in the documentary feature.

- "Quite often, the illness comes not from the symptoms, but from the stigma, isolation and mistreatment that comes about from the rest of society".
- "(Senua´s) psychosis (...) was exasperated by stigma and isolation at the hands of the clansmen and her father. The trauma of seeing her loved Dillion sacrificed tips her over the edge, making her remodel her reality around a concept that connects everything: the Darkness."

A better explanation is given by someone that suffers from psychosis and played the game:
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/08/09/hellblade-psychosis-and-me

IMHO, this is what's going on: Senua, a girl born in an era of complete ignorance, fear, superstition, etc. with a condition which her society finds to be a "curse", has been loved by two people in total in her entire life: her mother and Dillion. Her father not only secludes her, he does not like that Dillion and her see each other and denies her even that. So, she goes on an exile, becoming a "Geilt", with the hope of getting rid of the "curse" so she can be accepted by her father and society and not to "infect" her lover. When she comes back, she finds her village destroyed and her lover brutally murdered, which triggers a full-blown psychotic episode, something we are playing in the game.

As the Kotaku article above says: "instead of conjuring up complete nonsense, these hallucinations play on your own personal fears, creating images that feel entirely plausible within the warped reality victims find themselves trapped in". So, in the end, the Darkness is the sum of her father Zynbel, her society, the life Zynbel had imposed her, the fear of eternal reclusion and loneliness, the rage against the Northmen who destroyed the village and killed Dillion, and fear to hurt her only loved ones, all augmented by the tales Druth, another Geilt she met in her exile, told her.

So, the entire game was an internal fight to finally:
1.- Accept Dillion's death (and her mother's).
2.- Believe him about what she had was not a curse, but "an alternative way to see the world", so there's nothing wrong with her.
3.- Believe that she can live with her "curse".

I was really scared what the ending might be like while playing the game. It was so intense, full of suffering and hardship. I hoped that the end will be "good" in a way or the other. Not just succumb to the darkness and everything is for nothing.

I loved that the ending was about giving up her quest. She could not rescue Dillion because all these nightmares aren't real.
But I didn't liked it that the LAST battle - the final battle - right before Hela - was supposed to be a loss. After all the sufferings the player and Senua rose up and kept fighting. And the last battle had to be a loss? Story tells not only over cutscenes it tells itself also over gameplay. And to make the last fight in the game a forced-loss tells me a terribly story about fighting and not giving up. I fought those unending creatures on and on and all I had to do was to give up. And the magical cutscene saves the day.
I see the idea of MrFuzzles that we played that Senua that existed just to rescue Dillion. To go on Senua had to kill that part of herself. And really that idea saved the ending a bit for me. But to me as a player ... why can't I be "the one" that understands this? That felt like I failed.

And I think it's good that the voices came back. It has been already said that a magical healing from her illness would be unrealistic.
But really: everything she says after that scene where she came back to reality is bullshit to me. She just "killed" a part of herself. She realized that Dillion can not be rescued. He is gone - forever. But all she does is talk really cringy and typical cliché talk like "well that was my story, now it has ended, but there will be other adventures" - or in other words: if this game sells good, we'll make another one. I might be a bit too harsh with Ninja Theory here but that is how it felt to me.
It was just unfulfilling. When you just accepted that the one you loved died and will never come back that's the point where the first real tears would be shed. Until this point she believed she will be together with Dillion. But that is no further ability and that's a terrible feeling. And she just stands there and talks about some stupid adventures. I would have liked a scene where she builts a grave for Dillion back at home - to outline that she has realized he won't come back and that it's her turn to find a new meaning in life. Maybe showing here walking to the horizon.
Even if you're greedy as f*** and want to make a second game because this one sells good this could have been an option.


But after all: the ending took a realistic turn and released Senua from a lot of hardship but not all. It was a great game.

You seem to have missed the point. Throughout the entire game, she was fighting her demons in order to try to save Dillion's soul. In the end, the fight overwhelmed her, at which point she realized that the fighting and trying to save Dillion was all in her head. She fought her grief and acceptance of the fact that Dillion is dead and gone until it overwhelmed her and she realized that there is no one to fight and no way to save Dillion. At that point, she accepted what happened to herself and Dillion and started the healing process. The voices were with her long before Dillion died, and Dillion's death made them, and her hallucinations, a lot worse. After she came to terms with what happened, the voices and hallucinations went back to the level they were at before Dillion's death. They're not gone because they've always been with her, but she went from having a full-blown psychotic episode to her baseline before she lost the plot.

The final battle was intended to show how futile it would have been for her to continue to try to fight her demons. They would have always won in the end if she hadn't come to the realization that continuing on her path would surely have destroyed her. She had to give up the fight and come to terms with what happened, and in her case, she was such a fierce warrior that she never would have just given up on her own. She had to be shown that continuing the fight was futile, and the only way for her to truly understand that was for it to be spelled out to her that she's in a battle she can't win.

I really love the story, and especially the end. The fact that the final battle played out the way it did showed her, in addition to the player, what had been happening throughout the entire game. I already understood what was happening, but it was still nice to see it spelled out so I could tell that my interpretation of the plot was what the devs intended. I thought the ending was perfect, and I can't imagine the game ending any other way.

Thank you for your response! I was afraid this thread died already. --> Well I do think I got the point ;) But to be fair I haven't described it as well as you did. I see your point here and it makes some things a bit more clear to me.
But I think therefore the fight should have been slightly different. Instead of spawning the same amount of enemies everytime it should have been quickly a mass that nearly breaks your gear. I mean this from a gamemaking point of view because just respawning groups are something you find througout the game - you couldn't tell through gameplay that this situation is different because realization is in sight. And that is what I wanted to point out: if you're making a game you tell a story in a different way than in a book or a movie. And at that point I found the telling through gameplay a bit lacking that's it.
Another point is: as a player you don't give up - you are overwhelmed. Imagine fighting the enemies on and on, but somehow they're not ending and somehow you're not dying. Till you lay your gamepad down and do nothing for a while - and then the cutscene starts.
I do not dislike the story but I think there would have been more potential to use the media "game" to tell the story and I hope this time I could make my point a bit more clear.

I was (like many) also tricked by this scene but I have to say that in hindsight I liked the idea and that they did not really change anything until you realized there's a different cutscene. As a player and as Senua you don't give up. You fight as much and as long as you can and you only die if you fail not because you give up. Senua fought until she "died" she never was willing to give up she had to be defeated before starting accepting what was happening.

I finally finished the game!

I am glad it ended that way. How could it have ended differently? The core of the game is Senua's struggle to tell what's real and what's not (or how real is the world the way she sees it). In the end she had to accept that she would never see Dillion again and it was time to move on.

As for the final fight ending with a loss, I actually felt relieved when I realized what was happening and that all the fighting was over. I guess that's how Senua must have felt too. There are other unwinnable fights in the game (begnning with the initial fighting tutorial), and every time they happen Senua goes forward in her journey.

For most of the game I thought the last boss would be another Senua (especially due to the mirror scenes in which Senua argues with her reflecton). Senua fighting herself would have been another way to represent the "beat your inner demons" topic. However, it would need to be depicted carefully from a mental health point so it doesn't deliver the wrong message -Senua herself is not to blame for ther illness. But visually it would have been amazing (and gameplay-wise, a whole new and unexpected enemy type). Perhaps for the sequel? I'd say it's fair to call Zynbel a villian. He burned Galena alive. Not knowing what the darkness really is doesn't excuse murder. But even villans can be right sometimes, and in this case he (or the part of Senua influenced by his words) knows what Senua has to do about Dillion's death.