Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice PC Performance Review

.ini tweaks, save game location and other issues

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has a few problems on PC, many of which can be fixed by editing a few game files. We typically do not look into .ini hacks in out game reviews, but Hellblade simply has to be an exception here.

Game Files Location 

Hellblade’s game files are located in the following directory. Here the game’s save files and editable .ini files are available to view. We will go into how to edit and why you might need to edit these files below.  

C:Users[Insert User Name here]AppDataLocalHellbladeGame

Black Screen after changing game resolution

During our testing, Hellblade exhibited a bug where changing the game’s resolution resulted in a black screen, which did not revert to our previous resolution choice in time or even after a reboot of the game and system.  

This required us to look into Hellblade’s game files, where we deleted the game’s GameUserSettings.ini file, which contains data that hold your in-game graphical settings.   

Deleting this file will force the game to reset your graphical settings and create a new file the next time the game is booted, which fixed our black screen issue.   

C:Users[Insert User Name here]AppDataLocalHellbladeGameSavedConfigWindowsNoEditor

Achieve a wider in-game FOV

FOV options are missing in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, but a wider field of view can be achieved by editing the game’s Engine.ini file, which is available in the same directory that is mentioned above. 

Simply edit the game’s Engine.ini file and add the following lines. 

[/script/engine.localplayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV

Making a backup of your save game

While the game explicitly tells players that “all progress will be lost” is Senua dies a certain number of times, no real world evidence has been found to prove that the game has a “permadeath” mechanic. 

Even so, the game only has a single save file, and some of us would like to be able to back it up or at least have a copy of the first save point to skip the game’s long intro sequence if we want a second playthrough. 

The game’s save file is in the following location; (The Save file is called HellbladeSave_0.sav)

C:Users[Insert User Name here]AppDataLocalHellbladeGameSavedSaveGames

Disable Chromatic Aberration and Depth of Field

Both Chromatic Aberration and Depth of Feild can be disabled using Hellblade’s Engine.ini file. To disable these options simply place the following into your game’s Engine.ini file. These options will also set Anisotropic Filtering to 16x. 

[SystemSettings]
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.OneFrameThreadLag=0
r.MaxAnisotropy=16