10 Secret Ways Video Games Play YOU
5. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice "Lies" To The Player About Permadeath
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an incredible game, and opens with a haunting warning for the player - "The dark rot will grow each time you fail. If the rot reaches Senua’s head, her quest is over and all progress will be lost."
The obvious implication from this message is that Senua has a limited number of lives, and after dying so many times, she will be permanently dead, requiring players to start the game all over again from the beginning.
As it turns out, however, developers Ninja Theory were actually just toying with players, and the game doesn't in fact have any permadeath features whatsoever.
Put so eloquently by Ninja Theory's Chief Creative Director Tameem Antoniades, "The wording for the permadeath message was chosen quite carefully because we didn’t want to lie to the player...It’s actually your interpretation of the message that is what threw people off."
While the opening warning doesn't precisely detail the consequences of dying in the game, it doesn't take much reading between the lines to assume the inference.
Whether you consider it a lie or not, it certainly did a fantastic job of enhancing the game's already palpable sense of urgency and emotion.