Ninja Theory (DmC: Devil May Cry, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West) is up to something interesting with its next project, a self-published character action game called Hellblade that it announced during Sony's annual Gamescom press conference. This is presumably the 'independent AAA' project that Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades alluded to earlier today as part of his GDC Europe talk on the studio's evolution. Antoniades expressed frustration with the creative limitations of a traditional publisher-developer relationship and said that he had taken a team of ten people at Ninja Theory to work on a game that "looks and feels AAA, but is smaller and more focused, with a total budget that's a fracton of our previous games." He mentioned that Ninja Theory expects to pay for the lion's share of the game's development itself, and would pursue other (non-Kickstarter) funding strategies to make up the difference as the project moves forward. Antoniades told GDC Europe attendees that Ninja Theory planned to "lift the veil on development, invite you into our process and share resources along the way," something the studio seems to be doing by making a show of announcing Hellblade very early in its development process and promising to "show you how we make this game, warts and all." It's unclear when the studio plans to release the game or on what platforms, though it will presumably come to PlayStation 4 at some point.
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