Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga crashing/freezing error: Possible fixes, reasons, and more explored

Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga is easily one of the most graphically impressive games on both Xbox Series consoles and PC. While the Xbox version is more or less free of major technical issues, the PC version does exhibit a few stuttering, freezing, and crashing errors, especially on medium-spec PCs with 8GB or less VRAM GPUs.

While the game features a dedicated shader compilation step, it still stutters, especially while transitioning between chapters and cutscenes. Crashes can also happen if the game runs out of VRAM and spills onto system memory.

You can try fixing these errors with a few tweaks to the graphics settings. Here are a few potential fixes for the stuttering and crashing errors in Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga.

Disclaimer: The fixes mentioned herein are not guaranteed to solve the issue.

---

Potential fixes for crashing/freezing errors in Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga

Much like any other Unreal Engine 5 game, Hellblade 2 is incredibly demanding, as reflected in the game's system requirements. According to Ninja Theory, to play Hellblade 2 at 1440p High settings, you will need an RTX 3080, which is a high-end GPU with 10GB VRAM, and a CPU equivalent to a Ryzen 5 5600X.

During my time with the game, I found Hellblade 2 to be quite demanding on the GPU, but fairly light on the CPU, even with the game being recorded in the background. I tested the game on a Ryzen 5 5600X and RTX 4070 system, with the game being installed on an NVMe SSD.

While the first few hours were free of major technical hiccups, once I reached Chapter 3 and beyond, I faced stuttering as well as hard desktop crashes. A quick glance at the performance metrics indicated a potential memory leak issue, which made it exceed VRAM constraints and use system RAM.

Thankfully, the issue can easily be remedied by lowering a few settings. Here are the things I found useful in somewhat fixing the stuttering and the crashing issues in Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga:

• Lower settings to Medium: Medium in Hellblade 2 seems to be the sweet spot here it keeps VRAM in limit, especially for 8-10GB GPUs, and doesn't compromise on the game's visuals.
• Enable Frame-generation: Hellblade 2 ships with DLSS Frame-generation, which you can also use with DLAA. This not only helps boost the game's performance but also helps stabilize the frame time, which reduces stuttering.
• Use upscalers: Upscaling has become a necessity for most modern AAA titles, same holds true for Hellblade 2. Both DLSS and FSR are supported here and can help tremendously with stabilizing the game's performance.

Hellblade 2 Senua's Saga, for the most part, is a pretty well-optimized PC port, especially when you consider the state of most modern PC releases, outside of those from Nixxes Software. While the Xbox Series versions are locked to 30fps, the PC version offers an unlocked framerate, as long as you have the hardware to back it.