Everything we’ve seen from Saros proves it’s a fundamental improvement over Returnal, but those who played the latter and didn’t vibe with the difficulty should take heart. Housemarque is taking a “kinder” approach with the sequel while still ensuring that hardcore fans get the desired challenge.
“I think the lesson we learned from Returnal was that people really loved what we created, and we were going on the right track,” said creative director Gregory Louden to IGN. “But I think the feedback we did get is that more players wanted to love Returnal; they wanted to get further. So for us, it was about providing that ability. So it means we don’t dilute the challenge; there’s still a very challenging game there, but there is also the ability to kind of modify the challenge.”
So, in addition to Second Chance, which lets you revive after a lethal blow, persistent upgrades between runs, and Carcosan Modifiers for tuning the difficulty to your liking, there’s also the option to suspend a run. Added after launch to Returnal, you can effectively pause your progress and come back later if real life interferes.
That same philosophy has also seemingly influenced the overall run duration, which is about 30 minutes. As associated design director, Mitja Roskaric explains, “It’s a challenging experience, but every time someone dies, we want them to bring something out of it, right? Even if it’s not the resource that they will use to level up, maybe it is a lesson from that run. And if it’s a short run, I think it’s easier to get more and more lessons in a frequent cadence, right? So I think the 30-minute session lengths that we have are kind of the sweet spot for this kind of experience.”
If that wasn’t enough, you can also have multiple save game files. “One thing I thought personally is having multiple save slots. So with Returnal, I always had to clear my saves to start over. Now we have a couple of them available from the get-go, so I can have multiple runs of the game at the same time. It was very, very critical for us. I know lives are busy, right? So being able to drop the controller and resume the game at any point, it’s very critical to this experience,” said Roskaric.
Considering the heavier story focus with Saros, it makes sense that Housemarque wants a larger number of people to experience it. And if options like Second Chance or permanent unlocks aren’t your thing, you can turn most of them off to further increase the challenge.
Saros is available on April 30th for PS5, and it’s looked incredible, running in 4K/60 FPS on the base console. We’re still waiting for details on the PS5 Pro enhancements, but at least it still leverages the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers for an immersive experience, just like Returnal.
