The head of Returnal – about how a psychological horror made friends with an arcade shooter Leave a comment

For many years Housemarque was known from bright arcade shooters like Resogun And Nex Machina. But her new game, Returmal, intonationally different from its predecessors: the studio wanted to add a taste of psychological horror to her proprietary formula.

About how it happened, says the leader Returnal Harry Kruger (Harry Krueger). The game was born about four years ago when Housemarque decided which project to do next. Then the developers went into all the heavy ones: they began to throw all the crazy ideas that occurred to the head, as if no restrictions in production exist.

Kruger He always loved gloomy science fiction, time travel and psychological horror, and therefore wanted to bring them to a new project. Over time, a shapeless lump of ideas began to get rid of the unnecessary and acquire outlines, and the team Housemarque I realized that for the first time in his history he wants to add more plot elements to the game. The narrative context was built earlier, but for Returnal collected as many as a separate scenario team.

Nevertheless, from iconic arcade mechanics Housemarque did not refuse: in Returnal There will also be explosions, perfectly honed control and close gameplay cycles, where it is felt how the game rewards you for efforts. In the end, Housemarque made a name for myself just on such elements. However, c Returnal They will be adjacent to surprises, the specifics of which is too early to disclose.

Returnal -Exclusive PlayStation 5, which comes out on March 19, 2021. In the video below there are fresh excerpts with gameplay.

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Returnal

The best comments

On the contrary, I do not have enough not enough closed horror-Zhizhikhach on his knee, and a full-fledged story made qualitatively.
All parts of the metro are far from horror, but on hardcore, when you take every cartridge and try to shoot for sure, or not to raise excess noise (especially in the last part). And all these stealth mines with monsters or walks along dark corridors alone. God, how few of them, I want more!

The first Dead Space in general is the standard in this regard. Although the game is not particularly terrible (although in 2008 I still remember how the game dropped, frightened by an ordinary automatic door, which had to be stopped by Stasis. Therefore, this horror was first passed at a more conscious age).
And in general all these bunch do not make a horror movie a horror. But the atmosphere that only one cartridge in the store/one blow to you is the enemy/one wrong action separates you from the state of "dead" forces you to press your ass stronger than any scramer, which, to be honest, have lifted up.

About some parts of the residents, I’m generally silent.

I do not understand what https://stakezone-top.co.uk/ people are prevented by really interesting games or franchises and take something from there? As practice shows, gamers love difficulty (sometimes even hell), love an interesting story and love, in the end, to make a conscious choice, in which there will be no reward for the choice made, nor the consequences from it.
Often there is enough moral fact of choice (Soma conveys hello). Why developers almost stopped focusing on production, dynamics and plot? For almost 10 years we have or games with open and empty worlds, all sorts of incomprehensible grindles in the single, the absence of at least some interesting stories, music, dynamics, gameplay. This is no longer stagnation, but a real degradation, when games with a large budget look and play many times worse than projects from novice studios. Yes, damn it, lead me on the rails, tell me a crept history without any “RPG” (quotes for a reason). I can run around the open worlds in MMO, and I play first of all because of the stories told there.

But no, let’s bring arcativity to horror, donates to the single, RPG system in shooters, the main.

Here is the overflow of this arcation and horror?

And the point is to be afraid if you know that little depends on you at all and that the maximum that you will lose is time from the last checkpoint?

Another thing is that with a minigan it will not be very scary to walk.

But if you have five cartridges and a snag from the garbage, then you have a choice: either to spend cartridges and stay without them, but I got rid of the enemy, or try to get off with high chances to drive to the SEV with a stick and again look for supplies, except for everything else, or just try to run by. Well, this really holds in greater tension than stupidly on the hollow "caught, he will not catch".

Is it a lot of neon illumination for the horror, at least psychological, at least ordinary?

Well, this is a bullet-gell horror, even sounds wild.

Honestly, even the thought of Eternal is much more like a horror than this parody of Andromeda ..

Immortal: Unchained? Somehow it did not work very well.

Returnal is still like Risk of Rain 2, but most likely will lose to him in everything except graphics.

So, it is not for me that Andromeda seems to me there.

At one time, Alien Island passed with great pleasure, there was no irritation, as for example, and in the first visual vision on the most difficult, the people successfully noticed that the games were degrading, most games are sliding to “Press X to Win” or banal grind

Opponents look impressive. The rest … well, a little less impressive, let’s say so.

I remembered Immortal Unchained, but Remnant from the Asshes no.

Remnant: from the ashess more likely, and closer to Hellgate London than to Souls. =)

There is no feeling that the next Soulslike with some gameplayed interspersed?

I have a certain hope for a shooter with Souls mechanics.

This reminds me of the story with Watch Dogs: Legion. How many laudables were in the direction of choosing a random hero and playing for him. And at the exit, the expected drain expected by all (except Kilsoft) with an obviously non -working concept.

So here. Explanation of how "how a psychological horror made friends with an arcade shooter".

They wrote above correctly. Indeed – nothing.

It seems to me that the horror ends when they give you a weapon. And resumes only when you are disarmed, or shells on the enemy cease to act, or the enemy cannot die in principle. How can you be afraid when you can shoot what scares you?