Game News Returnal 2? A Housemarque executive gives part of the answer
Would a second episode of Returnal be possible? An executive from the Housemarque studio gave an answer at VGC.
Returnal is one of the big games of last year on PlayStation 5. Beyond a reasonable commercial success, it was above all acclaimed by all the video game press and industry players. We are therefore entitled to ask if he will be entitled to a sequel.
The door is not closed to a sequel to Returnal
Eevi Korhoven is senior narrative designer at Housemarque studio, the origin of Returnal. In an interview with VGC, she answered a question from the journalist: is the story of Selene, the main character of Returnal, over? Indeed, fans of Returnal would like a return of the franchise, but until then no clue confirmed or denied the existence of a sequel. Korhoven casts doubtwithout totally denying:
(laughs) I can’t comment too much on that. But I think our guys let slip earlier this year that we were working on an original license. Of course, whether we return to Selene’s story after that remains to be seen.
Korhoven therefore leaves the door open to a sequel to Returnalbut confirms that Housemarque is currently developing a new game, from an original license. Indeed, in March, the managing director of Housemarque, Ilari Kuittinen, declared this, to Venture Beat:
It’s only the beginning, but we’re on a whole new game, a new IP. We’ll see what happens.
The new license will reuse ideas from the development of Returnal
At VGC, Korhoven still has left some clues about this new original title. Indeed, it indicates that ideas originally planned for Returnalbut couldn’t be in the final game, were kept for this new project.
Returnal was so ambitious. We were dreaming super big, but we still had to leave so much to the side in the cutting room. All these ideas and narrative systems. I’m super excited to find them again and see how they fit into our new story on this license.
In addition to giving useful ideas in this new project, Returnal was mainly used as an apprenticeship to Housemarque executives and employees.
We didn’t quite have control over how big a game Returnal was going to be, building a new platform on a new engine with a new team, all of those things take some learning. Now we have this team that went through fire and learned how to make a game like Returnal. So now we can start stronger.
I think we learned the importance of pacing, and how hard it is to deal with in a roguelike. It’s very difficult to control and saying “ok, now we hit them with this perfect narrative beat”, that’s kind of the beauty of linear games, you can control that perfectly.
Dropping that linearity, and somehow building the sandbox, or playing field for players, so that certain story blocks become available, is a real challenge. You just have to tempt them with a foreshadowing and make them want to say “hey, soon you’re going to have this story block, are you excited?”. And hope they hang on to it, before the next item arrives.
Source : VGC
We can’t wait to discover this new license prepared by the Housemarque studio and its gameplay. As for Returnal, it is therefore not impossible that a sequel could see the light of day in a few years.
