When Returnal developer Housemarque finally released the game on the PS5, it meant the culmination of a lot of hard work and apparently quite a bit of trial and error. In fact, the developer is spilling the beans on just how difficult it was to make Returnal as good as it ended up being.
It was well known that Returnal was the biggest budget and biggest scope game that Housemarque had put out since it came under the PlayStation umbrella. However, it likely wasn't known just how much experimentation the developer had to resort to when it was putting together the roguelike shooter. In fact, while the finished product when it comes to the base game was released last year, the company is still obviously working on adding content and tweaking what's already there.
Speaking at GDC 2022, Returnal's director Harry Krueger is clearly happy that Housemarque's latest has been as well-received as it has. However, he also wants people to understand getting the game to the quality it's at now was not a remotely easy task. In fact, he compared it to "Sisyphus pushing up the boulder." Adding that making the game was incredibly challenging, the director said his company and his team basically had to learn how to make a 3D action game, while they were also learning how to design the title on a never-before-used engine and hiring new people who then had to be taught how Housemarque worked while learning alongside the veterans that were already there.
It turns out that learning on the go is at least some of the reason Krueger thinks some find the game as difficult as they do. All of Housemarque's games before Returnal were all 2D and the shooting in the PS5 game were built to be similar to what a player might see in a 2D title because it's what the developer knew. The director also admitted that he understands trying to shoot and do literally anything else can be incredibly challenging for that reason.
Continuing to discuss the issues the Housemarque team ran into, Krueger said that there were other features that were meant to be in Returnal that simply didn't make it in because at some point, he realized the team was "punching way above their weight" and needed to dial things back in order to make a game the company could be proud of.
It's possible that at least some of those features did arrive after release. A suspend cycle option came in the games' first big update last fall. Earlier this month Returnal also got an update that offer new features including the ability to play co-op. In the end, everything the game offered at launch, and what it's offered since has proven to make a very successful game that Krueger and his team can take pride in.
Returnal is available now on PS5.
Source: IGN
