After four excruciatingly long years, Housemarque has finally revealed its follow up to its 2021 roguelike masterpiece, Returnal. While we only got a short cinematic teaser, I’ll go ahead and speak for all the Returnal sickos out there by saying boy, it was worth the wait. It feels like Housemarque was speaking directly to the Returnalites with this trailer, because even before it was revealed as a Housemarque game, I knew it was Returnal 2… even if it isn’t called Returnal 2.
Related
Saros Looks Cool… And Like Everything Wrong With PlayStation
The new Housemarque shooter shows that Sony only wants to publish one kind of game.
Saros: A Returnal Story
This isn’t another story about Selene, and it doesn’t take place on Atropos either. Heck, for all we know this isn’t even another roguelike. And yet, this trailer has Returnal’s stink all over it. God, I missed that stink.
In case you haven’t yet been indoctrinated by the Church of Returnal, I’ll break it down. The opening line of the two-minute trailer, delivered by Saros’ lead actor and beloved gamer Rahul Kohli, is “It always comes back to this”, which seems to indicate we’re dealing with time loop shenanigans here, just as we did in Returnal. Selene’s story begins with her ship crash landing on an alien planet, and during her first excursion onto the surface, she stumbles upon her own dead body, and an audio log explaining that she’s trapped in a loop.
Kohli’s character, Arjun Devraj, also seems to be trapped in a time loop, and on a hostile alien planet no less. As Devraj picks himself up on a sandy beach under a foreboding red sky, there begins an eclipse as the narration continues, “Every time the sun dies, madness reigns. Then everything begins again”.
An eight-armed creature with dagger-like fingers emerges from the sea. Humanoid monstrosities are also featured all throughout Returnal, including the multi-armed boss Phrike. As Devraj approaches the towering creature, the narration gives us our strongest evidence of a time loop with, “But after every death, I always come back stronger.” Just as the creature unleashes a torrent of spinning fireballs in classic Returnal bullet hell fashion, Devraj says “I know you are here, and I will find out.” Selene lost her son in Returnal, but who is Devraj looking for?
Then the titles appear, and it says Saros, not Returnal 2. Not even Saros: A Returnal Story. I would have loved to see the word Returnal somewhere in the title, but the more I think about it, the less I think it actually matters. This is Returnal 2, even if it’s not called that.
Returnal 2 Never Would Have Worked
Sequels can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Trading on the name of a successful game is good for marketing, and sequels usually outsell the original. But, the number two in a title can also drive potential new fans away. No matter how many times a developer says their sequel is approachable and you don’t have to already be a fan of the first game, a lot of people still avoid sequels if they aren’t already familiar with the story. Saros is being promoted as a new IP that, according to creative director Gregory Louden, “builds on Returnal’s award-winning third-person action”. Housemarque’s strategy is to have its cake and eat it too. This is a brand new IP, come one come all! But for those of us in the know, we see what’s going on here. We see exactly what’s going on here.
There could never be a traditional sequel to Returnal. Selene’s story is over, and any attempt to continue on with her would undermine Returnal’s ending, which is one of the best twists in video game history. It also wouldn’t work with another character. A huge part of Returnal’s mystery is figuring out what Atropos is and why the time loops are happening. But now that we know the truth, you can’t just take another astronaut, plop them down there, and try to build the same kind of suspense. It just wouldn’t work. The only way to do a Returnal sequel is to secretly make it a Returnal sequel, and I think that’s exactly what Housemarque has done.
If Housemarque does eventually write a new story for Selene, I’ll happily eat those words.
It’s not that much of a sequel obviously. The studio’s follow-up to Returnal shares all the DNA of Returnal, from enemy designs, to gameplay, to its time loop narrative. But I don’t believe this is a brand new IP that only builds on Returnal’s foundation without a real narrative connection to Selene and Atropos. I suspect Housemarque is building something more along the lines of the Remedy Connected Universe. We might not get a direct crossover like the ones between Control and Alan Wake, but I’m already convinced Saros is Returnal 2 in all but name.
I don’t know how all the pieces connect yet, but I know whatever Housemarque has come up with is going to blow our minds once again.
- Released
-
2026
- ESRB
-
RP – Rating Pending