Why Did Nobody Tell Me How Profound Returnal Is?

thegamer.com:

I didn’t play Returnal when it came out in 2021 because I wasn’t in the mood to have my ass kicked over and over again, but I felt like I knew a lot about it. I heard it was painfully difficult and that a lot of people never made it past the first boss. I heard it was the first great 3D bullet hell and that more games should follow in its footsteps. I heard that the DualShock features were great and that the lack of a System Save was terrible. But what I didn’t hear was anything at all about the story, or what Returnal is actually about. After finally playing through it this weekend, it’s the only thing I want to talk about. There’s something profound about the way the experience of playing Returnal mirrors the themes it explores, and I think Housemarque deserves a lot more credit for the novelty it brought to both the roguelike and the time loop game.

I’m going to unpack the plot and themes of Returnal in a spoilery way, but know that I could never cover everything in a single article. Part of what has enraptured me about this game is just how layered and complex it is. I feel as though I’m going to keep making connections and understanding things in a new way long after I set Returnal aside, which is a lot more than I expected from a shooty game about dodging laser beams.

Returnal follows Selene Vassos, an astronaut for the ASTRA Corporation who, against orders, follows a signal through space she calls the White Shadow in her spaceship, Helios. Selene crashlands on an alien planet called Atropos and, after dubbing Helios irreparable, sets out to discover the nature of the planet and locate the source of the signal that brought her there.

Related: Returnal Interview: Housemarque On Winning Best Game At The BAFTAs

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