Uneasiness fills you with every empty roomĪtropos itself is a masterclass in visual storytelling, each level focuses on a distinct biome: Forest, Desert, Arctic and Sea with the exception of the dilapidated Citadel – all relentlessly isolating and increasingly disconcerting. Thankfully through post-release updates you can now suspend your runs and safely turn off the system – preserving your progress and hard-earned upgrades for a later time. With that in mind, Returnal doesn’t really respect your time with runs taking just under 2 hours to complete… if you don’t die first that is. Returnal is massively addictive with each run leading to a “one more” mindset in the hopes that next time you’ll learn a little bit more about the terrifyingly lonely planet and Selene’s nebulous timeframe on it.Įnemies look like something from a horror film style house scenes and translated glyph markings left by the previous inhabitants of the planet… And while I can’t say I understood a lot of what the game was presenting, I was fascinated all the same and I couldn’t put it down. The problem I found however is that because of the games randomly generated nature, the story had a habit of making you piece together an already scattered narrative from the audio logs, P.T. You’re left with so many more questions than answers Through it all, we’re right there with her. The lack of human contact lends itself to her likability as a human character who’s simply terrified by the tormenting situation she finds herself in… real or not. As she tries to understand how and why there’s a conceivable connection between the two through audio journals and monologues you constantly have to question her mental state (And she does too). What makes Selene so interesting as a protagonist is that she’s discovering the planet as we do - unearthing her own nightmares as the world becomes more and more turbulent. It’s a plot that contextualises the roguelike mechanic while giving it some much needed narrative – probably the deepest narrative from a roguelike to date. Set on the planet of Atropos, Selene must work through her own dark past and confusion to discover the secrets of a planet that refuses to let her die as she hunts down mysterious signals and uncovers audio logs from her previous failed attempts. Returnal is an interesting game to say the least, it’s a procedurally generated roguelike that does a great job at building atmosphere and emphasises on the isolation of a desolate remote planet, but the nature of the genre leads to a scattered narrative that never really reaches a satisfying climax.
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