Your first challenge in Saros, before it throws 20-plus hours of frenetic combat and nightmarish enemies at you, doesn\u2019t involve any fighting. All you have to do is stop gawking at the view.<\/p>\n
I have one particular piece of scenery in mind: a gigantic, swirling eclipse in the sky, which seems to be sucking everything in.<\/p>\n
There is something dangerously hypnotic about it, something that inspires a mix of awe and dread. Let your camera linger on the eclipse and, after a moment, it will zoom in closer and closer, the black orb filling your screen, as though you\u2019re being pulled in too.<\/p>\n
Saros eclipse<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a decent metaphor for what Saros is trying to do to you, the player, dragging you ever, irresistibly deeper into what art director Simone Silvestri calls a \u201ccocktail of cosmic horror, twisted enlightenment and violent beauty\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope players enjoy a game that is there to challenge them on every level. You know, a skill level, but also a narrative and psychological level, and an artistic level,\u201d he tells news.com.au.<\/p>\n
Like its predecessor Returnal, this game is much more than a vehicle for buttery smooth combat. Every element of it \u2013 the story, the world design, the art style, even little touches like your camera zooming in on the eclipse \u2013 it\u2019s all doing something interesting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love cosmic horror. We love psychological thrillers. So we do have these aspects of it,\u201d says creative director Gregory Louden.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in the end, I\u2019d say our aspiration with this game was to again give you a world and characters to examine and study, and from that, to kind of make up your own mind of what this game is, and what it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to haunt you, and create a true sense of mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always fascinating with a game like this, whose every pore oozes creativity, to poke at what the people behind it were trying to do.<\/p>\n
In this case the developer, Housemarque, was seeking to follow up 2021\u2019s Returnal with \u201crefinement, not reinvention\u201d.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why the moment-to-moment gameplay looks similar, at first glance, but feels quite different when the controller is in your hand.<\/p>\n
Mr Louden frames it as a question of \u201cavoidance\u201d versus \u201cinteraction\u201d.<\/p>\n
As your screen filled up with dangerous beams and orbs in Returnal \u2013 the \u201cbullet hell\u201d style of gameplay Housemarque specialises in \u2013 your only option was to dodge them. In Saros, you can instead absorb some of these attacks with your shield, which charges your powerful secondary weapon.<\/p>\n
That one mechanic transforms the flow of combat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Returnal, you\u2019re constantly dodging the projectiles. But in Saros you collect them, you use them. So every projectile type actually becomes an opportunity,\u201d Mr Louden says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s all these layers of opportunity for players. It\u2019s not just using projectiles for damage like many games. We\u2019re actually using them as chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been a full change. And we used to say bullet hell, but now we actually say \u2018bullet ballet\u2019, because you\u2019re dancing, you\u2019re using, you\u2019re moving between the projectiles. So I\u2019d say that\u2019s the big evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other evolution is in how the game handles difficulty.<\/p>\n
Saros isn\u2019t easy, but it is designed to be less punishing than its predecessor. If you were struggling in Returnal, it could feel as though you were making no progress at all. In Saros even your deaths are meant to feel productive; the goal is a sense of steady progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all loved Returnal, and some players loved it as well, but they couldn\u2019t confront the friction we had,\u201d Mr Louden concedes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo an early vision statement was \u2018come back stronger\u2019. We wanted to allow even more players to approach Saros, and get into it, and get lost in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to allow more players to confront the friction and then own it, and love the game. And ideally, after playing Saros, go back through 30 years of Housemarque history, and enjoy Returnal next.\u201d<\/p>\n
The difficulty is revamped in a few ways.<\/p>\n
First is the \u201carmour matrix\u201d, which is essentially a basic skill tree. Each time you die and return to home base, you can unlock a few more permanent upgrades. Most of them increase protagonist Arjun Devraj\u2019s stats by small increments, which add up over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do want to challenge you,\u201d Mr Louden stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will die, and that\u2019s OK. Death is just the beginning. That\u2019s how you upgrade yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always the key thing: we wanted Saros to be more motivating and more rewarding, to really pull you forward, so you don\u2019t feel like all is lost. You feel like, \u2018I\u2019ll get you this time.\u2019 So you can keep pushing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot diluting the Returnal experience, instead providing another avenue to confront it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another new feature is the modifier system, which becomes available a relatively short distance into the game, and lets you choose from a menu of ways to make it either easier or harder.<\/p>\n
Say you feel as though the enemies are too spongy. To compensate, you could activate a modifier that makes your weapons do slightly more damage.<\/p>\n
But at the same time, say you\u2019re finding the game\u2019s \u201ccorruption\u201d mechanic, through which some projectiles reduce your maximum health, a bit toothless. You could activate a negative modifier to make its effects more severe.<\/p>\n
You can mix and match different options however you like, as long as the overall difficulty level doesn\u2019t fall too low.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey adjust the challenge to be what players want it to be, so that way they can overcome it as they see fit,\u201d says Mr Louden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to create lots of different options for players.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about player agency, right? You have a challenge in front of you, and you have many ways to try to overcome it,\u201d Mr Silvestri adds.<\/p>\n
One more evolution worth mentioning is Housemarque\u2019s approach to world design. Where Returnal featured half a dozen distinct biomes, Saros seeks to tie all its locations together.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, Atropos (Returnal\u2019s setting) is very segmented and divided. Each level has its own sort of story and identity. But for Carcosa (the planet where Saros takes place), we really wanted to make this world a character itself,\u201d Mr Silvestri says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to do a lot more environmental story building. And we wanted to really design the civilisation that is there, really take care of the details. You can get a lot of narrative depth just by looking at the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd setting this journey so that you have this wider world, that you actually see the landmarks, and you move through them. That\u2019s also a piece of storytelling in itself, because these are fixed locations. And to me, that was a really awesome thing to evolve on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The style of the world sprang from a mix of real-world inspirations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe draw from a lot of references,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when we started talking with Greg and he pitched me the game and then the eclipse, I was immediately in love with this idea of the worship of the eclipse. So we started looking at the history of civilisations, mysticism, folklore.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then you got to abstract yourself a couple of layers and start injecting different references in there. So we looked at anime, we look at comic books, we look at 80s sci-fi movies.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd slowly this soup of things, we cooked it more and more until it distilled itself into a unique identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, for the architecture, we started from neoclassicism, because that\u2019s sort of the worship of gods. That was born from Greek mythology. And we tried it on and it just wasn\u2019t working because it\u2019s too safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we took something that is the opposite of that, which is Italian futurism, then just got it all together. And it sort of started taking its own alien look, but an alien look that is unique to Carcosa.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes I get asked was it this reference or this reference? And it\u2019s like, yes, but no. It becomes its own cocktail of cosmic horror, twisted enlightenment and violent beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n