It is generally frowned upon to care too much about appearances. We have a lot of little aphorisms discouraging this \u2014 books and their covers, beauty being skin deep, style over substance, that sort of thing. Vanity is a risk. Should one put a disproportionate effort into how a thing looks, then said work may very well be considered shallow. But in the world of big-budget video games? That\u2019s how you win.<\/p>\n
Visual fidelity is video game shorthand for progress: how meticulously rendered a mountain is, how dynamically the snow behaves, how a player character raises their hands to touch a wall when the player approaches it just so. This pursuit can become absurd, as illustrated by Rockstar Games\u2019 compulsion to animate horse testicles<\/a> responding to ambient temperature in 2018\u2019s Red Dead Redemption 2. It also has very little to do with anything a player, well, does. This is where Housemarque diverges from its peers.<\/p>\n The Finnish developer is an oddball in the PlayStation Studios roster. Acquired by Sony in 2021, the shop was known for arcade games like Super Stardust HD and Resogun, twin-stick shooters and shoot-\u2019em-ups that leverage contemporary hardware to make their bullet hells appear more like bullet heavens, full of fireworks and lasers vibrantly rendered but in the service of games in the tradition of Asteroids or Defender. They\u2019d be good if they didn\u2019t look as sharp, but it\u2019s cool that they did.<\/p>\n Saros, the studio\u2019s latest game<\/a>, operates on a similar principle. Like Returnal, Housemarque\u2019s 2021 PlayStation Studios debut<\/a>, it\u2019s another classic arcade-style game reimagined from the perspective of Sony labelmates like God of War or Horizon. It has an eye for dramatic genre storytelling and lavish presentation but without the obsessive pursuit of realism that can define conversation around those games.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, realism is not interesting to pursue,\u201d says Saros lead artist Simone Silvestri. \u201cSaros is a stylized, realistic game, which makes sure that we can bend the world to the crazy gameplay that we have. The level of detail that we want is very intentional, very controlled, so that we can make canvases for the gameplay. I think that\u2019s why we then get a lot more leeway to fall in love with the hardware as much as we do.\u201d<\/p>\n In Saros, the player assumes the role of Arjun Devraj (performed by actor Rahul Kohli), a member of a team sent to the planet Carcosa to investigate the disappearance of mining colonists sent to harvest a miracle mineral called Lucenite. Something happened to them, and something is currently happening to Arjun, and it\u2019s in this disorienting state that Saros begins. If the player wants to figure any of this out, first they have to learn how to play Housemarque\u2019s dextrous, arcade-like approach to action games.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s similar to Returnal, an alternate universe in which AAA video games are less interested in cinematic verisimilitude and more interested in escalating gameplay, engaging in an arms race for ludic athleticism. Across these two games, Housemarque posits another way of being \u201cnext-gen\u201d and pushing the benchmark forward, one not predicated on the pursuit of photorealism but on using the whole gameplay cow, so to speak.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the time the cinematics are about setting things up or giving you questions to ask, and through the game experience, you answer them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201dThe number one reference for our games are our own games,\u201d says Saros director and co-writer Gregory Louden. \u201cWe are gonna have really special story moments for you, but they\u2019re gonna be really rewarding. You are gonna own them, so I\u2019m not gonna give them away for free. We\u2019re also gonna make our cinematics about questions. The gameplay is the answer. So a lot of the time the cinematics are about setting things up or giving you questions to ask, and through the game experience, you answer them.\u201d<\/p>\n In Returnal and Saros, computing power isn\u2019t just used to craft detailed environments, but to fill the screen with orbs of different colors, to use the instantaneous load times as a way to underline each game\u2019s dizzying cycle of death and rebirth, to overwhelm the player with impossibly swift creatures, and arm them with weapons that defy physics and give unique haptic feedback. Environments are full of writhing flora that is always in motion, sometimes waiting to ensnare the player, to embody a feeling of psychological or cosmic horror. To reflect whatever internal hell the player character \u2014 a middle-aged woman and an Indian man in Returnal and Saros, respectively, both woefully unusual in the world of video game protagonists \u2014 is trapped in.<\/p>\n This is also the Housemarque philosophy: Visual fidelity actually has very little to do with the immersiveness that many games doggedly pursue via graphical prowess. \u201cImmersion does not come from realism,\u201d Silvestri says. \u201cIt comes from the believability of the sensations and the feelings that you have in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n This aligns with Louden\u2019s goal of kinetic storytelling that doesn\u2019t start with the melodrama of the typical video game cutscene. Housemarque\u2019s PlayStation Studios-era games aim to get you thinking about the characters you embody through playing as them, but the trap of being a \u201cgameplay-first\u201d studio (as Housemarque describes itself) is that players may only consider that gameplay, and not its narrative implications. Saros and Returnal each have a couple deft tricks for confronting this, each asking the player to make devil\u2019s bargains as they work their way through the live-die-repeat of a run. Returnal\u2019s small-scale attempt involved parasites, which would attach themselves to protagonist Selene and provide a perk that came with a gameplay tradeoff. Saros does this with upgrades that suffer from \u201cCorruption,\u201d a mysterious affliction that infects everything in the game.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens when the future isn\u2019t what you want it to be?\u201d<\/p>\n The player doesn\u2019t have to think too deeply about any of this, but the nudge is compelling, a Mobius strip of gameplay and character that gives the \u201cbullet ballet\u201d that Housemarque has choreographed a layer of psychological depth.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re creating a character that you can examine and study,\u201d says Louden. \u201cAnd not just one: We have many characters [in Saros] with many competing goals, all trying to find their way forward. Many of them are leaving something to come to this hostile alien planet. They know that it\u2019s hostile when they go there. They know they\u2019re leaving their past, but they\u2019re all going there for a new future. What happens when the future isn\u2019t what you want it to be?\u201d<\/p>\n Saros\u2019 confrontation with a hostile future that\u2019s different from what\u2019s expected is an apt metaphor for the studio. Housemarque remains atypical among AAA developers, and while Saros offers some concessions to a more welcoming experience than Returnal\u2019s notorious difficulty, it is still an odd duck among its sister studios and their emphasis on cinematic sprawl. Different is good, but in the high-stakes, expensive realm of blockbuster video games, it\u2019s also risky.<\/p>\n These are games that don\u2019t just need to sell themselves, they need to sell the console they\u2019re on. That makes risky a liability. 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