Returnal Fulfilled PlayStation’s Next-Gen Promise Better Than Any First-Party Game

This console cycle has seemingly been cursed since the start; being birthed in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic seemed to serve as an omen. Xbox spent the first few years flailing spectacularly, while PlayStation mostly followed the same playbook that proved successful during the PS4 era. But following a playbook, no matter how fruitful, isn’t always as exciting. Despite its slate of great games, there’s been a light layer of malaise over Sony’s output, something that has undoubtedly been ushered in by an onslaught of sequels, remakes, and remasters. Returnal was different, though, and that’s clearer than ever four years later.

Returnal was developer Housemarque’s first big game after stepping away from the arcadey shooters that it established itself upon in the prior generations. Super Stardust HD, Resogun, Nex Machina, and Matterfall, to name a few, were beloved throwbacks, yet, according to Housemarque, quality was not enough to sustain that style.

“ARCADE IS DEAD,” the studio bluntly proclaimed in all caps on its website in November 2017, less than three months after Matterfall’s launch. It was a somber post noting how the team took pride in developing acclaimed titles in that niche while also explaining that it couldn’t pay its employees with high review scores. Former CEO Ilari Kuittinen said it had to “move on to new genres” and “move forward with the industry” and away from the smaller games that were fundamental building blocks in Housemarque’s foundation.

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Returnal was the first game of the team’s new era, and that was evident from the start. No longer from an isometric, top-down, or side view with neon-soaked stylized visuals, Returnal was a third-person shooter set in a relatively realistically rendered world. There were no scores to chase or, for the most part, leaderboards to climb.

But instead of following the typical third-person shooter set of rules, Returnal injected the genre with the roguelike formula that had overtaken the indie scene in order to make something new. Prey: Mooncrash and Risk of Rain 2 had done something like this previously, but Returnal’s Sony-backed privilege gave it a budget and stage that those other titles couldn’t dream of. Roguelikes had finally made it to the big leagues.

A roguelike third-person shooter in an original franchise was just the thing to welcome in the early days of another generation. It wasn’t a paint-by-numbers cover shooter or a game like The Order: 1886 that was mainly focused on its cinematic story; it was a bullet hell with tight controls that punished sloppy players and constantly shifted after each well-deserved death. Even its narrative veered from Sony’s expensive, cutscene-heavy presentation, as Returnal reveled in riddles and letting the players piece together what happened without ever force-feeding them the full picture. Instead of having a witty sidekick crack wise or an ensemble cast, Returnal also starred a flawed and traumatized protagonist stranded on a melancholic alien world who had a small chance of a happy ending.

It felt new because it was new, a true testament to the powers of a game being far more than the sum of its parts and trying to go for a different tone. It’s not that Returnal — even though beautiful and something that utilized the PS5’s faster NVMe drive — was some technical marvel that absolutely could not have existed on PS4 in some form. Instead, it was a new way to experience roguelikes on a new console in a new franchise. All of that newness let it create its own legacy from scratch, which is something a console needs in its infancy in order to stand out over the prior generation. 

And that’s just not what Sony has excelled at this generation and partially explains why it feels like the PS5 hasn’t truly found its own identity. Gran Tursimo 7, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and both Marvel’s Spider-Man games are all excellent and demonstrate the dominance of PlayStation’s stable of first-party studios, but they — along with the glut of remakes and remasters — are all directly building off successes from previous PlayStation systems. It’s not feasible or wise to build a console purely on new franchises or genre blends, yet the balance is still off in regards to PlayStation’s first-party games. 

Perhaps the story would be different if Intergalactic and Marvel’s Wolverine were already out and came alongside a couple of other big-budget titles that veered from Sony’s normal output. But elongated development cycles have made that sort of variety harder to obtain. Returnal played its part, though, and yielded an extraordinary and singular experience that gave the PS5 its most special first-party game. And while it’s a little disappointing that it doesn’t have much competition four years later, Housemarque’s magnum opus continues to be a game worth celebrating not only for its thrilling roguelike gameplay and bleak yet awe-inspiring world, but also for what it means to the PS5.