Returnal’s senior narrative designer says writing the sport was a “tightrope walk”

According to Returnal’s senior narrative designer, getting the story proper was one thing of a “tightrope walk.”

Speaking to VGC in an early have a look at an upcoming interview, Eevi Korhonen spoke concerning the difficulties that got here with writing Returnal’s sophisticated story, because it’s one that’s uncovered by the participant in a non-linear trend.

“It was a tightrope walk,” stated Korhonen. “My boss Greg Louden, the narrative director, and I tried to ensure that both sides were included. So I was more ‘let’s make it more mysterious, let’s let the player puzzle it out with the community while Greg was kind of like ‘Okay, but we have to make sure that they understand some of this story.”

For those who have not performed Returnal, a lot of the sport is proven to the participant via brief snippets, and ye olde traditional online game storytelling machine, audio logs. But as a result of they’re out of sequence, gamers form of needed to piece it collectively themselves a contact.

“It’s hard to kind of see, even with all this priming, until it’s actually in the game, how is it pacing? How is it looking together with all the other elements? So up until the last moment, we’re still cutting, we’re still editing, and then tweaking the wording and making things a bit clearer.”

VGC requested Korhonen if there have been any ultimate secrets and techniques to find within the sport, however there did not appear to be. Although Korhonen did be aware that there is one thing of a “nice philosophical reference to the name” of the Tower of Sisyphus.

Korhonen additionally briefly touched on developer Housemarque’s subsequent title saying, “Returnal was so ambitious. We dreamt super big, but we still had to leave so much on the cutting room floor. All of these ideas and narrative systems. I’m super excited to pick up those pieces and see how those fit our new IP story.”