I know this just now got its release on an accessible platform, but I'm a little surprised that I've been hearing about a different plot-heavy action roguelite steeped in Greek mythology for years now.

Returnal uses every element of its design to work towards its central theme. The plot is constantly introducing you to something else that doesn't fully make sense right as you've come to understand the last clue. Knowledge of Greek mythology will help a player quite a lot and let you skip ahead a bit in making sense of what's going on, but even then I found my own theories about the plot to be ever-shifting, and I'm sure if I went back to complete more of the Tower I'd find them changing yet again. I won't say much else because I think continually going "oh my god" (good realization) and "oh my god" (terrifying realization) is a key part of the experience, and I'd like to preserve that as much as possible for anyone who hasn't yet played it.

What I will say is that the game (story-wise) is deliberately unpleasant, making this possibly the first roguelite plot I've seen where your inevitable failure does not feel like something the developers have to hand-wave away to keep things moving. Your goals are vague - much of the game is spent with the objective of reaching something that Selene is fixated on. Instead of a surmountable, heroic challenge, the whole thing feels eerie and unnerving - a desperate, irrational struggle through the tendrils towards a distant, beckoning something that holds little chance of being friendly. The tentacles and tendrils and all the other ways that the forest grasps at you, the way the same forest has... a run-down house resembling nothing else on the planet? The way the ambient soundtrack sounds wispy and ethereal and flowing and aquatic, interrupted by unnatural stutters and surges of sound that lends the entire environment a feeling of vastness that simultaneously has too much and frighteningly little going on.

And it's because it all works so well together that the most video game-like parts of it begin to stick out. To be clear, this is a nitpick: I was tempted to start this off by saying that the fights are "too good". The further I progress, the more I'm thinking about the story, and the harder I can feel my thoughts being violently yanked off-course by seeing a gun on the ground and having to decide if it's better for the challenge ahead than the one I'm using. It's a nitpick because these encounters are still fun, the items still suit the game thematically - the only pure upgrades you get in Returnal are traversal tools - but after each fight I find myself thinking about consumables, one of the very few elements present that feel like they don't belong. To be honest with you, it's probably necessary if you want players to continue through multiple deaths, because combat in Returnal has been pretty aggressively trimmed down to a (very strong) set of action game fundamentals. Removing the most game-y elements would arguably suit the mood a little better, but those same bits that I'm griping about are the only parts that allow you some room for mistakes.

It is the best attempt at working a story into a roguelike I've seen yet, and if you ask me it's worth picking up based on that fact alone. Selene is a character with genuine depth, and the game is fully committed to exploring that depth.

Reviewed on Mar 03, 2023


Comments