The mysterious new PS5 IP from Housemarque (Dead Nation, Nex Machina…) that is beginning its development will be heavily inspired by Returnal. The studio is restoring certain ideas it may have had.
Although Returnal was a commercial success, the Housemarque studio is currently moving towards an unreleased franchise for PlayStation 5. un new game that uses discarded ideas.
Housemarque recycles unused ideas
Eevi Korhonen, Senior Narrative Designer at Housemarque, made a reveal about the studio’s new PS5 franchise. She actually said that this license would take up ideas that ultimately couldn’t be put into Returnal.
Return was so ambitious. We’ve seen the big picture, but we still had a lot of elements to put aside. All these ideas and narrative systems. I’m really looking forward to taking these elements and seeing how they fit into the story of our new intellectual property.
Eevi Korhonen, Senior Narrative Designer at Housemarque, via VGC.
She added that The return had been a great learning spot for Housemarque. A precious baptism of fire to prepare for their next PS5 title.
We had no idea how big Returnal was going to be. Developing on a new platform with a new engine and a new team requires quite a bit of learning. Now we have this team that saw green and immature and learned how to design a game like Returnal. So that we can get stronger again.
This IP, whatever it is, will be a single player storytelling game, maybe with multiplayer mechanics like Returnal, but that should end there. The studio learned its previous lesson, which was an attempt at a battle royale. And after this unreleased title Returnal 2 could enter development.
