Turning the known into something unexpected is part of Returnal’s gaming experience, but its jump to paper is something that many of us did not see coming: facing the third anniversary of its launch, Housemarque prepared a series of announcements that led to three new initiatives about his saga: an art book, a graphic novel and the animated adaptation of the first issue of the latter. A video-comic that, by the way, you can see right here at our favorite price: free.
Under the title of Returnal: Fallen Asteria, artist Igor Lomov and screenwriter Gregory Louden reproduce the dynamics of the ongoing games of the PlayStation Studios game, including common creatures and nods to the saga’s gunplay. All recreated with a delicious black and white aesthetic in which contrasts play to the benefit of the narrative and, without going into details, end up receiving some color at the end of this appetizer. And after that?
According to its creators, the graphic novel Returnal: Fallen Asteria, composed of 88 pages and published from Dark Horse Comics, is both an expansion and reimagining of the original video game and its story. In fact, the animated short serves as a great appetizer, showing its respective animated panels narrated in first person by its protagonist. Intentionally leaving the door open to what will happen from the last moments.
On the other hand, with regard to The Art of Returnalthe art book also published from Dark Horse Comics, we know that it will offer 224 new pages with a hardcover format in which concept art of enemies, biomes and annotations from the creative team of the video game itself have been compiled. The bad new? We will have to wait for the paper versions of Returnal reach the stores.
Both the graphic novel Returnal: Fallen Asteria as the art book will be available this year. The first is expected to hit shelves starting October 22 of this year. A very well calculated date, since it can be purchased just in time for Halloween. It must be recognized that Housemarque has been correct with the date.
Perhaps these three projects are not exactly what fans of Returnal expected to see it announced on the occasion of the third anniversary of the game’s launch, but it is clear that there is a desire to expand the franchise. In any case, we know that for your next project you will take advantage of many of the ideas that they were left in the pipeline on the busy journey of Selene Vassos. And that is something very bad for its future protagonist, but really interesting for the players.
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