according to returned As a senior narrative designer, writing a good story is like walking a tightrope.
In an upcoming interview, Eevi Korhonen spoke in an early conversation with VGC about the difficulty of writing Returnal’s complex story, as it is discovered by players in a non-linear fashion.
“It was a tightrope walk,” Korhonen said. “My boss, Greg Lowden, the narrative director, and I try to make sure both parties are involved. So I’m more inclined to ‘let’s make it more mysterious and let the player solve the puzzle with the community, and Greg’s kind of Like ‘Okay, but we have to make sure they understand part of the story.'”
For those who haven’t played Returnal yet, much of the game is presented to players via short clips and classic video game storytelling equipment, audio logs. But because they’re out of order, players have to piece it together themselves.
“It’s hard to see, even with so many launches, until it’s actually in the game, how is it paced? How does it look with all the other elements? So until the last minute, we’re still cutting, we’re still editing, and then Adjust the wording to make things a bit clearer.”
VGC asked Korhonen if there were any final secrets to discover in the game, but it doesn’t appear to be. Although Korhonen did note that the name of the Tower of Sisyphus has some sort of “good philosophical reference”.
Korhonen also briefly introduced the developers Hausmark’s The next caption said: “The comeback was so ambitious. We dreamed super big, but we still had to leave so much on the cutting room floor. All these ideas and narrative systems. I’m so excited to pick up the pieces, See how these fit into our new IP story.”
