The difficulty in certain games is so high that it can drive more than one to despair. Returnal’s is not exactly short, although Harry Krueger, his director, has acknowledged on the PS I Love You XOXO program that it seems appropriate, since it is related to the narrative part which is the last work developed by Housemarque.
At no time has he denied that the level of difficulty is high, but for him that has a great reason. As he has admitted, if the adventure were simple, the players they would feel less committed to the story by not posing any challenge, that is why he has pointed out that in many ways the plot and the gameplay are very inseparable.
Mostly, this is due to the concept of dying, starting the game from the beginning when coming back to life, and so on:
Celine’s character talks about dying over and over again and how these are insufferable odds, and she can’t move on. There’s this descent into madness that’s happening simply because of the challenges she’s facing, but these challenges are also the player’s challenges in many ways.
It seems like if you were allowed to get past a boss without any challenge, or just go from A to B to C through the narrative points, it would feel like it created a bit of dissonance.
It’s the game telling you that this is very challenging and that you’re overcoming these obstacles, but you wouldn’t have had to experience that friction. So that’s always the line to follow, but it’s something we’re going to keep in mind.
In this way does not rule out considering more options so that the experience becomes more accessible for all players without the need to reduce the difficulty, which is why a cooperative mode for two players simultaneously was recently introduced:
It will definitely always be an interesting challenge to find that sweet spot. I think we can always do more and we can always add more support for playing in different ways and with different control methods. I think when it comes to difficulty, it’s a matter of what kind of experience you’re having with Returnal.
At the time it was David Jaffe, the creator of God of War, who also stated that the difficulty of returnal it seemed excessive. Despite everything, the exclusive PS5 action game was the most awarded at the recent BAFTA Games Awards 2022 gala, where it was proclaimed the best video game of the year, in addition to winning in the categories of best music, best sound and best voice actress in a leading role.