Returnal’s story and themes have been analyzed from every conceivable angle on the Internet. Dream or reality? It has to be said that the work done to encourage a subjective reading of the game will never allow us to give a definitive, objective conclusion. This dark tale has its own beauty, as anyone can complete the work with their own imagination.
However, the theme of this analysis will not really be to understand Selene’s story head-on. On a personal level, I particularly subscribe to the theory that explains the game as the fruit of a single mind, Selene’s mind.And I agree with this idea, because, like any work of art, Returnal speaks far more about its creators it does about the subject it explores.
Une image peinte ne représente pas d’idées ou de sentiments, mais des sentiments ou des idées peuvent représenter une image peinte.
René Magritte
So I’m going to propose a reading that establishes Housemarque as the subject of its work.
As I write this article, I’m assuming that you’ve completed the game. The article will contain numerous spoilers. For any translation needs, I suggest you use DeepL.
Many thanks to Alkasushi for his superb drawing, which captured the essence of this article!
Creative context
First of all, we need to set the scene for the birth of Returnal. Housemarque is a Finnish studio founded in 1995 by the merger of Bloodhouse and Terramarque. The studio is known for several outstanding titles rooted in the arcade genre. These include Super Stardust HD (2007), Resogun (2013) and, more recently, Nex Machina (2017).
Though the games are acknowledged critical successes, the studio seems to be struggling to find its audience. Or perhaps the genre is slowly being relegated to an ever-smaller niche. Yet the critical reception of Housemarque games is always excellent, as evidenced by their high metacritic scores.
However, after the release of Matterfall in August 2017, the studio failed to meet with the desired commercial success. A similar situation to that of Nex Machina, released shortly before.
This under-performance led the studio to declare the “death of the Arcade”. A change of strategy was thus set in motion by the Finns, who announced a new era and a new project: Stormdivers. The aim is to target a flourishing market to ensure the studio’s survival. However, the Battle Royale will never be released, leaving the way clear for Returnal, a game that blends arcade and high-level production.
Housemarque-style arcade
The term “arcade” is very vague, so we need to understand what it means to the creators of Nex machina.
First of all, the general philosophy can be summed up in a catchphrase: Gameplay is King. This gimmick is accompanied by an appropriate and, in my opinion, smart explanation:
Gameplay is not what’s happening on screen; it’s what’s happening inside the player’s head
Harry Krueger – The arcade spirit (2019)
Indeed, it would be a mistake to reduce the gameplay of a video game to its rules, its systems or the depth of the button “combos” to be used. Above all, it’s the fruit of a cyclical exchange between the image on the screen and our inner selves. A game is essentially played in our heads.
Let’s close this digression. For the studio, this philosophy can be broken down into four main principles:
- Embracing simplicity : a principle reminiscent of the creative process of another industry genius, Fumito Ueda and his no less famous “design by subtraction”. Bring in ideas and let them distill down to the most essential ones, then take advantage of the reduction in volume to implement them in the best possible way.
- Depth without complexity : a concept summed up in the fact that the game is easy to pick up, but difficult to master.
- Putting the player on the knife’s edge : creating the permanent tension of micro-managing the different layers of objectives.
- Offer replayability by controlling the game’s flow, trusting the player to learn, and leaving room for curiosity. Offer random variations between runs. The aim of all this is to prevent the player from going into autopilot.
The arcade crash
And so all this is “dead” in 2017. This is the context in which Returnal will be born. Therefore, it’s already interesting to note that the game’s introduction shows a ship crashing on an unknown planet.
What better emblem is there for the arcade than a spaceship? It’s the icon of the “Shoot’em up” video game genre, established with the success of Space Invaders in 1978.
I’m oversimplifying to illustrate, but if a “Shmup” arcade terminal is a machine equipped with buttons and containing a ship in a screen, then Helios is, in fact, an inverted arcade terminal: a ship containing screens and switches. Beyond the fact that the game is inspired by the artistic direction of Alien, the style chosen is no coincidence for a studio that has earned its reputation in the arcade genre. Indeed, Selene’s ship adopts an analog, retro-futuristic design. With sticks and screens featuring old-school graphics.
Helios is a symbol that encompasses everything to do with gaming.
Whether it’s the spirit of the arcade, the spirit of play or the freedom that comes with playing.
The ship’s impact on Atropos serves as a metaphor for the end of the arcade, as announced by Housemarque.
However, with the failure of Stormdivers and the brand-new partnership with Playstation, the arcade ended up as a safe haven for the studio. This is reflected in the fact that Helios is an anchor to which Selene returns again and again.
With returnal, we shot for the stars and landed on a hostile alien planet.
Harry Krueger, Game director of Returnal – Artbook foreword
So we can already see another parallel with the game’s heroine. But first we need to explain another key element.
The stare of the astronaut
If Selene travels through space, it’s first and foremost because she’s tracing a signal that’s personal to her: the white shadow.
In practice, “The White Shadow” is responsible for Selene’s accident when the signal takes the form of the astronaut as it stands in her way.
But then, it is also the source of Helios’ abandonment and Selene’s promise of survival when the white shadow is revealed to be the image of the moon through the water. A guidance to the surface.
In reality, this signal is a materialization of Theia’s dreams, which are imposed on Selene. When the child sitting in the car refers to the moon with the phrase “do you see the white shadow?”, he is rekindling a trauma in his mother that is rooted in the fact that Theia will never be able to take part in the Apollo 11 program.
The astronaut on the road is therefore an unconscious form of trajectory correction. Selene has a problem with parenthood, just like her mother before her. This accident is like a protective mechanism, reproducing the accident that led to the disappearance of Alex (Selene’s twin brother?) and Theia’s paraplegia. An unconscious reproduction to free herself from her child and reclaim the integrity of her life.
This tragic incident is the source of Selene’s torment, haunted by a diminished mother whose shattered dreams become an oppressive cage.
The astronaut is thus a mental fabrication representing this constant pressure. It comes as no surprise, in our reading, that this controlling framework (which he represents) comes into conflict with what Helios represents: the playful, uncontrolled, free attitude.
This anxiety-inducing figure can be likened to conformism, to someone else’s dream. A form of collective thinking, or even social pressure, that would like to impose on Housemarque the codes and standards of a successful product.
In the same way that Selene, becoming the astronaut for her son, will seek to impose her space dreams on a child who cherishes the seabed.
Therefore, the astronaut is faceless, or all faces, it’s a concept and a feeling. He is alternately Theia’s lost dream, Theia’s omnipresence for Selene, Selene’s pressure on Helios, … But he is also a representation of the collective imagination of what AAA video games should be.
In more general terms, it’s a representation of the collective mind that influences generations through a cycle of social pressures exerted on children by the more or less intrusive perspective of their elders. A repeating pattern that can lead to isolation, division and even death: the severed.
Breaking the 4th wall
Returnal is a surprising game, because everything explained above is brought to life in the sequences played out from the point of view of Helios, the child. Moreover, these sequences strongly support the idea of a universe born of a single mind, thanks to a form of omniscience that stems from it.
If the game breaks the fourth wall, it’s not for the sake of a free easter-egg. Above all, this sequence links Helios to the player and puts Selene back to her avatar status.
In his room, we can interact with various toys. It’s a mise en abîme of the sequence’s dichotomy between linear constraint and freedom of choice. Indeed, the toys linked to space dreams are shown as very rigid and hollow (astronaut and space shuttle). They stand in direct contrast with the board and walkie-talkie, which enable the child’s imagination to flow naturally.
But better still, when Helios has come down, he can sit in front of the Astronaut himself. A dialogue opens up between playful freedom and the normative image that constrains play.
All this is conveyed by the floating, stylized choices made to create a non-linear narrative for Helios story. These choices stand above the monolithic figure of the astronaut and his rigid, rectilinear book.
The dialogue ends with the astronaut’s disappearance. This sequence demonstrates his disinterest in ideas that don’t fit into his framework.
To end the sequence, we see Helios retrieving Octo, his octopus-shaped stuffed toy. And the weight of the astronaut’s gaze, surely angered by the child’s persistence in moving away from the “stars”, causes monstrous tentacles to emerge from the visor. A clever way of showing the association between the mother’s anger, the child’s fear of the adult and the stuffed toy.
So, here we discover the source of the recurring design of the bestiary tentacles that plague our “Atropian” cycles.
Finally, under our reading, it conveys the feeling that these unconscious representations we have of a game can terrorize the game itself. A discourse that echoes the principle of simplicity in arcade design at Housemarque mentioned earlier.
Selene, Housemarque’s avatar
With all this in mind, we understand that Selene represents Housemarque in the pursuit of its dream of commercial success. A stellar dream culminating in the crash on Atropos.
Considered as an avatar, Selene combines three representations: she is a near-perfect copy of her mother, Theia, but with two well-known attributes of the god Helios: she has golden hair and a heterochromia that echoes his moniker: the eye of the world. Her spacesuit, meanwhile, evokes the image of the astronaut.
The blending of these three elements produces an image of Selene that isn’t necessarily accurate with the character she’s playing, but it helps with tackling all the game’s concepts and narrative arcs. It mythologizes the character, but more on that later.
This avatar brings three concepts to life:
- The inevitable weight of filiation (Théïa).
- The inseparable “arcade” genre declared dead (Helios).
- The ambition to reach new horizons (the astronaut).
This design echoes fabulous chimeras (griffins, sphinxes, etc.) and allows Returnal to play on the dichotomy between reality and fiction, in such a way as to never be able to make a definitive statement. Indeed, Returnal is built like a neo-myth, but we’ll go into these notions in greater detail later.
It also integrates the inner selves of Helios and Theia into Selene’s journey. Everything is true, taken from the drama of this family, and yet nothing truly is, because it is recombined and mythologized.
This places the player in the position of a guide, a therapist even, who will encourage the avatar to slowly unravel the threads of his story. Playing becomes a liberating act for Selene and Housemarque. Both seeking a way out of their nightmares through iteration.
Ascent and descent
The game takes place in three acts, and we can now offer two ways of reading it as a whole. Let’s start with the first two acts.
The first is when the studio declares that the arcade is dead. This is instant zero for the studio and Selene. Indeed, in the story, it’s the very moment of the car and spaceship crash.
From there, our avatar starts searching for the “white shadow” broadcast signal. The astronaut is the source at the top of the antenna, so Selene begins to trail him. But as we saw earlier, this white shadow is also the moon’s glow through the surface.
Thus, Act 1 takes the form of an ascent to the top of the abandoned citadel, echoing Selene’s ascent from the bottom of the river. Both are following the white shadow.
After her accident, Selene looks for this signal in the same way that Housemarque looks for a way out of his problem. And this process is iterative. The studio gradually calibrates its design through creative loops of additions, deletions and adjustments. In the same way, Selene methodically discovers her own story, trapped in the heart of a temporal cycle.
In the heat of the accident’s chaos, their first common reflex was to move away from the arcade, from Helios, to get a breath of air. To survive.
The ascent to the white shadow is therefore the path that is supposed to lead Housemarque to the realm of AAA. And in parallel, it promises to lead Selene to her mother’s dream: to become an astronaut by surviving the crash and abandoning Helios to his fate.
This desire to free herself from her maternal status is directly reflected in the game’s health system. In ancient times, the absorption of Silphium was known to act as a contraceptive. This is how our avatar repairs her “integrity”, and it connects with the idea of Selene/Theïa being cut off from her dreams by her status as a mother.
This ascent sounds like a macabre and unhealthy liberation. A sequence of events that echoes Théïa’s accident, which cost the life of Alex.
That’s why the escape from Atropos turns out to be nothing but an illusion. That of a dreamed, peaceful life, built on the corpse of a child abandoned to his fate. Our avatar’s death of old age is not a way out. Selene, like the studio, will have to understand why pursuing the astronaut ultimately sends her back to this cursed planet.
The second act is therefore, conversely, a dive into oneself. A form of introspection. The vision is clearer now that the astronaut has disappeared.
Our avatar/studio will have to project herself into the past to trace the origin of the problem. In reality, in this temporal frame, the astronaut hasn’t really disappeared. He simply hasn’t yet had time to form in Selene’s psyche.
The quest thus shifts from an ascent into a descent to the depths of Atropos. A dive into a repressed universe: the aquatic dreams of Helios. In other words, it’s symbolically a return to the arcade and a descent to Helios, trapped in the vehicle.
It’s in the depths of this space that Selene meets Xaos. A form of primordial divinity akin to the Greek Chaos, but whose appearance has fused with Octo. We’ll come back to the mythological elements later.
We can see, however, that its design takes that of a machine from Nex Machina (below) and mixes it with the Octo plush, forming a “Lovecraftian” cosmic entity.
As such, Xaos is a chimera built in a similar way to Selene, the avatar. He is the cosmic entity that will connect Housemarque to the Nex Machina arcade genre and Selene to Helios (as Octo does).
In the depths of this abyssal scar, the blood of a god flows (Ichor). Helios awaits his ascension, locked away.
Reignite the sun
The end of the second act is a revelation. But before that happens, the attentive player will have had the opportunity to notice a new break in the fourth wall.
Returnal’s HUD is, in fact, based on the systems of the ship Helios. It is the only unchanging point in the game that tracks our progress. It transcends intra-diegetic space-time, synchronizing with that of our own reality.
The tasks we obtain during our adventure evolve naturally through iteration and the achievement of objectives. What a surprise, then, to come across this during our final battle:
The HUD reveals itself as a conscious entity. A guide with a purpose of its own. Helios is calling us, and as you may have guessed, he’s looking for Selene to free him from the car. This is the aim of this third act: a quest to “reignite the sun”, to free the arcade genre from its foretold death.
The sun is fixed. I have to take it home.
Sélène – Returnal
But all this raises questions about the nature of the journey. If Helios addresses us through the interface, then perhaps it’s closer to the player than to the universe in which Selene evolves. Helios needs US to set him free. It’s a leap of faith on the part of the studio, expressed through the game’s interface.
It’s the players who will keep the arcade alive, or let it rest in peace, in this ultimate coup d’éclat that is Returnal.
Dead Chronos waits dreaming
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
William Blake – Auguries of Innocence
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
In this way, Atropos becomes a planet outside space and time. The whole game is just one big minute in Selene’s real life. A timeline that stretches from the moment of the crash to the moment of dilemma between her quest for the surface and her quest to save her son.
- The game’s first ending thus represents the moment when Selene comes to her senses in the midst of a chaotic situation: the white shadow, the music, the crash, the surface quest. The sequence ends halfway through, when a shadow catches up with Selene.
- The second is to remember Helios and fight the weight of the astronaut’s gaze (Theia). She must become aware of her son’s presence in the car, and avoid reproducing her mother’s pattern. Indeed, the second ending puts Selene in the astronaut’s position. She is the cause of her own accident. In her solitary ascent, Selene has become Theia, and this realization leads her to reproduce the cycle. To return to the surface alone to live out her dreams is to kill Helios and kill Alex a second time.
The ending is open to interpretation. Does she rescue Helios? Is it too late? I think the game deliberately doesn’t answer that question. Atropos is a liminal space where Selene and Helios are between life and death. In a way, they’re like Schrödinger’s cat.
The purpose of this space is to lead our avatar towards awareness. There is no real beginning, nor any real end. Selene and Helios are locked inside a self-generating cycle. But this is precisely where the interest lies, as we’ll see later.
The game aims to show that hope can be born, even when trapped in this never-ending time capsule.
On the other hand, the whole game is also an introspection into Selene’s psyche and what determines her decision-making process. Each of the biomes, each of the bosses, each of the objects or creatures is made up of key elements from her life.
It may only last a minute for the real Selene, but it’s her entire existence that we’re unravelling on Atropos. Biome by biome. With the aim of purging her decision-making process of the parasites that life has implanted in her. The death of her twin brother, the departure of her father, the weight of a broken mother imposing her dreams on her, the distance induced by a child in love with the depths of the sea while she suffers from thalassophobia and nurtures stellar ambitions, …
In this way, the game is an eternity.
Returnal’s time is thus dilated, cut into cycles and recomposed fragments. All this is like a dream, but it also exists. For in the end, we are faced with a video game fiction that is both sensitive and immaterial. A work that takes the form of a neo-myth.
Returnal as a neo-myth
If Atropos exists without existing, it’s because Returnal’s story is written like a myth. A story featuring gods and heroes not merely for entertainment, but as a vehicle for symbols, values and philosophical thoughts. A story intended to be passed on, modulated, transformed, …
Myth is a model of the order of the world; it allows man to discover his place in the universe and to face the contradictions of his existence.
Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return
More precisely, Returnal takes the form of a neo-myth. A myth taking refuge in a modern medium. An adaptation to today’s social codes that allows a traditional tale to survive the test of time.
For example, the game takes up the myth of Sisyphus, whose boulder is none other than Selene for the player. With each death, the cycle starts anew, and the player must “push his rock” again. The game discusses the absurdity of such a task, in the same way as the original myth.
Through this parallel, he can discuss the family division that work addiction can generate, the reproductive cycle of parent/child relationships, or nihilism and its possible outcomes.
This theme of work-life balance is strongly reflected in the values of Studio Housemarque. This quality of life, both at work and outside, offers them unique opportunities. The example of Sami Hakala, Development Director, is proof of this. He is a member of a music group, which enabled him to write the main theme for Nex Machina, composed by Ari Pulkkinen. By combining creativity and day-to-day work, Housemarque is a studio that seeks to juggle Order and Chaos.
Now back to the topic. By playing out the myth of Sisyphus, Returnal confronts the player with the absurdity of the world and of life. Through this experience, it can communicate the way in which hope or happiness can actually emerge from such a task.
I cannot atone, so I accept.
Sélène – AST-AL-066: The Truth Lying
When I laid on the side of the road dying, I understood the truth: this is my home.
The sense of belonging I was searching for… is here.
This is my place in the stars.
I will stay here now.
As you will.
The game thus evokes Albert Camus’s Sisyphus, who, by accepting the context, is able to transcend his condition. Not through a search for escape, but through direct confrontation with his eternal task. Embracing his fate becomes a revolt of existence in the face of the absurd. A liberating realization.
Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
Albert Camus – Le Mythe de Sisyphe
So we see how Returnal raises modern social issues through its neo-myth. But we can also see how this reinterpretation allows the studio to discuss its creative situation at the same time.
Like Sisyphus, the studio rushed into a quest for immortality, declaring the death of the arcade in favor of a Battle Royale dream. A dream I don’t necessarily interpret as theirs, but rather as the meeting of an era and a necessity. And like Sisyphus, they were punished for it with the failure of Stormdivers. There’s no self-satisfaction on my part in saying this; a studio has to move on and select projects to survive. It’s a difficult time for the teams who invest in and cherish these projects.
Returnal is an acceptance of this reality. And finally, this is how the studio landed on Atropos, Housemarque’s Tartarus. A place where they have no choice but to bring together two rather distant philosophies: the playful spirit of the arcade and the formal constraints of a triple-A narrative. Helios and the astronaut.
A cultural mosaic
Neo-myth means the insertion of modern references. Within the house, the narrative sequences, we can find a significant number of books on mythology or science fiction. These are the building blocks of the story, in order to understand the Vassos family, but they also serve as material for the game’s other key element: the creation of this world.
Earlier, we mentioned the game’s design, which is based on the idea of the fabulous chimera. An assemblage of different elements forming a new entity. Atropos and its creatures also follow this rule. Everything, absolutely everything, is rooted in what we can find in the house.
To give just a few examples, we can draw parallels with Selene’s reading about the heroes of Greek mythology (Perseus, Theseus, Hercules, etc.).These heroes, who obtain magical objects that help them defy the gods, will find an echo in Selene and the technological tools she gathers from the corpses of the “Sentients”.
A parallel can be drawn between reading about Thalassophobia and the bioluminescent design of monsters. There’s a connection between the weapons and the various science-fiction books in the home’s bookcases. There is a connection between the pills on the hall cabinet and the Sylphium repairing our integrity.
The list is not exhaustive, and I’m convinced that it all has its roots in this house. But above all, the focal point of all this lies in the book Ichor Orbital Terminus.
It’s a book we’re given to read two or three times, and it’s a surprising one. Indeed, the book’s excerpts seem to foreshadow the events that occur in some of Selene’s narrative sequences. And yet, these lines evoke the romantic narrative of Tali Acheron, a “necro-physicist” by profession.
We also find echoes of this book in the datalog entries. Helios maintains a data bank that grows as the player uses items or encounters monsters. Each entry contains three levels of data, so patience is required to unlock them. Until the next level is reached, Helios informs us that more data is required to continue his analysis. The data contains a wealth of useful information about the object’s function, its material, how it works and how Selene reacts to it.
What a surprise, then, to find that absolutely every third entry is actually an extract from the book Ichor Orbital Terminus? This means that every object, weapon or relic, once analyzed in depth, finds an attachment to this literary fiction. It’s as if these elements, once fully deciphered, reveal a hidden reality about their nature.
The conclusion is unexpected. Atropos is a video game representation structured around an intra diegetic literary fiction, itself complemented by the other readings, films or games present in the Vassos house.
The universe of the game is thus formed by everything that made up the life of this family. A universe created as a random assembly of all the substance that formed their lives.
Xaos, Chronos, Hélios and Selene
Like any other myth, Returnal uses figures symbolizing creative forces. This neo-myth thus incorporates its own deities. But since we’re going to talk about genesis, we first need to understand what is generated in the technical term.
As a game based on “runs”, Returnal follows in the prolific footsteps of the “roguelite” genre. A modern blend of “rogue like” elements and those of another genre. It generally features a random layout of levels, combined with permanent death ( with various bonuses allowing a form of progression).
Returnal uses procedural generation to create its environments. Each “run” is different in terms of space layout. The game draws from a set of rooms, enemies, weapons and objects, which it arranges randomly until the character dies. The next cycle generates a new configuration, and so on.
We’ve already mentioned Xaos, inspired by the Greek Chaos. A formless, chaotic, primordial mass from which the entire universe emerges. By analogy, Xaos can be assimilated to this set of assets available before their organization. A cosmic entity containing all that exists prior to its existence. He is also represented in the form of an octopus, Octo, since he is the link between Helios and Selene. A guardian for him, a nightmare for her. He is the source of matter that Helios uses to generate Atropos, the space that is required for Selene’s realizations.
Helios is the solar god of the Greek pantheon. But it would be simplistic to consider him solely as a lighting god. Helios is, in fact, associated with a form of creation power. He is the light that brings life in a cyclical process that enables order to emerge from chaos. He transforms formlessness into structure. It is the one that generates the world of Returnal with each cycle. This power of creation therefore aligns very well with what it represents: the playful, creative spirit. Like a child assembling Lego to build a playground.
As one of his main attributes is to observe the world (his nickname is the Eye of Zeus), he guides the player towards him through the HUD, following his progress, or perhaps it’s Xaos (Octo) given his linking function?
Selene is the lunar goddess. In other words, she is a reflection of sunlight, which she “transmits in her absence”. She exists only in the space between chaos and order. Selene therefore symbolizes the reconciliation of opposing forces (which is reflected in her design). Between Helios and the astronaut, between interactivity and linearity, between arcade and triple A. It’s an image for Housemarque.
Finally comes Chronos, god of time. All creation is shaped by time, but Atropos seems to be governed by a time that turns in circle. “Chronos is dead” can be read in various documents in the database. He is an organizing god in the Orphic tradition (which seems to be an important breeding ground for the game’s mythological references).
Selene regularly feels a gaze weighing down on her.
I remember, while crossing the desert, I used to feel shadows watching me.
Sélène – AST-AL-050: Primordial Forces
Could they have been manipulating me instead?
Not passive watchers.
Active participants.
Chronos.
Xaos.
What controls them?
Who are they?
Am I being manipulated now?
If that’s the case… why do I feel like I want to continue?
Once again, the screen shatters and Selene perceives her avatar condition. If Xaos is the Studio’s interface, providing assets for the procedural system, narrative elements and so on, then Chronos is the player’s interface for controlling Selene. In a video game, time is managed by the player. The player decides what to do and when to do it. We call this player agency.
Chronos can control and organize time, transcend cycles, generate temporal rifts and link other versions of Selene. He is the image of a player organizing his avatar’s journey until the Atropos moirai cuts the thread of his life and destiny.
In this way, two cosmic forces from Returnal’s pantheon can be used to illustrate the very nature of video games and embody their core actors. Certainly, it’s a medium that takes the form of a co-construction between a player and a studio. Nothing exists without one or the other, and their joint actions form the work of art.
Videogames are, in part, theater, and the player is his own audience! That’s why gameplay is an inner performance that is transmitted outwards. “Game” and ‘Play’. A game is played the way an actor plays a role in a play. The difference is that our performance is translated through inputs on a controller. So it requires a play and a role, an author and an actor, chaos and order (in the sense of Greek mythology).
But let’s close this parenthesis. Each work produced in this way is accompanied by a subjective reading that will contribute to the mythization of the game as it is transmitted orally or on the Internet. In this way, Returnal fully embraces the non-definitive, evolving nature of myth.
Or rather its neo-myth, for Returnal is fully aware that it is a video game.
Insert command: cataclysm.bat
Ship Log #18: Final Application (Variant 2)
WARNING: THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?
SELENE: Yes
…
[LOGIC BLOCK ACTIVATED: USER CANNOT PROCEED #XAOS IS WATCHING]
Insert command: override logic block /all
SPHINX-v.836: « If there is no end of the world, how can the world end? »
Insert command: There was an end. The gods died. No one remembers them. They are stories. Zeus faded away. Hera faded away. They all faded away, as do we. There will come another to tell our stories, but that is what we will have become at that point: stories. I’m sorry. I am so, so very sorry. But I will remember for you, even if you cannot. Do you submit?
SELENE: Yes
…
[LOGIC BLOCK OVERRIDE: USER CAN PROCEED #CHRONOS IS BLIND]
SPHINX-v.837: « And She will wipe every tear away from his eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. »
HELIOS: Will the second things be beautiful too?
…
Insert command: /enact prophecy
/format all
« Returnal »
To conclude, with all this in mind, the question now is what really returns in Returnal. And the easy answer is obviously Selene, performing cycles, reproducing family patterns. Returnal thus evokes the memetics at the heart of our social relationships, which we unconsciously accept and reproduce.
But in my opinion, this answer is too easy and incomplete. If Selene is coming back, it’s because what’s really coming back is the Housemarque studio, after targeting a market far removed from the arcade that made them such a success.
What’s making a comeback, then, is the arcade spirit that was almost swallowed up, and which the studio will now have to keep ablaze in the triple-A sphere.
An arcade spirit inherited directly from Nex Machina (2017). The similarities are striking. The patterns, the bosses, certain secondary weapons, the dash, the sword, certain robotic enemies, …
In fact, even the sequence of biomes is reminiscent of Returnal:
But we can also find connections to Alienation (2016), Resogun (2013) and Outland (2011).
These include symbols from Outland, such as the Sisters of Chaos, one of whom controls the light of the sun and the other the darkness of the moon. A taste for immense, mysterious statues.
Returnal is a work of return that combines a multitude of symbols, themes, myths, games and books. It’s a fiction made of assembled fictions. A mosaic that speaks as much of the Vassos family as it does of current issues, the studio that conceived them, and the creative process that brought it to where it is today.
Atropos is a symbol of the liminal space within which Housemarque is now forced to push its rock. Between its arcade heritage and an industry-leading level of production.
The game director is transparent with this reading, signing many of his posts with a direct reference to it. As here with “the spirit of Helios lives on”.
With Returnal, Harry Krueger and Housemarque have entered the small circle of my favorite game designers.
And if this work offers such a level of artistic coherence, with so many possible readings, it augurs an equally interesting next step. SAROS seems to have been inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ short story collection The King in Yellow.
A collection that evokes the arrival of a cursed play that brings about a radical change in the perception of reality. This work poses art as a threat to the established order, which is why its description is that of madness. The King in Yellow thus symbolizes the idea of a radical social revolution by the dominated over the dominant, propagated through art.
Is it possible, then, that SAROS, a term defining a period between two eclipses, evokes its own relationship with Returnal? The passage of the moon in front of the sun as a metaphor for a Returnal occulting SAROS. A quest to break free from the previous game, to assert an identity.
Returnal is a cultural revolution for the Finnish studio, an event that has radically transformed its reality, as we’ve seen throughout this article.
Only time will tell.
But if you’re reading this, you’re stuck here too.
Laisser un commentaire