Returnal developer Housemarque is on record as saying it wants to dispel the notion that it is a studio that only works on small games. To that end, Marketing Director Mikael Haveri said the studio wants to make more games the size and scope of Returnal rather than some of the "arcadey" titles it work on in the past.
The PS5 exclusive which released at the end of last month is said to have some aspects of Housemarque's "bullet hell" formula of previous projects. On the other hand, Returnal has a different style and aesthetic compared to previous Housemarque games such as Resogun.
In a recent interview with Gamereactor, Haveri laid out how he thinks his studio wants to move further away from some of its smaller projects of the past. One way he suggested the team might accomplish making more games the size of Returnal is to focus on one project at a time. Previously the company has apparently usually been working on two games at once. While Haveri didn't completely rule out the idea that the company would work on two IPs at one time, he seems to prefer focusing on one at a time.
The developer thinks Housemarque has the room to change up how it works thanks to the way it established itself with Returnal. In the interview, it didn't appear he liked the idea that the company was known as only doing arcadey games. However, the marketing director went out of his way to say that doesn't mean the company is going to only do games like Returnal moving forward. It appears he and others on his team are just happy they have a larger scale title to be known for.
It also doesn't appear that Haveri, for one, wants to return to the smaller projects any time soon. When asked about what he thinks the plans for his studio is, he said it might return to things like Dead Nation or Nex Machina "26 years in the future." While he Haveri knows that his studio can work on all kinds of different things, he likes that it's focusing on projects that are larger and specifically geared to powerful consoles like the PS5.
There are even some in the gaming community who think Housemarque's work on the PS5 - and specifically the DualSense controller - could inspire other studios to build what it did and then try and take it even further. There's even been talk that the next God of War could use Returnal's innovations as a bit of a blueprint.
Returnal is available now on PlayStation 5.
Source: Gamereactor