Returnal is a roguelike third-person shooter where, much like most rogue-style games, progress isn't exclusively determined on how far a player reaches in a level but instead their character's progression. Unfortunately for most Returnal players, the balance between story progression and character progression can force players to decide whether losing progress in a specific cycle will be worth the permanent upgrades they earned during their run.
In modern rogue games, players have utilized a feature on consoles that most take for granted, which is putting their consoles or devices into rest mode. Players can cause the console to enter a low-power state whereupon waking the device, gameplay can be resumed normally from where the player left off. It is also the primary way for Returnal players to "save their progress" during a cycle, as most cycles are notoriously long to play in one sitting. However, players who rely on this function will need to be aware of PS5's auto-update ahead of tomorrow's patch.
Returnal's developer Housemarque tweeted out a "PSA" warning players who are currently in a rested cycle to turn off auto-update prior to May 5th at noon in PDT. The reason for the tweet is because of how auto-update works for PS5 owners, forcing the games to shut down completely in order to update games to their latest version. In the past, updates would be scheduled, giving players a prompt to update the game before resuming gameplay but at the cost of convenience, players in the middle of a Returnal cycle will lose their progress from the forced shut-down.
Housemarque is aware of its players' criticism involving Returnal's "unforgiving" save system after recently reposting a Reddit post about a player losing over two hours of progress and forcing themselves to reset in order to save while losing their current load-out. In the Reddit post, opinions were polarized with several Redditors disagreeing the need for a "save function" as it would diminish the integrity of a roguelike genre. Others were in agreement with the original Redditor but offered the option of save states akin to checkpoints, allowing players to continue but deleting their save state as they resume gameplay.
While opinions are currently polarized, Housemarque acknowledged the critiques and has hinted toward an alternative in preserving player's progress in Returnal. Whether or not the latest patch will address these common criticisms will be determined following tomorrow's anticipated patch and patch notes detailing the changes made in the game. Regardless of what contents the patch will provide, players who do not wish to lose their progress will once again need to be mindful of their auto-update settings until they feel ready to update their game manually.
Returned is now available on the PS5.
Source: Reddit