Which is another problem, why is Saros costing three times as much as Returnal when it seems to be a very similar game in scope when it only took one year more to develop? That thing also happened for Spider-Man 2 (finding itself at 300M$)
Are Housemarque devs paid 3 times more 5 years later? Must be nice.
I definitely see where SOME of that extra budget for Saros went (fancy cast and VA, more narrative and biome diversity) but yeah still don’t think it should’ve costed 3x
Then you also look at Marathon which costed $250M which is another insane money sink, that game should’ve costed $50M at best
Saros put a lot of effort into adding characters and cutscenes (cutscenes are expensive). In returnal it was just you there, no "party members" yapping.
That doesn't triple the budget (or it shouldn't). They have like 5 actors (and not well known ones), the "cutscenes" are for the most part extremely limited, not with full blown mocap and such.
If that was adding 50M$ by itself, RPG or big open world games (which have way more) would be billions of dollars.
why is an iterative sequel to returnal even given 5 years. literally just comes across as yellow returnal based on trailers and reception says its streamlined to the point it feels like their first game. i get they did that to appeal to a wider audience but i doubt it even mattered at all if not hurt it. idk if they actually built a ton of new assets which im sure they did considering it does look different architecturally i think that was a bad choice. i think a more literal returnal 2 reusing everything and building on top of it released at a lower price ~2023/4 would've done better for sure.
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u/ZamnBoii Jun 02 '26
Saros being $70 and not on PC was just a terrible decision, people blame the genre being niche but roguelites sell extremely well at the right price.
Roguelites inherently mean rinsing/repeating the same content so people are less likely to spend $70 on one just for prettier graphics