Of the games released this year,Returnalis one of the most peculiar. It’s perhaps the most triple-a roguelike game to have ever existed, and one of the biggest PS5 exclusives to debut in 2021. WhileReturnalearned high marks critically, fans have been split on its brutal difficulty. Luckily, aReturnalupdate added a better save system recently, allowing players to return to their run if they put their console into rest mode. That system is now being exploited, though.
Returnal’ssuspend systemis designed to let players back wherever they left off, as runs can often tick over into multiple hours. This is still balanced because players can still die at any time when they return, kicking them all the way back to their crashed ship. The new exploit allows players to get around this and essentially use the suspend point as a full-on save point, makingReturnaleasier to beat.
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Over on Twitter, Joseph Yaden shared the exploit, detailing the step-by-step process of making it work. To start, players need to suspend their game and upload their saves to the cloud. Once a player dies, they then simply redownload the cloud save, allowing them to restart from the suspend point. That process allows players to get through each ofReturnal’s biomes with relative ease, or at least with less time invested in the process.
Yaden posted a follow-up tweet detailing his experience with the exploit in the time since he shared it. Yaden says that while some people have criticized him for not playingReturnalthe “right way,” he’s had a more enjoyable experience with it, as he wouldn’t have the time for constant resets otherwise. So far, the response to that stance seems to be mostly positive. It certainly helps that the lack of a save system was one ofReturnal’sbiggest flawsat launch.
Housemarque has been celebrated for its work onReturnal, which has a far larger scope than many of the studio’s other projects. Implementing the suspend feature was in direct response to fan feedback, a strong indicator that the developer is listening. However, howHousemarquewill respond to this exploit – which fans may have preferred as an alternative in the first place – is a mystery. A true save system is clearly something that players want, but there’s also the question of whether or not it makes the experience unbalanced. At the end of the day, though, players having fun is all that should really matter.
Returnalis available now for PS5.
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