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Housemarque and PlayStation Studios have released a new trailer & story details for upcoming shooter Returnal focusing more on the game’s story and revealing that the game will go into first-person for some sections.
Selene (voiced by Jane Perry whose voice you may recognise as also playing Diana Burnwood from the Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy) is a Greek-American ASTRA deep space scout, and as the accompanying post on the PlayStation Blog describes is “driven to a fault, intelligent and resourceful” — when she crashes on the alien planet of Atropos chasing a mysterious ‘White Shadow’ broadcast signal, she finds herself trapped in a time loop on a hostile alien planet with everything out to kill her.
As she explores Atopos, however, she eventually comes across a set of holographic statues called Xeno-archives, and upon reading (and subsequently translating) the Xenoglyph writing on them starts seeing projections of other player’s deaths which, in a neat touch, will be the deaths of other people who’ve played the game while connected online, similar to those seen in Dark Souls. After witnessing these deaths, you’ll be able to choose whether to scavenge their remains for items, or revenge their death.
Later on in the story, Selene will also come across a mysterious house that, well, obviously, shouldn’t be there. These segments will play out in first person as a break from the usual gunplay, as you explore the house as Selene and try to piece together the mystery surrounding it, and how exactly it ended up light years away in space. There’s definitely shades of games like Gone Home and even P.T. in there judging on the footage, and it offers an intriguing prospect for those wanting to get their teeth into the game’s story.
Check out the trailer for yourself below – Returnal launches exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on April 30, 2021.
