Housemarque’s Narrative Director Gregory Louden and Marketing Director Mikael Haveri share how Returnal gameplay will become amazing with the help of the PlayStation 5.
Louden revealed that the DualSense controller would make the gameplay so immersive that players would feel the raindrops in a particular scene. “When you crash on Atropos, you can actually feel the rain pattering on the DualSense as you walk up in first person as the rain comes down,” Louden describes.
When wearing the 3D Audio headset, Louden revealed that players would hear things like bullets flying by during combat sequences and it would feel that they are in the middle of everything. It seems this would trick your mind in thinking you were really there in the game.
“Things like the opening in the rain, as well as the 3D audio being above you? What if you could feel it?” asks Louden. “Also, as it’s Housemarque, how are we going to make the weapons feel amazing? How are we going to bring that new texture, a new sense to it? I think it all came from the game and all came from wanting to put you in this flow state.”
Haveri then adds that with the haptics, 3D audio, and the PS5’s SSD, are now clearly part of the development landscape. It would be quite a different than how they would do it in the past. They’re very much tied into the audio production side of things. The importance of quote unquote, ‘audio’, is huge now, too. You can do so much with the segment that I think has been underutilised in the past. So I think that’s the biggest learning, invest in your audio team. And they will shine with this platform.”
Haptics and 3D audio will definitely make a huge difference in gameplay immersion this time around.
Returnal launches on PS5 this coming April 30.
Interview source: Gaming Bible