Those of you hoping for save features in Returnal will have to hope a little longer as Housemarque still isn't sure on whether it wants to implement them or not.
In Housemarque's latest newsletter shared by VGC, an interview was included between Axios Gaming and Housemarque's marketing director Mikael Havari. In the interview, Havari claims that the save options issue is complicated because "there's a lot of different people looking for different things." He also explains that Housemarque doesn't quite know what its next steps are to fix the problem.
Returnal released at the end of April to critical acclaim, yet one of the most agreed-upon issues with the game was that runs are too long to not have some kind of save function. Each successful run of Returnal can last several hours, an enormous amount of time to dedicate solely to gaming for some people. Adding to the frustration is the ludicrous issue that game updates could even interrupt your run if you have your PS5 in rest mode.
This led to calls for a save system of some kind, calls which developer Housemarque acknowledged. However, just because a developer recognizes a problem for some people, it doesn't mean it's going to fix it. Like Havari mentions, some people have taken Returnal's lack of saving options as a show of skill, leading the tired, old difficulty debate to rear its ugly head once again in another round of "discourse."
For now, it seems like those of you waiting for some kind of save option in Returnal will have to wait a bit longer because it doesn't seem like Housemarque is working on one at the moment. Like Havari mentions, there's a significant number of people out there who don't mind the lack of saving options and it's possible that Housemarque might just never implement one at all and it would still retain a loyal player base.
If you are interested in Returnal, the game is currently available for PS5. Our review of the game gave Returnal 3.5 stars, praising its satisfying gunplay but warns that it's "harder than a right hook from Mike Tyson in his prime."