Returnal has many secrets, some having to do with the game’s overall narrative, but many more are just references to other games or pop culture. There’s a fair number of references to the Aliens franchise, and a reference to Housemarque’s earlier game, Resogun. Over the past year, most of the game’s easter eggs have been found, but there’s at least one more left.
That’s according to senior narrative designer Eevi Korhonen, who told VGC she’s been checking in on the Returnal subreddit to see when somebody finds it.
"I’ve been stalking our subreddit, and there have been wonderful little discoveries… there is something I’m still hoping that they will discover about the Tower Sisyphus," Korhonen said. "It’s not as much of a secret, more like a nice philosophical reference to the name. But nobody has put that on Reddit yet, so I haven’t seen anyone make that connection. But hopefully, someone will maybe after this."
Returnal's mysterious narrative was a source of much debate within Housemarque during the game's development. Being a roguelite, most of Returnal's story comes in random flashes of memory, although there are longer audio logs and written notes to be found.
Korhonen described walking "a tightrope" between providing the player with story beats versus having the player community "puzzle it out."
"It’s hard to kind of see, even with all this priming, until it’s actually in the game, how is it pacing? How is it looking together with all the other elements? So up until the last moment, we’re still cutting, we’re still editing, and then tweaking the wording and making things a bit clearer," Korhonen added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Korhonen discussed the possibility of Returnal 2. "I can’t comment on that too much. But I think the boys did slip sometime earlier this year that we are working on an original IP. Of course, if we return to Selene’s story after that, remains to be seen."
So far, Returnal remains a PS5 exclusive, but a Steam database update possibly hinted at Returnal coming to PC in the near future.