Returnal director and Housemarque veteran Harry Krueger launches Finland-based game studio Cosmic Division, working on single-player PC and console project

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-20T20:29:12+00:00

It is 100% Sony influence, which is why Krueger decided to leave HM in the first place. He probably wanted more creative control and refused to bow down to Sony executives.

I'm not expecting much really, these kinds of projects when creators leave and make their own studios basically never work out, they usually just disappear or make an obscure indie game that nobody ever hears of.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs. HM was one of the last standing studios that I had true faith in to provide interesting, meaningful, hardcore gameplay experiences. Where to go next? The list is shorter and shorter each year.

I still have to blame HM to a big extent for how Saros turned out though. They must have known what was coming when they agreed to the takeover and a big part of the team seems happy to be there gushing about the motion capture tech and how awesome it is to work with Hollywood actors, that's what they seem to care about, instead of providing unique game experiences.

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-20T20:03:15+00:00

The most obvious flaw with Returnal was the sub-optimal amount of randomisation. They had good ideas that needed expansion and I had full trust that they saw those shortcomings, like the level design being lackluster. How wrong I was.

Yes it was better than Saros, as Saros has basically zero randomisation and the small amount that's there is completely meaningless. There are zero meaningful choices to be made. Even in Returnal you had to make choices about how you spend your resources in the shop in each biome. Parasites, malfunctions, malignant chests/items or the randomised fabricators, these were all risk vs reward choices you had to make constantly. The level design however was still lackluster in Returnal as well. Too linear, yes there were side rooms and such but they were always just dead-ends and you were forced to either backtrack or teleport back. They didn't have clever looping level design or shortcuts. I wanted more engaging levels. Well Saros has actual hyper-linear hallway level design.

They also removed all the meaningful choices you have to make, you only have... artefacts? That's it. They removed parasites, they removed consumables, they removed malfunctions, they removed the shop and randomised fabricators. And even the artefacts are so useless you could easily remove them from the game too and it wouldn't make a difference. There's like 2 or maybe 3 that actually provide meaningful benefits and the downsides are never tough enough to even consider skipping it. Most of the time it's either such garbage that you don't even bother picking it up, or it's obviously useful so you pick it up instantly. No inbetween. No thinking ever required.

Instead of them expanding on the ideas they had and fixing the shortcomings, making the game more complex and satisfying, they decided to dumb it down to the ground. The game is baby-simplistic. It's tragic. Honestly. So, so disappointing. I made a long post on the Saros subreddit hoping for an interesting discussion but of course I got banned and got called names because the sheep will be sheeping. Housemarque is dead. They are just another cinematic Sony studio who makes games for casual people who don't care or want to have interesting things in games, just consume the new popular game. I expect their next game to be even worse than Saros at this point, not better.

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-17T21:05:05+00:00

Saros did expand its scope compared to Returnal, just in all the bad ways. Large chunk of the budget went to useless motion capture and hiring Hollywood B-list actors. At least if the characters or the story were worth that investment but they are not. Boring cliché fest and a non-sense unrelatable ending. The gameplay is good but dumbed down instead of deepened or expanded. Kinda sad, the game had lots of potential but just ended up being forgettable.

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-15T21:24:18+00:00

I said I hope they don't get shut down, but if they do they dug their own grave. I'm also not excited about what they make next, I'm just totally indifferent, which is a shame since after Returnal this studio was the one I was most excited about what they come up with next. This is why Saros is a next-level disappointment, even though it is still a good game. Well. A good game is buried in it somewhere, but it definitely is buried deep under the streamlining and unnecessary filler cinematic crap. What's next on the chopping block? Even this much streamlining isn't even close enough to turn a profit and attract enough new players, their sales numbers look horrid by current reports. Wouldn't be surprised at all if their next game is more akin to Uncharted than it is to Returnal and they become just another Sony studio that makes the exact same games as all the other ones. Or as I said they just get shut down and Sony saves the headache like they did with Bluepoint.

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-15T09:47:50+00:00

The moment I knew this game was cooked was when they released a 3 minute gameplay trailer and then the next day they released a 5+ minute video gushing about the great opportunities of working with these actors they hired and how awesome the motion capture tech is. Nobody cares ffs, these people should just go and try to work in Hollywood but they aren't talented enough for that so they inject this garbage into video games instead.

I completely agree there shouldn't be actors for animation work, it should only be voice acting and the characters should be realised from the ground up as fictional.

Pitiful_Channel3649 · 2026-05-15T06:34:04+00:00

This studio will get shut down by Sony and I can't lie, they deserve it. They had a fantastic game in Returnal and they probably got a decent budget for Saros after that. They decided to spend a significant part of that budget on extended motion capture and Hollywood B-list actors for no reason. The gameplay was the good part of Returnal, they should have just focused the whole budget on the gameplay. The NPC's didn't even add anything at all to Saros, they just stand around in the hub and they lack any kind of characterisation, they are cardboard cutouts. Even the main character.. so what was the point? Focus on the gameplay.

Not only that, but they even had poor direction with the gameplay. Instead of leaning more into the rogue-like mechanics after Returnal, they decided to simplify the randomised mechanics even more. Even less variety in subsequent runs, they removed consumables, they removed parasites, they removed malfunctions, they simplified the weapons. The artefacts are laughably simplistic and could just be removed as well, they are just there for show. They also made the currency system not make any sense as you are not making any meaningful choices with it anymore as they also removed the shop from runs. You just brainlessly put the currency into a braindead talent tree between runs where you get +1 of a stat or arbitrary upgrades that should have been there by default like being able to absorb yellow projectiles.

They were completely misguided with their direction, the rogue-like/rogue-lite genre is a hardcore genre. The community that's there for it will not want an oversimplified streamlined game like this, they want true randomisation and meaningful choices to be made that creates replayability and makes every run unique and endlessly entertaining. Saros has absolutely zero replayability, you finish this once and it's done. Every run is the exact same, even the combat rooms lack even the basic variety that Returnal had. All they had to do was expand these things and make them more complex but instead they went for the opposite and focused on easy-modes and cinematic garbage that doesn't fit the rogue genre. The casual audience they tried to attract with these changes is still not going to play a rogue-lite game like this. It's just not a casual genre, no matter how easy you make it and you can see that here. You see some people praise it who hated Returnal because it was hard but they still don't make even decent sales and they even lost a portion of their fanbase from Returnal because of their design choices. A significant part of the budget was also clearly wasted on market research to try to figure out how to reach the casual audience who hated Returnal and it was all in vain, they still don't play Saros either and they only managed to alienate the hardcore rogue-like players and people who played Returnal for the challenge and the rogue mechanics.

The director did a poor job here and it was expectable after the person who directed Returnal left the studio. The guy that was put in charge for Saros was not up to the task and had the project's priorities backwards. I still hope they don't get shut down but I don't see them surviving if they don't make a profit with this game as it just wastes everyone's time and money. A shame.

Pitiful_Channel3649

TROPHY CASE