“We Want Even More Players to Discover Who We Are”: Gregory Louden speaks to Root Nation about SAROS, Accessibility, and What Comes Next

Yesterday’s PlayStation State of Play reminded everyone what Sony’s first-party bench looks like at full strength: Marvel’s Wolverine, God of War: Laufey, Control Resonant, and a dozen other heavy hitters filling out the calendar through 2027. And yet, the game that keeps coming up whenever anyone talks about this console generation’s defining experiences isn’t something revealed last night. It launched five weeks ago, on April 30, and it currently sits at an 87 on Metacritic with a 92% critics-recommend on OpenCritic. That game is SAROS.

Housemarque’s follow-up to Returnal has done something few sequels manage: it’s made everything its predecessor did well feel even more intentional, while opening the doors to players who bounced off the original’s punishing difficulty. It’s a GOTY conversation piece that also happens to be genuinely welcoming. That tension – between challenge and accessibility, between artistic vision and commercial ambition – is exactly what we wanted to explore with Creative Director Gregory Louden.

The Shield, the Matrix, and the Decision to Be More Forgiving

Root Nation: Many players, and us included, have noticed that SAROS is not as punishing as Returnal. In Returnal, the main defense was a dash. In SAROS, the Shield and the Armour Matrix give the player a much larger safety net. Does this shift toward defensive options come from a desire to reward different playstyles, or was it a direct response to feedback that Returnal felt too ‘all or nothing’ for the average player?

Gregory Louden: For players with SAROS we wanted to add a new way to play so we introduced the shield. Another driving idea after shipping Returnal was that we wanted to make progression even more rewarding so we added the come back stronger systems including the Armour Matrix.

The reason we did this was we wanted even more players to discover Housemarque games. Our dream is that people who play SAROS and haven’t played our other games will go back and play Returnal and discover our 31 years of history.

Accessibility as a Creative Statement, Not a Concession

Root Nation: Sony has become a leader in accessibility with titles like The Last of Us and Astro Bot. In SAROS, you’ve introduced the ‘Unlimited Protection’ toggle and shorter 30-minute runs. Was this a conscious effort to move toward the more inclusive philosophy we see in those titles?

Gregory Louden: Definitely a key point that we wanted to expand into was accessibility and this had the same goal. We wanted more players to be able to discover the games that we’re building and the unlimited protection was added to allow more players to experience the game.

Mastering the PS5: From Pioneers to Veterans

Root Nation: For Returnal you were pioneers on new hardware; for SAROS you are masters of it. Does the longer lifecycle allow you to stop worrying about technical hurdles and focus purely on creative risks? Or do you feel pressure to constantly find new ‘tricks’ in the hardware to stay relevant?

Gregory Louden: Our goal at Housemarque is to push the medium so despite it being in the life-cycle of the PlayStation 5 we want to keep finding new ways to push the hardware for players. We’ve been pushing the hardware since 1995 so every game we make is about finding new ways to challenge, surprise, and elevate games for players.

Rock-Solid 60FPS: Is There Still Room to Push?

Root Nation: SAROS is visually denser than Returnal, yet it still targets a rock-solid 60FPS on the base PS5. Have you reached the ceiling of what the original 2020 hardware can do? And as a creative director – are you actually in a hurry for next generation, or does a longer cycle actually result in better, more polished games?

Gregory Louden: I feel there is definitely more we can push and definitely more we can improve the same way you saw us evolve from Returnal to SAROS. I love the new opportunities new generations bring, but the most important thing for me as a creative director is that we keep pushing the medium.

The DualSense: Housemarque’s Secret Weapon

Root Nation: Saros and Returnal are still the benchmark for DualSense implementation. When you play third-party titles and feel standard ‘old-gen’ rumble, do you see it as a missed opportunity, or do you think most developers simply don’t have the time to ‘compose’ haptics the way your audio team does? In general, do you think that the DualSense has been fully utilized by developers, especially those not from the PlayStation “family”?

Gregory Louden: We love the DualSense at Housemarque. I think there is huge uncapped potential for so many games to really bring players deeper into the experience. I hope in the future more developers can be inspired by the work we’re doing and create even more special experiences for players on PS5.

Root Nation: Players talk about your graphics and haptics constantly, but the audio team at Housemarque also deserves a lot of praise. Do you think sound design is the most overlooked element of the player experience? Does it bother you if a player completes Saros with a podcast on or with poor audio, knowing they’ve missed half of the tactical cues you’ve built?

Gregory Louden: The sound and music for SAROS is a collaboration with PlayStation’s Creative Arts and they’re an incredible partner for us in London. We have worked together on Returnal and now SAROS.

I think sound and music is something that should be innovated in games as a medium. It’s an incredibly powerful emotional tool that still has massive potential to be explored.

Storytelling Inside the Loop: Arjun vs. Selene

Root Nation: How do you maintain a consistent emotional arc for Arjun when the player might spend hours in the ‘middle’ of the story? Is it a challenge to keep the narrative stakes high when the player has become so used to the ‘reset’ that death starts to feel like a mechanical chore rather than a narrative tragedy? Is the loop mechanic limiting from a storytelling perspective, or is it an additional challenge?

Gregory Louden: For us it was really important to have a driving story that constantly pushes you forward. However we’re also okay with players having agency to explore and not follow the plot.

I would say working in the loop has been really inspiring. I would also like to highlight how interesting it is that our game shape shifts so the way that every player experiences our story is actually different. Some players may find a note or audio log in different ways. Then the story is pieced together by every player.

It’s something only games can do and that’s something that I really love about the type of games we’ve built with Returnal and SAROS. There are moments where it comes together, but otherwise it’s an experience that every player can explore and understand in their own way.