With Saros, Housemarque makes a case for doing next-gen games differently
With Saros, Housemarque makes a case for doing next-gen games differently
通过《Saros》，Housemarque 证明了次世代游戏可以有不同的做法
‘Realism is not interesting to pursue,’ and other lessons from the PlayStation studio. “追求写实并不有趣，”以及来自这家 PlayStation 工作室的其他经验之谈。
It is generally frowned upon to care too much about appearances. We have a lot of little aphorisms discouraging this — books and their covers, beauty being skin deep, style over substance, that sort of thing. Vanity is a risk. Should one put a disproportionate effort into how a thing looks, then said work may very well be considered shallow. But in the world of big-budget video games? That’s how you win. 人们通常不赞成过分在意表象。我们有很多格言来劝诫这一点——比如“人不可貌相”、“美貌只是皮囊”、“金玉其外，败絮其中”等等。虚荣是一种风险。如果一个人在外观上投入了不成比例的精力，那么该作品很可能会被认为是肤浅的。但在大制作电子游戏的世界里呢？这却是你获胜的关键。
Visual fidelity is video game shorthand for progress: how meticulously rendered a mountain is, how dynamically the snow behaves, how a player character raises their hands to touch a wall when the player approaches it just so. This pursuit can become absurd, as illustrated by Rockstar Games’ compulsion to animate horse testicles responding to ambient temperature in 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2. It also has very little to do with anything a player, well, does. This is where Housemarque diverges from its peers. 视觉保真度是电子游戏衡量进步的简写：山脉渲染得有多细致，雪的行为有多动态，当玩家靠近墙壁时，角色如何抬手触碰墙壁。这种追求有时会变得荒谬，正如 Rockstar Games 在 2018 年的《荒野大镖客：救赎 2》中执着于模拟马匹睾丸随环境温度变化而收缩那样。这与玩家实际的操作几乎毫无关系。而这正是 Housemarque 与同行们分道扬镳的地方。
The Finnish developer is an oddball in the PlayStation Studios roster. Acquired by Sony in 2021, the shop was known for arcade games like Super Stardust HD and Resogun, twin-stick shooters and shoot-’em-ups that leverage contemporary hardware to make their bullet hells appear more like bullet heavens, full of fireworks and lasers vibrantly rendered but in the service of games in the tradition of Asteroids or Defender. They’d be good if they didn’t look as sharp, but it’s cool that they did. 这家芬兰开发商在 PlayStation Studios 的阵容中是个异类。该工作室于 2021 年被索尼收购，此前以《Super Stardust HD》和《Resogun》等街机游戏而闻名。这些双摇杆射击游戏利用现代硬件，将“弹幕地狱”变成了“弹幕天堂”，充满了绚丽的烟花和激光，但其核心依然是《Asteroids》或《Defender》那种传统街机游戏的精髓。即使画面没那么精美，它们依然会是好游戏，但画面精美确实让它们更酷了。
Saros, the studio’s latest game, operates on a similar principle. Like Returnal, Housemarque’s 2021 PlayStation Studios debut, it’s another classic arcade-style game reimagined from the perspective of Sony labelmates like God of War or Horizon. It has an eye for dramatic genre storytelling and lavish presentation but without the obsessive pursuit of realism that can define conversation around those games. 该工作室的最新作品《Saros》也遵循类似的原则。就像 Housemarque 在 2021 年推出的 PlayStation Studios 首秀《Returnal》一样，这又是另一款以《战神》或《地平线》等索尼旗下大作视角重新构想的经典街机风格游戏。它注重戏剧性的类型叙事和华丽的呈现，但没有那种在讨论这些大作时常见的对写实主义的痴迷追求。
“To me, realism is not interesting to pursue,” says Saros lead artist Simone Silvestri. “Saros is a stylized, realistic game, which makes sure that we can bend the world to the crazy gameplay that we have. The level of detail that we want is very intentional, very controlled, so that we can make canvases for the gameplay. I think that’s why we then get a lot more leeway to fall in love with the hardware as much as we do.” “对我来说，追求写实并不有趣，”《Saros》首席美术师 Simone Silvestri 说道。“《Saros》是一款风格化但又写实的游戏，这确保了我们可以为了疯狂的游戏玩法而扭曲世界。我们想要的细节程度是非常刻意且可控的，这样我们才能为游戏玩法创造出画布。我认为这就是为什么我们有更多余地去像现在这样热爱这些硬件。”
In Saros, the player assumes the role of Arjun Devraj (performed by actor Rahul Kohli), a member of a team sent to the planet Carcosa to investigate the disappearance of mining colonists sent to harvest a miracle mineral called Lucenite. Something happened to them, and something is currently happening to Arjun, and it’s in this disorienting state that Saros begins. If the player wants to figure any of this out, first they have to learn how to play Housemarque’s dextrous, arcade-like approach to action games. 在《Saros》中，玩家扮演 Arjun Devraj（由演员 Rahul Kohli 饰演），他是被派往 Carcosa 星球调查采矿殖民者失踪事件的小组成员，这些殖民者原本是被派去开采一种名为 Lucenite 的神奇矿物。他们遭遇了不测，而 Arjun 目前也正经历着某种变故，游戏就在这种令人困惑的状态下开始了。如果玩家想要弄清这一切，首先必须学会如何驾驭 Housemarque 那种灵巧的、街机风格的动作游戏玩法。
It’s an approach that’s similar to Returnal, an alternate universe in which AAA video games are less interested in cinematic verisimilitude and more interested in escalating gameplay, engaging in an arms race for ludic athleticism. Across these two games, Housemarque posits another way of being “next-gen” and pushing the benchmark forward, one not predicated on the pursuit of photorealism but on using the whole gameplay cow, so to speak. 这种方法与《Returnal》类似，仿佛处于一个平行宇宙中：在这里，3A 级电子游戏对电影般的逼真感兴趣不大，反而更热衷于升级游戏玩法，在游戏竞技性上展开军备竞赛。通过这两款游戏，Housemarque 提出了另一种“次世代”定义和推动行业基准的方式——它不以追求照片级真实感为前提，而是充分利用游戏玩法的每一个潜力。
“The number one reference for our games are our own games,” says Saros director and co-writer Gregory Louden. “We are gonna have really special story moments for you, but they’re gonna be really rewarding. You are gonna own them, so I’m not gonna give them away for free. We’re also gonna make our cinematics about questions. The gameplay is the answer. So a lot of the time the cinematics are about setting things up or giving you questions to ask, and through the game experience, you answer them.” “我们游戏的第一参考对象就是我们自己的游戏，”《Saros》总监兼联合编剧 Gregory Louden 表示。“我们会为你准备非常特别的剧情时刻，但它们会非常有价值。这些体验将属于你，所以我不会轻易地把它们白白送出。我们还会让过场动画围绕问题展开。游戏玩法才是答案。所以很多时候，过场动画的作用是铺垫或提出问题，而你通过游戏体验来回答它们。”
In Returnal and Saros, computing power isn’t just used to craft detailed environments, but to fill the screen with orbs of different colors, to use the instantaneous load times as a way to underline each game’s dizzying cycle of death and rebirth, to overwhelm the player with impossibly swift creatures, and arm them with weapons that defy physics and give unique haptic feedback. Environments are full of writhing flora that is always in motion, sometimes waiting to ensnare the player, to embody a feeling of psychological or cosmic horror. To reflect whatever internal hell the player character — a middle-aged woman and an Indian man in Returnal and Saros, respectively, both woefully unusual in the world of video game protagonists — is trapped in. 在《Returnal》和《Saros》中，计算能力不仅用于构建精细的环境，还用于在屏幕上填满各种颜色的光球，利用瞬时加载时间来强调游戏中令人眩晕的死亡与重生循环，用极其迅捷的生物让玩家应接不暇，并为他们配备违背物理定律且具有独特触觉反馈的武器。环境充满了不断蠕动的植物，它们时刻处于运动中，有时等待着诱捕玩家，以体现一种心理或宇宙恐怖感。这反映了角色所陷入的内心炼狱——《Returnal》中的中年女性和《Saros》中的印度男性，这两者在电子游戏主角的世界中都极其罕见。
This is also the Housemarque philosophy: Visual fidelity actually has very little to do with the immersiveness that many games doggedly pursue via graphical prowess. “Immersion does not come from realism,” Silvestri says. “It comes from the believability of the sensations and the feelings that you have in the moment.” 这也是 Housemarque 的哲学：视觉保真度实际上与许多游戏通过图形能力顽强追求的“沉浸感”关系甚微。“沉浸感并非来自写实，”Silvestri 说。“它来自你当下所感受到的感官和情绪的可信度。”
This aligns with Louden’s goal of kinetic storytelling that doesn’t start with the melodrama of the typical video game cutscene. Housemarque’s PlayStation Studios-era games aim to get you thinking about the characters you embody through playing as them, but the trap of being a “gameplay-first” studio (as Housemarque describes itself) is that players may only consider that gameplay, and not its narrative implications. Saros and Returnal each have a couple deft tricks for confronting this, each asking the player to make devil’s bargains as they work their way through the live-die-repeat of a run. 这与 Louden 的目标一致，即通过动态叙事，而不是从典型电子游戏过场动画的煽情桥段开始。Housemarque 在 PlayStation Studios 时期的游戏旨在让你通过扮演角色来思考他们，但作为一家“玩法至上”的工作室（Housemarque 对自己的定位），其陷阱在于玩家可能只关注玩法，而忽略了叙事内涵。《Saros》和《Returnal》都用了一些巧妙的技巧来应对这一点，要求玩家在“生-死-重复”的循环过程中做出艰难的抉择。