Trivia / Returnal

• Schedule Slip: Minor case; the game was originally meant to be released on March 19, 2021, but was pushed for a little over a month to April 30 to allow the team to polish the game.
• Shown Their Work: The health pickups are called Silphium, and the variant that increases maximum health is called Silphium Resin. Silphium was a now-extinct plant used as a medicine, perfume, and contraceptive in classical antiquity. The resin was the portion of the plant used for all of the above.
• Sleeper Hit: Out of all blockbuster exclusive games announced by Sony Interactive Entertainment in June 2020, Returnal gathered the most skepticism due to its title and presentation, which felt underwhelming in comparison to showstoppers such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West. Its previously comfortable March 2021 release date also slipped to April 30, an exact week before the much higher-profile Resident Evil Village. In spite of its hinderances, Returnal began to catch attention as it neared release, culminating in rave reviews and solid early sales, inclulding getting sold out in multiple markets; in the US, Returnal finished as the eighth best-selling game of April despite the limited supply of PlayStation 5 and being on market for only two days; later on, Sony even declared Returnal as a successful new intellectual property launched by the company, sharing the honor with the much more mainstream Ghost of Tsushima.
• What Could Have Been: The game was originally meant to be in similar scope and size of Housemarque's previous games; early demos and progress managed to impress Sony enough to grant Housemarque a bigger budget and turning Returnal into a blockbuster game.

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