In Returnal, players will start their endless adventure in the Overgrown Ruins, but once they manage to conquer that area and beat the first boss, Phrike, the world becomes a lot bigger. A teleporter in the ruins takes players to a new biome, the Crimson Wastes, and creates a lot of questions about what else the game might have in store for players. Each of these biomes is distinct from the others, with new enemy types, environmental hazards, and rewards to be found, so players are encouraged to explore them all. What's more, there is also a challenging boss at the end of most of these biomes.
In order to uncover the truth of what's really happening on Atropos, players will need to explore each of these biomes and defeat the bosses of each one. Returnal's story focuses on a time loop that will keep players coming back over and over, but certain progress can be saved between runs, including the portals that lead to new biomes.
In total there are six biomes in Returnal and five bosses, but it's a little more complicated than that. Players will start off in the Overgrown Ruins and then head to the Crimson Wastes before finally ending the first portion of their journey in the Citadel. After reaching Act 2, the player unlocks three more biomes, called the Echoing Ruins, the Fractured Wastes, and the Abyssal Scar. Astute players may notice a similarity in the names of the first, second, fourth, and fifth biomes, and there's a good reason for that.
Without getting into story spoilers, the Echoing Ruins are essentially a reskin of the Overgrown Ruins area. The enemies here are much tougher than before and players will run into more end game content, but visually things are mostly the same. On the bright side, it does have a unique boss. Likewise, the Fractured Wastes is very similar to the Crimson Wastes area, with aesthetic changes being the main difference. Surprisingly, this area is completely without a boss, but the standard enemies are harder to accommodate for that. By contrast, both the Citadel and the Abyssal Fracture areas are completely unique.
Given the game's notorious difficulty and its unforgiving save system, it will likely take players a while to get through all six of these areas. The procedurally generated nature of the levels helps to ensure that things never feel stale, so even though the Overgrown Ruins and the Echoing Ruins are very similar, they will still feel different enough.
Returnal is available now on PS5.