Returnal has been reviewing and selling well in the week since launch, with gamers being impressed by the quality of Housemarque’s first AAA title. However, the unique indie game is not without its flaws, as Returnal fans have been struggling with various bugs and crashes.
The previous update for Returnal was 1.3.4, and it served as a direct response to the game’s messy 1.3.3 patch. Not only did 1.3.3 force many players to completely install the game, but it led to entire save files becoming corrupt. While update 1.3.4 fixed some of this corruption, not all saves were salvageable, forcing gamers to hope for a backup in PlayStation Plus’s cloud storage. If no copy existed, fans were out of luck, with an entirely new playthrough of Returnal required.
The May 8 patch will fix more of Returnal’s save corruption issues, with several other fixes outlined as well. It will be available at 11 AM GMT, with the first bullet point mentioned in Housemarque’s breakdown highlighting rare crashes. The update will supposedly fix several of these bugs, allowing players to have a bit less fear over their runs being lost due to a technical problem. The patch will also address the issue with pre-order costumes breaking the game’s doors and item pickups, which is great news due to just how devastating the bug could be.
Outside of the fix for Returnal’s door bug and crash solutions, the update has the vague note of fixing “incorrect healing behavior.” While the specific healing issue is not mentioned, this comment may be tied to the bed exploit. If players return to Selene’s ship, they could sleep in her bed to regain all health before continuing their run. An unintentional feature, Housemarque removed the bed healing with 1.3.3. However, with that patch’s flaws, the game was reverted to the stable state of 1.3.1 — effectively bringing back the healing exploit.
While players will no longer be able to heal this way once 1.3.5 arrives, the sacrifice may be worth it in order to avoid crashing. The patch notes also mention minor fixes as well as a solution to the game’s custom controller mapping problem. In a reply to the original notes, Housemarque reiterates that fans should keep PS5's auto-update off. With the rest mode feature being the only way to save progress on a run and take a break, downloading the update would restart the game and ruin the playthrough. As such, players should only download the patch once their run is finished, ensuring that they are completely prepared for a game restart.
Unfortunately, the patch notes mention no proper save system for Returnal, something that many have been asking for since the game released. As such, fans waiting for some kind of in-game option to end their session will need to keep holding onto the hope that a future update adds the feature.
Returnal is available now on PS5.