Spoiler for the very first thing you see in the upcoming game Saros: It’s a bunch of words. The letters type out one by one onto the screen, spelling out some world-building that gives context to kick off the game’s story. I don’t remember what any of it said, because I was so focused on the tactile vibrations coming from the controller in my hands. There is a sharp haptic buzz for every letter, and it immediately feels very clicky-clacky. From the very beginning, Saros makes its intentions clear—this is a story you’ve got to feel.
Since the launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony’s DualSense controllers have enabled haptic feedback that developers can use to make the controller vibrate in just the right way to communicate the feel of what is happening on the screen. Maybe it’s letters typing across the screen, little patters of rainfall, or a big rumble when shooting a gun or whacking something with a melee weapon. Adaptive triggers add resistance to the main triggers, meaning the difference between feathering the trigger and pulling it all the way down is very apparent.
Saros, launching on April 30, is developed by Housemarque, a Finnish studio owned by Sony. It has been here before, when it released the highly regarded PlayStation 5 game Returnal in 2021. That game, as a launch title for the console, aimed to make use of all the new technology Sony was offering with its hardware, especially the haptic and adaptive features in the DualSense controller. Gregory Louden, the creative director at Housemarque who has helmed development on both games, says both titles came with an added bit of pressure to show off what the console could do.
“Back when we started Returnal, we almost felt a responsibility—because we were a launch window title for PlayStation 5—what can you do with this hardware?” Louden tells WIRED. “In a lot of ways, we're doing it for our players, but also doing it for the medium to try to inspire others.”
As it did with Returnal, Housemarque has developed its newest game to take full advantage of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controllers. It also uses 3D audio features to make the world feel more lively. Returnal and Saros came out on the same hardware, but Louden says it all gels even more now than ever.
“We've really pushed the graphics and pushed the hardware,“ Louden says. “We wanted to do something even better for players and really make the most of the DualSense.”
From the few hours I’ve spent with it, Saros feels quite excellent to play. It is a dark sci-fi roguelike where you mow down dozens of hostile aliens in a barrage of frenetic, tactile gameplay. The battles feel especially palpable because everything onscreen translates to what you feel in the controller. The obvious moves are replicating the feel of shooting a weapon or feeling the reverberations when the enemies’ bullets and explosives crash into your shield. But Housemarque has also deployed haptics in more careful, subtler ways, like during cinematics, where a steady haptic pulse helps make the onscreen characters’ tension and anger more visceral.
“The typical way and the easiest way is just take what you hear and make that drive the haptics,” says Matti Häkli, associate design director at Housemarque. “But we’re really pushing the experience by doing something custom there and really thinking about what is the most meaningful feedback or sense that you need in the scene.”
Louden echoes that and says it’s a way to create a much deeper emotional connection and pull audiences into the world. “It's something that only games can do,” Louden says.
The haptic features feel great in Saros. They have also been deployed effectively in other games, like Horizon: Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Astro Bot. The commonality here is that all of these games have been published by Sony and developed for the PlayStation’s first-party hardware. These are often still the edge cases, as most games are developed across platforms. Many players also use third-party controllers, which may not incorporate those features as smoothly as the official DualSense controllers do. If a developer isn’t sure that a majority of players will even be able to use those extra features, it doesn’t make sense to go hard into developing a game around them.
When asked, a Sony representative said the company couldn’t share any details about how many people opt into using the enhanced features on its DualSense controllers.
“It does kind of incentivize you to buy Sony hardware, but at the same time, the added capabilities are not really that compelling,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “They are better, but in how many instances, or how many games? The number is not high, and that is the challenge.”
Still, the developers at Housemarque are optimistic about Saros’ carefully constructed vibes, hoping it will incentivize other developers to take advantage of the DualSense controller’s capabilities.
“There have been many different kinds of gimmicks in various controllers,” Häkli says. “If we're not really utilizing these things, they will just disappear. At least we love this, so we are going to do the best possible version of this.”
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