u/k36king1

(Tried to keep it spoiler free, but maybe light spoiler)

With Saros out long enough now, the discourse is already defaulting to familiar patterns, I want to make a case that the “it’s all psychological” reading of these games isn’t just wrong, it’s the exact defense mechanism the games are designed to provoke.

Let’s start with what Housemarque is actually working with. Returnal draws from Lovecraft, and Greek Mythology. Saros draws from Lovecraft, Indian Mythology, AND Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, with Carcosa lifted directly from Chambers as a place of genuine cosmic decay and madness. These are not accidental choices. The King in Yellow is a FOUNDATIONAL cosmic horror text precisely because it presents a reality that is ALIEN, CONTAGIOUS , and completely OUTSIDE human psychological frameworks. You don’t PROJECT Carcosa. You get CONSUMED by it.

The cinematic touchstones Housemarque has cited for Saros are “Sunshine” and “Event Horizon”. Event Horizon opens a literal portal to hell. The crew doesn’t hallucinate the hell dimension because they have unresolved trauma. The hell dimension is REAL and it BREAKS them. That’s the whole point.

This is what separates cosmic horror from psychological horror as a genre. Psychological horror uses the external world to externalize an internal state. Cosmic horror does the opposite. It uses a protagonist’s internal collapse as evidence that something genuinely UNKNOWABLE has made contact with them. The deterioration is a SYMPTOM , NOT A METAPHOR.

When Selene can’t distinguish the loop from reality, that’s not Housemarque telling you she’s dissociating. That’s Housemarque telling you the loop is real and human COGNITION was NEVER EQUIPPED to PROCESS it. When Arjun’s grip on what’s true starts slipping on Carcosa, that’s the eclipse doing what Chambers’ Carcosa always does. It doesn’t care about your backstory.

The reductive reading feels sophisticated because it maps onto recognizable frameworks. Grief. Trauma. Dissociation. Those are real and meaningful things. But applying them here flattens the actual horror, which is that the events ARE REAL AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE . That’s the harder thing to sit with. PSYCHOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM is a way of routing around that discomfort without realizing that’s what you’re doing.

Housemarque has now made two games built on this exact premise. That’s not ambiguity inviting interpretation. That’s a studio with a deliberate artistic philosophy that a certain reading keeps refusing to meet on its own terms.

If Xaos (Eldritch/Old One in Returnal) and Hastur (The Yellow Shore) are two sides of the same coin, they function as complementary cosmic filters. Under a unified Lovecraftian framework, they serve a singular, greater overarching entity that sits at the center of the Housemarque universe: Yog-Sototh (or a closely mirrored, unnamed supreme outer god of space-time).

The connection is mechanical. Xaos and Hastur(Yellow Shore) act as opposite psychological scissors designed to break human minds for the exact same purpose: feeding space-time loops to an ultimate cosmic entity.

Xaos (also know as Chaos) represents the past. Operates on negative emotional gravity. It traps Selene by anchoring her to her regression, guilt, and what she can’t change. It is the entity of the abyss, crushing the soul downward.

Hastur (Sentient Yellow Shore) represents the future. Operates on positive emotional gravity, desire, want, and greed. It traps the Echelon crews by anchoring them to their projection, ego, ambition, and what they desperately want and desire and It lures the soul outward and upward into madness.

An Eldritch god of infinite space-time requires both halves to completely trap humanity. If a human is too depressed to care about the future, the Yellow Shore has no power over them. If a human is entirely consumed by future ambition, Xaos's past trauma cannot hold them. Together, these two entities ensure no consciousness escapes the grand architecture.

While the Yellow Shore creates a "pull" toward a fake future, the Blue Precipice creates a "crush" within the static moment. It forces the immune to experience the terrifying magnitude of infinite space-time all at once, without the luxury of a timeline to organize it.

For the human who is too depressed to care about the future, the Precipice amplifies the immediate, raw sensory data of existence until it becomes unbearable. It turns the "now" into a cage just as heavy as any trauma or ambition.

In Returnal, Selene's deep space mission is heavily bound to lunar. In Saros it is heavily tied to the solar. We’ve all seen the developer comments teasing whether Arjun and Selene "see the same stars." But if you dig into the linguistic naming conventions, character motivations, and cosmic functions of Returnal and Saros, it becomes clear they aren't just easter eggs. They are two halves of an intentional cosmic machine and they point directly to a missing third story. Which I believe would round out a trilogy of sorts we just don’t have yet.

Housemarque uses a very specific naming formula for the characters to signal their roles.

Selene Vassos: Selene is the Greek Goddess of the Moon. Vassos is a derivative of “King” or “Sovereign”. Her name literally translates to “Moon King”.

Arjun Devraj: Arjuna is a mythical archer from the Mahabharata. His father is Devraj, which translates from Sanskrit to “King of the Gods”. Arjuns name translates to “The Solar King”.

Housemarque didn’t do this coincidentally, they didn’t just give them Mythical names, they literally twinned them. The Moon King and the Sun King. But in Lovecraftian ancient Cosmic Horror and the Alchemical lore (“The Great Work”), the Sun and Moon can’t exist in a vacuum and they are a binary system meant to feed a third central point.

So a third story would be about the present and likely be framed around “Nyarlothep” also known as “The Crawling Chaos” and/or “God of a thousand forms”. This entity bridges the two elements together in a triad. He is the orchestrator of the cycle(s).

We find text logs of Primary speaking with “unknown entity” which Primary clearly understands as another AGI of what it thinks is a Rival Corporation. Primary believed only Soltari knew of Carcosa and the entity said it was there first before Soltari. This is not meant to be one of the early Echelon missions either as it’s not another Primary. And then Primary requested of the entity for all logs and knowledge of Carcosa.

This entity is what I believe is behind the “Blue Precipice” that Nitya and others found. And Nitha used to build Constant.

One of the game Devs said “it’s up to the players to find out if Arjun and Selene see the same stars” this was not throw away. While they built Saros to stand on its own it’s clearly a shared universe. As Housemarque is using certain Lovecraftian “Old Ones” as the Eldritch Deities in both games with Xaos as the entity behind the events in Returnal that’s also named in text in the game, and Hastur (King in Yellow/Yellow Shore) from Chambers work that Lovecraft utilized in his works and expanded on.

I believe the corporation Primary believes the entity is, is Astra. He’s speaking to an Astra AGI.

If this is the rout they’re following I assume if they do a third game the Eldritch deity behind it that could utilize elements from both Returnal and Saros would be Nyarlathotep.

That Old One is one that has the ability to make itself look human and walk among human civilization and corrupt or psychologically from within. Think CEO of Soltari or Astra or another high tech corporation where he would grant them unimaginable tech that somehow is able to interface with Eldritch or Alien technology and phenomena.

Between Hyperion, Ophion, and Algos in Returnal.

Or The Priestess or Yellow King in Saros?

I say Yellow King.