HK: We have designed Returnal around replayability. Just like our previous games, we want it to be easy to pick up and hard to master. It should be accessible, yet deep. In many ways, we want it to be a game that, the more you play it, the more it opens up to you. As Mikael said, with permanent progression, and lots of layers to discover with the story, systems, weaponry, and the character herself — there's a lot of replay value, and that creates a lot of flexibility with how players can approach each run. That relationship people have with the difficulty will not be as rigid or intimidating as it might seem initially.
If we're getting technical, the game is more of a rogue-lite than a rogue-like; as you mentioned, it features some permanent progression. You're not going to always be starting from square one. Could you go into these a bit?
HK: After you defeat a boss, you gain access to a key that opens a passage to [the next biome]. Of course, we have a wide variety of biomes to explore. All of these milestones, they will persist across multiple sessions. That means you can carve out your own way to play over multiple runs; you can choose to take the shortcut to the next biome, or spend more time upgrading your character. You won't have a very rigid relationship with the game's challenge — it will allow you to approach it in any way you like. Combined with the variation each run provides, we feel it's going to be a world of different possibilities in every run for players.