If you are familiar with Hades’ “God mode” option, or just their persistent level up currency between runs, I think this is the approach they are taking with Saros. They want Returnal and any potential direct Returnal sequels to maintain their difficulty and challenge, but they mentioned in their briefing they you get more and more powerful each run in Saros. They must have internal metrics on this and they have to know that many people have never finished the game. Hell, I didn’t for a long time and recently got up to just before beating Biome 6 myself (still trying to make the final push). I expect Saros to be difficult but also give players progression to ultimately finished the game compared to Returnal.