Remnant 2 Game Director Would Love A Survival-Like Mode After Second DLC

Adams: For whatever reason, we naturally gravitated to Losomn. I don’t think there was any discussion of doing one of the other worlds. I think the One True King storyline was a story we wanted to continue, so we built the DLC around that.

Adams: When we started the first Remnant game, Remnant: From the Ashes, I can’t say that we definitively set out to create a ‘Soulslike’ game. There are a lot of aspects to Remnant that don’t really fit that description: you don’t lose anything when you die, the world is randomly generated, etc. I can say, however, that there are aspects of Souls games that we really enjoyed as gamers and one of those was fair but challenging combat. From that point of view, we did want to create a game that presented a fair and compelling challenge to the players.

As for what we learned from Remnant 1 – that’s a tough question. We learned quite a few things. A lot of the things we learned were small: little tweaks here, improvements there, etc. I can’t say there was any one major thing, but more a plethora of little things we wanted to tweak/address with the sequel.

Adams: Losomn started with the fact that I personally love the Victorian era. I’ve always wanted to make a game set in that period, and since Remnant can be ‘anywhere anytime,’ it seemed like a good opportunity to work it in. A lot of people point out Bloodborne for inspiration, but honestly, at the time, it didn’t even cross my mind. I just sat down and said, ‘What would a Victorian-era setting be like in the Remnant universe?’ and went from there. 

Yaesha was originally inspired by Pan’s Labyrinth, hence the ‘faun-like’ creatures of the Pan. But obviously, it strayed quite a bit from there into more fantasy Mayan/Incan ziggurat-type stuff.

Nerud probably had the most direct influence in that we are huge fans of Aliens, Prometheus, and Event Horizon – horror sci-fi in general. I think you will see a lot of that influence in the design of that world.

Adams: We do plan to expand the existing worlds through DLC, but that doesn’t mean that’s all we are planning to do. Beyond that, I can’t say much other than that we will let you know if we have anything else to announce.

Adams: I can’t say exactly, but it won’t take too long. We’re committed to doing the three DLCs within the first year of the game’s launch, so you can sort of do the math from there.

Adams: We certainly had a bump in the number of players playing. I think the biggest advantage is increasing the awareness of the game. The Remnant franchise has sold millions of copies, but of course, there are still millions of players who have never tried Remnant. Game Pass gives a good chunk of those players a chance to try the game.

Adams: Soon.

Adams: Right now, we are focused on the second DLC we’re working on. That’s the ‘official’ answer. The ‘unofficial’ answer is we would love to explore a new game mode. Maybe not exactly like Survivor, but something that scratches the same itch. As a team, we are pretty organic in our plans for the game… for instance, the Aberration event we did in October wasn’t some master planned update; it was something we tried out that we thought would be cool, so we released it to the players for free. The short answer is: who knows? We love the game and want to keep adding stuff to give more value to our players.

Adams: I generally have a rule that the designer who implements the boss should be able to ‘Ace’ that boss, which means a no-hit run or a close-to-no-hit run. It’s generally a good barometer for difficulty. It also helps to ensure that there is a sense of mastery over the boss because if the person playing and tweaking that boss dozens of times a day can’t master the pattern, then perhaps the pattern is too complex to master.

Did we do a perfect job of this? I’m sure a few things slipped through the cracks here and there – it’s a big game – but that is our goal, yes.

Adams: Each DLC will come with its own unique items. Though, I will say our item team has their work cut out for them. Each ring, amulet, mutator, weapon, etc., in our game, is hand-crafted with its own bespoke advantages and abilities. There are no random gun drops, for instance. I think that’s really cool for the player, but it’s a lot of work coming up with all those unique ideas without them coming across as rehashes of other items. So… the answer is – yes – but hats off to the folks who have to come up with all those new item ideas.

Adams: Dang… Ok. Personally, I LOVE, LOVE the cube boss. It’s 100% fair in that if you die in that fight, you know it was your fault. There’s no randomness, no random attack that procs at an inopportune moment. Just pure pattern. I really enjoyed that fight. 

Annihilation (the final boss) really pissed me off. I was so mad fighting that guy, and I was messaging one of our principal designers the whole time complaining about it. But you know what? I beat that dude, and I felt amazing. At the end of the day, it was a really great fight, and I kind of had to go through that mental anguish of being mad at the boss first before I could really appreciate my victory. I’m sure a lot of people remember bosses like that in other games – like Ornstein and Smough – where you thought it was the worst thing in video game history while it was kicking your ass, but when you beat it, you just basked in the triumph of it. I personally tend to remember those boss fights.

Adams: It’s entirely possible I will implement some boss fights again. I tend to jump around on what I am working on. I will get into modes where I’m doing level layouts, writing up lore for new worlds, fleshing out biome storylines, setting up basic creatures, scripting the intro to the game, or implementing some new tech features. I tend to have my hand in a lot of pies, and I genuinely love working on games – boss fights included. I had started working on a few of the boss fights in Remnant 2 (Cube Boss, Many Faces) but ended up handing them off – so who knows?

Adams: This feels like a trick question. The one thing I love about Remnant is that you can go through that Crystal and end up anywhere. It’s like OG Star Trek, where they would show up at some new world, and it could be anything. I have a few ideas in mind, but since they will likely show up in future games, I can’t divulge them.

Adams: More Remnant 2! As for anything else, you will just have to stay tuned.