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Remnant 2is one of the best games I’ve played this year.
Kicking things off, we introduced ourselves and then dove straight into it.
John Wick 4 has come to life
Disclaimer:This interview has been edited for grammar and clarity.
So, it’s gonna be one of the new shotguns in the DLC.
So, we’re… just gonna do a little casual demo showcasing the shotgun here."
John Wick 4 has come to life
In fact, that’s interesting.
you could customize it, right?
It comes with its own [ability].
Taken during my DLC playthrough, this chaos is caused by the Ritualist’s second ability, Miasma.
It still has a slot.
It’s what we consider a standard weapon: it can get its modifier/mutator.
So if you know Enigma, somebody played 300 hours, you know of Enigma, right?
A screenshot of an Impaler during my playthrough. These enemies are a pain when grouped, but survivable solo.
It’s a special gun that applies Overload, shock, and things like that.
So, this is actually a standard gun.
And so I don’t know if you have seen John Wick before?"
There is no angelic nature to be found here
“Of course!”
“You’ve seen John Wick 4, you know the Dragon’s breath.
This is inspired by that.
The boss weapon on display is similar to the Abyssal. A large anchor-like weapon that devastates enemies with a massive 505 damage burst when upgraded.
This is our old-timey Dragon’s breath…
The idea is it’s a shotgun extremely, extremely short range like the fall-off range.
It’s really nothing, right?
The ritualist uses magic to damage enemies while taking advantage of those with a status effect.
It’s kind of like that John Wick gun.
Like I said, it’s basically a John Wick gun in our old-timey setting here.
Of course, it’s Dran-themed.
The feeling of being hunted by a slow-walking witch in a town that’s on fire is somewhat unnerving, to say the least. Mimicking the pain and suffering throughout the DLC entry.
It’s lever action.
Instead of, you know, pump or anything.
Like that or automatic.
The one shot build that broke Borderlands 3.
“The burning that it applies is actually very small.
The burning is not meant to be some huge damage amount that some other weapons do.
It’s really just to apply a status to an enemy and represent that the bullets are super hot.
The return to Losmon is highlighted by a giant castle that decided to teleport onto the coastline.
So you get that really short 3-second burn.
you could increase that, you could increase the damage.
But with this DLC, it’s also coming.
Nimue makes a return, but as a prisoner
You know, we’ve already announced it as the Ritualist archetype who is very status-oriented.
“I made the connection with the status effect.
I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, that will be awesome for the Ritualist.'”
They’re in pain for a while.
In fact, it might be the only one.”
Ben"We’ll come in here.
The Regrowth armor set bonus from the original Remnant
We’ll check this out.
We have a little event popping off here.
And this is just a drama preacher, and he’s spouting nonsense.
He knows that I am not a Dran.
So he sets all these people against me here.
We’re just going to start blowing these guys up.
So it puts them on fire so that little bit will kill them.
It’s not a huge amount, but this thing hits really hard, right?
OK, let me let me get these guys out of the way here cause it gets dangerous.
It did like 2 pixels of damage to that guy.
But out here, let’s go.
It’s nothing; I can just breathe on the guy to do that 30 damage.’
And many of them lean into that status-punch in stuff.
[Ben then approaches a large weapon-wielding maniac.]
“This guy’s mad that he got kicked out of Resident Evil 4.
But that’s OK; we wear inspiration on our sleeve.
But it’s also going to hit everybody around them.
you’re free to also level up the gun, which is going to increase said damage.
[Turning the camera, we’re met with the Awakened King’s castle sitting on the coastline.]
“Pretty cool view here.
Anybody that’s in my way is getting taken out.'”
“It’s a really fun gun to play.
It’s funny because it turned into a dev favorite almost immediately.
It’s like everybody likes shotguns.
“I ran the double barrel as my secondary for a long time.
So, agreed!”
[Ben then approaches a bare-chested man, standing a few feet taller than the player.
Fashioning two long spears in either hand.]
“Oh, man.
It’s a really awesome gun.
So yeah, I mean typical remnant fashion.
it’s possible for you to go many different ways, right?
Maybe pain, that might be a reward, but we’ll see.
So this is one of our new elites here.
He’s just an Impaler by himself.
He’s not all that scary, right?
He’s just a melee-based guy.
He’s kind of aggressive, and he hops around.
He just does melee stuff by himself.
Splashing in fashion to the ground in front of the player.]
“Mini bosses are based on the elites, and then the world bosses are their own thing.
So this is the elite or the mini boss based on him is here.
The Hand of the One True King.
He only trusts the king, or the king trusts him.
So he’s like.
The more aggro version of this.”
“Who doesn’t like an incendiary shotgun that causes explosions?”
“Somebody that doesn’t deserve to play Remnant 2.”
“There you go.
See, same team.
So this guy doesn’t trust anybody.
He doesn’t care.”
[Ben is currently using the angelic enemies as cover while the boss targets the player.
The boss uncaringly hurtling strikes toward Ben but only hits his own underlings.]
“He just killed all the ads.
I didn’t shoot a single one.
Which you think is kind of funny.
you could kill him.
And also, if you shortcut this section here, you know you’ll have to deal with him.
So let me come here, get him to jump down.
Let’s go over here.”
Telegraphing in true Soulslike style, the boss charges toward the player, both spears aimed at chest height.
When struck, the player is lifted before being pelted to the ground, sticking to the spears.
It’s an ultimate death scene built specifically for the DLC.]
“To what extent can you talk about other weapons?
Can you just say that there are other weapons that will have status effects like that potentially?”
“Well, we can say that there are obviously other weapons in the game for the DLC.
But when we get into the other guns, right, and you’ll see what comes out there.
They’re definitely some status effects there.
And that comes across in everything from the weapons to the firearms or melee.
And then, of course, the traits and things like that.
It’s all about evilness and pain and all that suffering.”
“So you know, you brought up the medic earlier.
[He had mentioned it being his favorite class] I loved using the medic.
I used it a ton because even if I made a mistake, the medic would bail me out.
It didn’t give me the most damage, but because of that, I eventually switched over.
But I would consider that more of an easier class to play.
Where would you put Ritualist on that scale?”
“It’s very interesting.
I will say that’s a good question.
Like, you’re right.
It’s a very front-loaded class in terms of how easy it is to use, right?
You know, I can put my heel down.
I can put my shield up; I get extra relics back.
That’s not because I like it.
The medic always has relics, which in turn makes them really strong at the end.
Let’s make all of these suffer at once.'
I mean, that’s pretty much all I can say.
I probably said too much!”
“In the end, that was the concept of the Ritualist when we made it.
[We] said, ‘What do the players not have access to?’
What do they not have access to?
What would be an interesting gameplay element or theme that we could just base this entire archetype around?
And is it fun?
And when we made the Ritualist… we knew right away.
We were like, ‘OK, this is super fun.’
So we just knew… And it’s the same thing with medic.
Well, medics can support themselves.
Medic can support the team.
Medic has a shield that seems really strong.
OK, the medic can get their relics back.
It’s [health that] comes back over time.
With the Ritualist as well, I don’t even know if it’s just rituals.
If I have grey health.
If I have been recently taking damage, then I want to pay back.
I want retribution, right?
And so that’s another thing that gave us some insight on how to create the items.
So when we made the gun, we’re like, OK, what does the gun do?
Oh, it makes them suffer a little bit.
After already doing big damage, OK, what does the archetype do?
Oh well, it does… XYZ.
It’s like, oh, well, the player can get stronger.
You know, kind of like that.
That’s the thinking behind it, at least.
“But that’s the thing.
You know we worked on the items and trinkets and the classes for years, right?
We don’t want to make the 17th gun again.
And so we look for opportunities to lean into that, like the grey health.
Let’s kind of make a suite for that.
There were a few holes in status effects.
People wanted more status stuff.
All right, let’s theme things around status.
And sometimes, it just comes together organically because we realize where we could fill in some gaps.
Wow, that’s a lot.”
“Don’t worry, I probably won’t write the whole answer down.”
“Yeah, I kept stacking items toward the end of the game.
I kept stacking items that would allow me to just bolster damage.
“The restriction cord, probably.”
So I was just walking around using that, but if I got hit, I was dead.”
That’s how a shield works, right?
That’s how relics work.
We could have done more on low-health builds.
We could have done, you know, high Relic or low Relic builds.
Let’s make a whole class around that.
Can we make weapons or mods around that?
That’s how it all comes about.”
How do you go about balancing those types of things?”
“Well, we really don’t care if things are strong.
We just care if things are relegating all the other stuff to obscurity, right?
You’re very hard to kill on even Apocalypse, right?
So you’re just constantly getting health regen, and you play that with engineer or challenger or whatever.
So if you better stay alive more and you build into healing, that’s totally fine.
As long as the numbers aren’t absurd.
“There are a few things we fixed recently.
People were like, ‘Ohh, they ruined the game.’
It’s still incredibly good because it gives you minus 25 encumbrance on a ring.
So we’re OK with that stuff.
Let’s move those 20 or 30 items up.
Now, a lot of people are logical when they see the logic in that.
And but some people are like it’s a PvE game.
Leave it alone.”
“A good reference for me on that is Borderlands 3.
And you know, Gearbox came in, ‘Hey Brad… Yeah, we can’t have that.
We can’t allow this.’
And they nerfed it.
And I was sitting there with my soldier build going, ‘Can they buff my Agent build?'”
“Well, that’s the thing.
So, it’s very funny.
I’ll give you a little story here, but when medic came out.
Cut to three weeks later.
The best builds in the game are medic and engineer, right?
Because of the stuff I told you about, like infinite regen and infinite relics and this and that.
We see what people are talking about.
“We tested ourselves, OK, well, we didn’t see that interaction.
They’re not getting the most damage ever.
Yes, they’re really hard to kill, but they built themselves to be hard to kill.
Are we OK with that?
And they think it’s too good because it does too much damage.
I’m like, well, it’s two damage classes.
It’s two damaged archetypes, and they’re both focused on damage.
They’re the main two damage archetypes.
So, if you put them together, they’re gonna do more damage than everybody else.
And the question is, are they doing too much damage over everybody else?
That’s all we really care about in the long run.
“And then again, just looking at the underperforming stuff.
You feel like there’s a choice because if you could just wear armor and ignore everything.
OK, that’s cool.
But we made 100, you know, 200 trinkets, and 45 to 50 of them are survivability.
You never have to use them, ever.
We’re like, OK, well, let’s adjust that balance a little bit.
A true balance, right?
Lower it over here by a few percent and then buff it up over here so it’s enticing.
Now, all of a sudden, there are real choices.
That’s all we really venture to do.
And you ruined the game.’
And I’m like, ‘wWll, that’s fine.
We’ll live with that one, I guess.'”
Headed back to Losomn
“What was your reason for returning… to Losomn?”
It just ended up like that.
But it also has the souls look kind of back and forth.
You know, especially in this area [the palace area] that we were looking at.
We felt like who’s Nimue and how does she interact?
Who’s this big?
Who’s this king that everybody’s talking about?
What’s going on with the Red Prince?
What’s up with this Council?”
There’re a lot of stories in the other biomes too.
People really love the Nar’ud lore.
But this one, I think it just was easy to look at.
And so we just went with it.”
“Do we see Ford return by chance?”
“I mean, that’s something for later.
You never know, right?
That’s the tricky one.
Everybody’s asking that question.
Ford is off doing some stuff.
And I think if, and when he comes back, it’ll be a moment, right?
But we do know that it’s a perfect opportunity for a cool moment.
You know, we may be building up to that; we’ll have to see.”
They’re always looking for better ways to do stuff.
I know that sounds really standard, but that is the goal behind the scenes.
I don’t know how hard it is because that’s a whole team working on that.
But we’re not going to get relaxed on it.
We’re just going to keep working on it the best that we can.”
“Remnant was a big success, but Remnant 2 kind of blew past that.
Did you expect to see this much of an increase?
“41,000, I know nothing.
I don’t track it meticulously.
OK. Well, for two, it was 110,000.”
“I was gonna say.
And for two, it was 110,000.
Did you expect that?”
“I don’t know if we expected 110,000.
I would say we didn’t.
They’re like, what’s this?
Some people loved it.
‘The greatest free game I ever played,’ and some people hated it.
So we got the name of Remnant out there.
That’s just icing on the cake, and it was awesome.
Who knows what the number would have been if we were guessing back then.”
“What’s something that you added to this series that maybe you wish you could take back?”
“Well, it’s interesting.
I came into my whole situation with the Gunfire.
Guys, I worked on Darksiders 2 at Vigil.
They fit with what we’re trying to do.
So what can we do or what could we have done?
“No, that makes sense.
“It’s more about what I’d like to add.
I want to do that.
I want to set my own challenges;’ that would be awesome.
We talked about it.
“Yeah, but that is limited by time and resources, right?
Or why isn’t there Storage?
Well, with time and resources, we’re just making more content for you.
Maybe we’ll get to it.
Maybe we’ll get to something else that you want.
You know, battle passes.
Can you comment on why that is for this DLC?”
“Well, here’s the thing.
The procedural generation overall is still generally the same amount.
Or when comparing to the Empress throne, or the royal throne, or whatever that area is called.
That’s a very small area, but that small area of two or three tiles is static.
So we wondered, what if we made the whole overworld static?
We made it really, really large and static.
“And the reason we did that was like an experiment in storytelling.
Can we use the environment to tell more stories or to give opportunities for more stories?
Does that make sense?
It was like, you could get more backtracking.
It makes it feel bigger while still maintaining every yellow door that you go in.
Every boss that you fight and every injectable is still procedurally generated.
The tile set is randomized.”
“I love the asylum storyline.
You know, as someone who had it before guides were out.
No matter what, even if I got frustrated and wanted to look, I couldn’t.
That’s cool to hear.”
Or that’s the area where that skyscraper fell or whatever.
That’s really cool.
So now we’re doing our experiment, which is, ‘I can see that castle.
I wonder if I can work my way over to the castle.
It’s always in that direction.
Let me work.’
I’m gonna work my way.
Oh, I didn’t know that this side pass was there.
I didn’t know this dungeon was here.
We said our goodbyes, and that was that!
I’ll try and catch up with Ben come the next DLC as well!
ensure to check out ourreview of The Awakened King, which launched today.
I still havent discovered everything this return to Losomn has to offer after 15 hours.
