will see, as they trigger randomly – another boon for replyability.
The Remnant story started out about the multiverse. This meant that it was possible for the Gunfire team to do a mostly-new adventure that also continued with plot threads and a revisited couple of familiar locales from the studio’s last two games, without it feeling contrived. “We made a VR game before Remnant called Chronos, which was eventually ported to other platforms,” explains Adams. “Yaesha was in that game, as well as in Remnant: From the Ashes, so we thought it would be cool to see the full story arc for that world. In Chronos (spoiler alert) the protagonist is the cause of Yaesha being invaded by the Root, so by Remnant II, you get to see the full effect of those actions.
“The labyrinth came back because it’s an essential part of the Remnant games’ lore, but beyond that, we wanted to create new worlds for players to explore.”
INSTANT REPLAY
One of the elements the team wanted to make sure of was that Remnant 2 was more replayable than its predecessor, which wasn’t noted for being a game many players returned to after their first time seeing the credits. As such, the studio focused on making the worlds of Remnant II more interesting to visit and adventure through. As a result, adventures feel a little more magical - especially at first, if you know someone else is playing at the same time. The game’s emphasis
on replayability is evident early on with its multiple starting areas and realm instances – built using procedural generation to change things up on a player-by-game basis. Worlds even include secrets that not everyone
56 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2023
“In the first Remnant, even though the dungeons and bosses were randomized, the overall storyline for each biome was the same each time. In Remnant II, we randomized the storyline in each world, as well as added quite a few more side quests, injectables and stuff like that,” Adams says. “Players should be able to play the game multiple times and see a completely different set of quests and storylines. “We did it to really drive home the fact that your experience was unique from other players,” he continues. “You might have two friends start the game at the same time, and one of them is playing in a jungle, and the other in a sci-fi wasteland.”
THE CORE LOOP Of course, replayability would mean nothing if the game itself wasn’t fun to play. Thankfully most of the Remnant II’s formula had already been worked out during the development of its predecessor. Mostly, that core comes down to fostering a sense of meaningful exploration. “We wanted the core loop to be compelling,” explains Adams. “Go in, explore a new world, find some items, play with your build – maybe find a cool secret – then kill a boss. We also try to make the individual side quests and story elements unique, with some cool ‘aha’ moments so players do something unexpected or see something interesting. Hopefully giving them that sense that they should keep exploring because they aren’t sure what they will find.”
Another conscious and deliberate choice when it came to changes to the core design of the game was to redesign the game’s up-close weapons and their melee attacks. These changes, in our experience, made bashing stuff with your weapon less useful than last time, and put more emphasis on the fact the game is supposed to be played
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