Remnant 2 is looking to greatly expand one of the first game’s strengths: replayability through procedural generation.
As explained by Gunfire Games CEO David Adams in a video interview with IGN, the sequel can randomize even full-fledged storylines within the same world, so players going through a specific area could have two vastly diverging experiences.
One big change we made for Remnant 2 was that we randomized the storyline, so if you go in and fight a mini-boss and another player goes in and fights a mini-boss in the same area, they might have a completely different boss. There’s also different random events that occur in the game and even the layouts of the dungeons change. If you played Remnant one and you both started the game you were both going to go into the city, you were going to find a big tower, and save a lady in a church. Those beats were always the same, even if the mini-bosses and the side dungeons switched out, but in this game even that’s randomized.
When you go to a new area of the game, you’ll get a random storyline even if you’re in the same world. You might get a different storyline. These are pre-designed storylines. We designed and scripted them out. We have the high level beats, but there’s multiple per world, so not only could you get a different world from another player, you might get a different storyline within that world and it is a full storyline with its own NPCs, its own world boss. Everything’s completely different.
Let’s say by chance you got the same storyline and by chance, you got the same mini-bosses, which is highly unlikely. Even within those dungeons, the tiles you get and the events that occur are going to be different, so the number of permutations pretty much ensures that two people playing in the same area are going to get a different experience.
The way the world of Remnant II is generated is it starts at the high level. The first thing it’ll do when you go into new areas to determine what high level storyline you’re going to play. Then, within that storyline, there might be multiple dungeons, or a certain amount of mini-boss dungeons, and within those dungeons all of the tiles themselves (which is how the maps are built) are randomized within a world. There’s multiple different biomes, so you might you get different dungeon and Overworld types, and they all have their own different creatures. If you get mini-boss A, you might fight these types of enemies within this environment, like floating islands or whatever, and if you get mini-boss B, you might be fighting different enemies inside of a crypt.
You could play two full games with not a single repeated element, and that’s how we gauged how much content we wanted to make for each area of Remnant 2. That’s a pretty unique experience.
Announced at The Game Awards 2022, the sequel to Remnant: From the Ashes will also introduce major changes to the Archetype system. Each Archetype will have exclusive Perks and Skills, making them far more unique, and even the Trait system has been expanded. Moreover, players will eventually unlock the ability to mix two Archetypes of their choice to create a unique class.
Each combination of Archetypes will have access to all their Perks, Skills, and Traits, with one notable exception: only the primary Archetype’s Prime Perk will be enabled. The primary Archetype will also have their Skills enhanced in various ways, such as quicker cooldowns, increased efficiency, and more. You’ll have to evaluate which Archetype of the two you want to be set as primary.
