Following the developer’s breakout success with the first game in the franchise, Gunfire Games releasedRemnant 2just over a year ago to similar praise, quickly generating a lot of buzz and some impressive player counts on Steam thanks to its unique third-person shooter-meets-Soulslike gameplay. Since that initial launch,Remnant 2has received three full story DLCs with the latest being the final promised story expansion for the game: The Dark Horizon. In addition to the single largest story update toRemnant 2, the DLC also delivers the new Warden Archetype, which is shaping up to be one of the most powerful support classes in the game.
In celebration of the launch ofThe Dark Horizon, Game Rant sat down with two ofRemnant 2’s lead gameplay designers, principal gameplay designer Ben Cureton and senior designer Steve Bednarz about all the exciting reasons to try out the new class, the thinking behind how the gameplay team forRemnant 2designs classes and gear, as well as how community feedback factors into the team’s design process.The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How the Warden Archetype Came About in Remnant 2
Q: Could you introduce yourselves to readers?
Cureton:I’m Ben Cureton, principal gameplay designer ofRemnant 2. I’m kind of head of progression. Anything to do with the gear that you use to interface with enemies and stuff like that; things like guns, weapons, Archetypes, trinkets, and stuff. That all falls under the team that I head up. Steve here is on my team and he can tell you about himself.
Bednarz:Steve Bednarz; I’m a senior designer and I work with Ben. We do everything that goes in the player kit—Archetypes, trinkets, guns, mods, all that stuff. Anything that shoots and explodes. That’s ours, pretty much.
Q: How does it feel to haveRemnant 2’s third and final DLC launching soon?
Cureton:Well, for me, it’s awesome. It’s like a weight is lifted, but not a negative weight, it’s just the amount of pressure of sort of trying to wrap everything up and trying to create items that fit within the ecosystem that we’ve already created; enhanced players, build opportunities; and knowing that we’re trying to “go out with a bang.” We want to do some of our craziest and most experimental things.
It’s a nice feeling, but it’s also a bit sad because again, we could work onRemnant 2for as long as they’d let us. What about you, Steve?
Bednarz:Yeah, about the same. It’s bittersweet, you know? I loveRemnant, like a lot. I have a ton of organic hours playing with my friends and stuff, I could play forever. But, it is also nice to wrap things up. You know, DLCs can be a lot of tight timeframes for, now, a year straight, so it’ll be nice to not be on such a tight timetable.
Cureton:It’s like inNarutowhen Rock Lee drops his weights and he goes crazy. We’ve been, I don’t want to say “constrained” because that has a negative connotation, but we’ve been working within the ecosystem that we created. Then when you “drop those weights,” it’s like, “Oh, now we can explore new things.”
That could be anywhere. It could beRemnant. It could be something else. It’s definitely a positive feeling but, again, it comes with that sadness of like… we spent a lot of time onRemnant, and it’s kind of getting to the point where we’re sending it off with our best.
So at this point, the team can focus on maintenance, subtle improvements—things like that?
Cureton:Absolutely.
Q: What were some of the inspirations behind the design and abilities of the Warden Archetype?
Bednarz:There’s stuff that always seems like it’s so apparent, like when we released the trailer and people were commenting about theDestinyGhost similarities. It was very surprising to me that it never clicked in my brain to draw that connection. I’ve been working on this little drone dude for like three or four months and I was just like, “Oh yeah!” There’s this strange thing where there might be this subconscious inspiration that you might not even be aware of, and there are other times there where it’s intentional.
I’d say one of the more intentional ones was probablyHelldivers 2. At the time, we were playing some of that, and they had the drone that would follow you around. More than anything, the real inspiration was basically drawing from the game itself and what would fit well with the existing class ofN’Erudand their theme in general, which is, you know, automation. The turrets, slamming down the turret and something else that could complement that can be a “click it and forget it.”
You set the drone out and it goes and does its thing and it helps, or you can be more interactive with it and send it to a co-op player and get engaged with it. It’s bouncing off of preexisting Archetypes. We look atall of our Archetypesand see what it could work well with here and there and what will mesh.
Basically try and figure out what the team hasn’t done yet and figure out where something new can go.
Bednarz:That as well, for sure.
Reasons to Look Forward to The Dark Horizon and The Warden Archetype
Q: A lot of the preview coverage for The Dark Horizon established that the Warden has some strong synergies with the Engineer. Are there any other Archetypes that have proven to be good companions for the Warden in playtesting?
Cureton:Well, I know Steve has some thoughts on this. I’ll just say, for myself, the Warden definitely has synergies with everybody, but it was intentional, right? We didn’t want any case where, like with the Handler, for example, you might be like, “Well, I don’t want to use that with the Hunter, specifically, because I’m not going to be able to…” whatever your reasoning may be. We thought with this one, let’s ensure each drone can provide something to every build, within reason.
If you have something that procs up heal, or if you have something that needs shield, or if you have something that needs bulwark—right, because we have a perk that does that—if you need something that just adds that little extra DPS, etc. I would love running it with another support build, just because I like support. I’m a fan of support. I’m a fan of all types of gameplay, but I like support because people tend to only think they play a specific way and we try to change that.
I would play it withMedicbecause then I could be the “shield guy.” I’m going to keep my team alive under all situations, even on the hardest difficulty. I’d also love to use the combat drone or even the healing drone in a scenario where I’m playing more melee or trying to be in close range a little bit more often. How about you, Steve?
Bednarz:Yeah, I think that the Warden, specifically, will pair well with anything where people are trying to be more tanky or have more survivability. Challenger is a really good mix. Or even going with a “double pet” class where you have the Handler with the dog and then you have the drone. It’s like, you’re like this little “minion master,” but then you’d be able to have the dog resurrect you while the drone is doing additional support work at the same time.
The Warden is just a really strong support class that synergizes well with any support or will complement a good DPS role to fill in those gaps where those classes might be lacking. They don’t have as much of the support function, but then the drone can come in and fill those gaps.
Q: For players who are coming back toRemnant 2as part of The Dark Horizon’s launch and the major free content update, what are some of the more exciting reasons to roll a new character using the Warden Archetype?
Cureton:Well, I think there are a couple of parts here, specifically speaking to what you asked regarding Warden. The Warden is going to give you that initial self-support that some new players (or even some experienced players) might really enjoy, because you can take more risks, right?
With the Warden, you have the drone that is constantly giving you shields, or heal, or having that damage all the time, or the AoE explosives, and you can build into that and say, “Oh, what are the pieces that I had before? Oh, that’s really interesting, I have those shield items I can put together,” or “Oh, when I’m full health, I’ll get this extra bonus that works with that drone.” The combat drone, of course, it’s like, I’m going to keep all the scrubs away from me, I’m going to focus on the elites.
I think that is going to provide a huge bonus or benefit to players coming back. It’s going to be a different starting experience, right? You’re going to feel a little bit more powerful right off the bat and then hopefully it evens out, but it is a pretty strong class overall because it’s very versatile. Then we have things like Prisms, but that’s not directly related to the Warden.
Balancing Remnant 2’s Existing Meta With New Archetypes
Q: What are some of the main challenges with balancing the introduction of a new Archetype into Remnant 2’s existing meta?
Cureton:The challenge would be: one, repeating what we’ve done. I know I say that when we’ve had something similar like the Handler, we have something like the Summoner, but the challenge would still be avoiding that.
We do that by trying to offer something that those other classes just simply don’t offer, you know? Also, just in general, we try to think about “What do no classes offer at all?” or what is missing from the game in some ways. If we could look at that and you could look atRemnantand say, “Oh man, it would be really nice if I had X, Y, Z,” right? We did that when we did theRitualist.
We thought, “We don’t really have a status-focused guy. We have an all-damage guy, but we need a status-focused guy.” Okay, cool. “We don’t really have a class that’s skill-based, one that’s focused around skills. So what if we do theInvoker?” We really just look for those opportunities.
We had multiple Archetypes designed conceptually, not fully designed, but we had concepts for them, 20 or so when we started. We kind of narrowed them down and we brought them together. We had the concept of a Tracker, which was sort of the Handler and a Hunter together. Then we had a sniper that was just ranged only. We thought, “Okay, well, let’s split those up. Let’s remix those. Let’s do this.”
We always had the idea for the Warden and this is kind of how we approached the finished product with the Warden. We thought that it was one of the designs that we had that we never really got to, with all the other ones that we hybridized and put together and glued together and kitbashed. We thought that’s the one that stands out as a good opportunity to flesh out like we did with Ritualist and Invoker.
Bednarz:I think one of the biggest challenges is just trying to be conscientious of the sheer magnitude of all the different permutations of what’s already there. We have, like, 200 rings in the game, you know? Which are, in essence, these little slot double interchangeable perks. They can just completely change the way the game works.
The question becomes: “How can we give the player all these different little toolkits to work with and create interesting things that sort of work within that, while also not making the game out of control and super easy?” Finding a balance within all of these different things is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do when it’s just the team before the game gets out and thousands of people are playing. We’ll have a lot more data when that happens, until then though…
Cureton:Yeah. It’s also challenging to try to keep them equal in some cases when they can’t be equal. For example, we have things like damage perk and those aren’t too hard to keep simple. We just say, “This guy does this much damage, this guy does this much damage.”
We have utility perks, damage perks, and relic perks. For some characters, the relic perk is crazy powerful. It’s way stronger than everybody else’s. But then that character may have a weaker utility perk because they’re kind of a loner, so they don’t actually bring anything to the team.
By themselves, that Archetype is kind of strong because of X, Y, and Z. Within a team, they’re still strong by themselves, but they’re not a force multiplier for the other guy. The challenge is trying to recognize those scenarios and it is a challenge because sometimes you’re like, “Oh yeah, we didn’t think about that. They are good all the time. That’s a great perk. Okay, well, cool.” It happens.
Q: It’s very obvious that there are so many different variables at play between different individual Archetypes, how they synergize with other Archetypes, solo play versus co-op play, team compositions, etc. And then you start throwing gear in there and the different rolls that you can get on your Fragments, and other factors. So it’s just trying to balance all those variables out?
Cureton:Yeah, we see that with other games, too. We’re playing a bunch of other games, we’replayingSpace Marinenow and they have a very similar system where they have core perks, team perks, and signature perks. It’s semi-equivalent to Prime and our utility and core perks. Sometimes you look at similar things in other games and you go, “That second team perk. That’s my jam. I don’t think I’m ever going to pick anything up.”
I can see that with our characters. People think, “I only use Medic Shield with Medic. I’m not using anything else like that,” and I’m like, damn. We worked so hard on these other ones. Please use them. We’ll buff them. You know what I mean [laughs]? It’s definitely a challenge.
How Remnant 2’s Design Team Leverages Community Feedback
Q: When designing a new Archetype, how does community feedback factor into the process?
Cureton:Well, I think a lot of it comes from just what they feel they’re missing. We want to provide them with things that they think would be fun for them to play, so we’ll look at what they’re saying and somebody might say, “It’d be really cool to have Turrets fromthe firstRemnant” or something like that. We see that and we’re like, “We got an Engineer, we’re on the right path.” Then somebody might say, “I wish I could have something a little bit more melee-focused” or whatever.
We take that into consideration. We often weigh that against stuff we’ve thought about because, while the players may play the game for three or four hundred hours, however much they play… we think about it for 10,000 hours.
That doesn’t make us right. That just means we have thought about some of those situations also. We have created a list where we go, “Oh, I wish we could do this. I wish we could do this.” Then, when we get that feedback from players based on their experience, we’re like, “Man, that’s really close to item seven and item 14. I wonder if we could we could kind of merge that together because that seems like something that would be actually really popular.”
Maybe that feedback shifts things around. Maybe it moves something up or pushes something back or whatever. It’s not always the case, but we do respond to feedback in that way. We’re never going to just do something because they say, “You should do it.” We don’t have transmog in the game because sometimes time is an issue and resources are an issue, but we try our best because we are making this game for people like us who just play games and want to have fun and want all the ability to experience it differently.
Q: Based on what people say are their favorite Archetypes or their favorite team compositions, does that ever factor into the design process?
Bednarz:Well, I know that one criticism in the vanilla game was people were talking a lot about status effects not being very strong back then, so there was almost an echo chamber of people saying that sentiment. Then obviously the first DLC, we were like, “Here’s the Ritualist,” and we gave a ton of items that supported status effect builds and things that gave you more options to apply them.
We definitely do listen to things and pay attention to what people think is lacking or could use some, you know, dials tuned up a bit. We do try to listen to feedback and fill those voids that people think are missing from the game.
Cureton:Yeah and, again, sometimes players’ thoughts will echo or even bolster some of the thoughts that we had. We have hundreds of hours in retailRemnantwhere we can’t cheat, we can’t give ourselves items. We’ll play and we go, “I see what they’re saying. We could use a couple more status items,” or we could make what’s already there better.
We may have already had Ritualist on the docket with the idea of it being a status character, but that doesn’t mean we have the whole design. We have the initial concept and then we go, “Oh, they had a really good idea there,” or “That’s a cool way to think about that.” That has then inspired us to have a new idea or we take the idea and iterate on it.
Q: How does the team strike a balance between designing Archetypes that are viable for both solo and co-op play?
Cureton:Well, I think the main element there is making tools that can be used in different ways. You can’t always do that, right? Like, if you have a tool that does ranged damage and that’s all it does, okay, that’s fine. That’s cool. Maybe that character is a little more solo-based. Maybe that class is really good at eliminating targets from far away. That is their contribution, but it’s a singular contribution to the team or solo—it works both ways.
Then you have something like Medic which has the shield. You’re like, “Well, I’m gonna put a shield on everybody. I’m gonna prevent you from dying because you’re at two pixels. Oh, I can put the shield on you real quick then you may Relic yourself?” I know that, let’s say, you have an item and Steve has an item that gives 10% more health or three stacks ofBulwarkwhen you have a shield. That can be used on myself and on my team, but knowing the person that I’m playing with can help even more.
It’s not revolutionary, but we think about those tools in many different ways. Some other ones we’ve touched on are, like, the Hunter. That class is ranged damage but it can use Shroud. What if I need to use Shroud and resurrect somebody? I’ve gotta revive a teammate in the middle of a fight while Steve is fighting off other guys. Using Shroud, I can sneak in there and get them instead of me getting wailed on while I’m reviving. That’s a pretty standard use for a cloak, but at least it provides some utility.
So we try to at least look at those opportunities and recognize when tools can be used in multiple ways, and in the cases that they can’t be, it’s not that big of a deal as long as we consider it with some other skills. It’s okay to make something with a fully singular focus, but it’s always nice to have something in there with a team-focused context.
Q:Remnant 2is designed to be a game that players return to time and again, and the Archetypes play a major part in that. How does the team balance providing players with new experiences while also catering to established favorites among the player base?
Cureton:We’re not always trying to increase the power level dramatically, and I know I’m saying that while we have a patch coming has the Prisms update and they’re crazy powerful, but that’s a different thing. Generally, when we do it, we think, “What is gonna provide more outcomes with the stuff we already have?”
I always joke about this, but you can only make two or three “+5 hit” rings, right? There are only a couple of ways that you can do that. Generally speaking, it’s gonna get boring. What we do is consider leaning into things like regenerating health, shield, status effects, etc., and then, each time we do that, we realize that we missed a couple of opportunities because there are dozens of possibilities. We don’t want to completely change the formula, but we do want you to look at new things and discover new ways to play.
It’s really about keeping things in the same general power level. Sometimes we go over, sometimes we go under. Just saying, “Hey, there are new ways to trigger old things that you really like,” or things you don’t even look at. We’ve definitely made changes before where people went back and said, “Wait a minute. Those 30 items I didn’t use before might actually have a use now.”
Q: With The Dark Horizon marking the final promised story DLC forRemnant 2and, ostensibly, the final new Archetype, what’s next in store for Gunfire Games?
Cureton:I’m glad that you said final “promised” DLC because we’re still going to support the game. We know that there are gonna be bugs. We know that there are going to be opportunities to make adjustments. We fully broke down the Prism system and people already have gotten back to us with feedback like “I wish we could re-roll Prisms.” We thought about that, but sometimes you have a finite amount of time. Then again, sometimes you get a little bit of extra time after you’ve already delivered the finished product, you know?
We definitely want to keep supportingRemnant. As far as the future, we just have to see how the response and reception is. We know that, as players, we want to keep experiencingRemnant. As Steve said, we could work onRemnantforever. There are a million things we can do because the setup for the game means you can go anywhere.
You could go back and fight dinosaurs [laughs]. Of course, now that I say that, someone is going to ask for it. In the end, we don’t make the decisions. But, if someone comes to us and says, “Hey, do you think we should do some more withRemnant?” we’ll be like, “Yes, please.”
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