"With N'Erud, we just decided to go all out" - Remnant 2's game director shares inside scoop on boss design, DLC, and more (Exclusive)

Remnant 2's recently released The Dark Horizon DLC is easily one of their best works. From its increased focus on verticality to some genuinely intriguing and gnarly boss fights, the latest expansion is the pinnacle of what Remnant 2 offers. And to top it all off, developer Gunfire Games bundled the final expansion with the highly requested Boss Rush mode.

As a massive fan of Remnant 2 and Gunfire Games' past titles, i.e., the Darksiders series, I was always curious as to what inspired the developers to create these titles, the levels, as well as the bosses that inhabit said worlds. Luckily, we recently got to chat with none other than David Adams, Game Director and President of Gunfire Games.

David shared plenty of exciting information about how the team at Gunfire Games conceptualized the creatures and setting of Remnant 2. He also shared some insight on the studio's past titles and the inspiration behind the latest expansion—The Dark Horizon.

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From the conceptualization of Remnant 2 to the creature designs, game director, David Adams, shares his insight on the game, the latest DLC, and more

Q1. Hi David, Suman here from Sportskeeda (and a big fan of Darksiders and also Remnant 2). My first question would be to Colin. Colin, how did you and your team at Gunfire come up with the design of the creatures (and also the bosses) for the original Remnant? I remember when Remnant From the Ashes was released, we did not have any souls-like or game akin to Remnant that attempted a post-apocalyptic setting like this, at least not that I’m aware of. And so, considering it’s an original idea, where did you get the inspiration for a world like Remnants? Games, movies, books, or any other media?

Remnant 2 features some of the most intriguing boss designs (Image via Gunfire Games)

David: There are a ton of inspirations. It’s really hard to pinpoint just one. The beauty of Remnant is that each trip through the world stone can take you to any world. Literally anything. It can be fantasy. It can be sci-fi. It can be a twisted version of Victorian London. We took a large amalgam of different influences: Dune, Pan’s Labyrinth, Resident Evil, DnD, you name it, and we anchored that all on a post-apocalyptic earth, then connected everything through some fancy world-hopping pseudo-science magic.

Then when it came to actual bosses, at least for the first game, we had our concept team draw a ton of thumbnails, and we looked at pictures that inspired us with cool boss ideas—and then made those bosses. Sure, we sometimes went into a boss design with a very specific idea, but it’s often a collaborative back-and-forth process where one thing inspires another which inspires another.

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Q2. One of the best aspects of Remnant 2 that really drew me to the game and made me a fan of it, was the combat system. Unlike Gunfire’s past titles, i.e., Darksiders, Remnant has a completely different form of combat. Where did you and your team get the inspiration for it, and why the third-person shooter genre was chosen over the traditional hack-and-slash style of Gunfire’s past games?

David: For me personally, after working on Darksiders 1 and 2, I just really wanted to work on a shooter. At the time I was heavily inspired by Resident Evil 4—which is an amazing game—but for me, what was appealing was the fact that the pacing and feel of the gun combat in that game was completely unique. When we started on Remnant, that was a big inspiration because we didn’t want to make something that felt like any other shooter on the market.

Obviously, the game evolved from there and picked up influences from other games, but at the end of the day, we always wanted to make something that felt unique—and, of course, something we ourselves would enjoy playing.

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Q3. The map of The Dark Horizon DLC is, in my opinion, a massive improvement over not only the base game N’Erud, but also the previous expansions in general. The most intriguing aspect of the map that really stood out to me was the increased focus on verticality. I’m really curious, what inspired the team to go for a more vertical map for the final expansion?

David: One thing we did differently in the (Remnant 2) DLC vs the base game is that the overworld zones are static and hand-crafted as opposed to randomly generated. With the randomized overworld system it was extremely difficult to achieve a lot of verticality—we had some verticality in Losomn and Yaesha, but it was limited. However, with the overworld zones being more hand-crafted the shackles were off, so to speak. I think with each of the DLC you can see that we tried for more depth to the map, but with N’Erud, we just decided to go all out.

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Q4. Remnant 2’s bosses are easily my favorite aspect of the game, right after the combat system and art style; perhaps that explains my excitement for the Boss Rush mode. How did you and the team at Gunfire go about designing the bosses, for the base game as well as the three expansions? Also, I can’t help but notice some similarities between bosses in Remnant and Darksiders like the Mother Mind (Remnant 2) and the Wailing Host (Darksiders 2).

David: There are a lot of different things that go into the design of a boss. Sometimes it’s more mechanics-driven, sometimes we just have an idea of what we think is “cool” in our head and come up with a design that fits. At the end of the day, a good boss fight should be memorable. They are the capstone of a play experience—you fight through a dungeon, level up your gear, get loot, die, buy some stuff from a merchant, etc...etc...and your reward for all that is taking down one of the game’s bosses. It needs to reward you in the sense that you feel like you faced a challenge and overcame it, and it should reward you in the sense that you did and saw something spectacular or cool.

I can say (since I implemented the Wailing Host in Darksiders 2) that any similarities are purely coincidental...I think the designer who did Mother Mind (Remnant 2) was probably in Grade School when that boss was created, lol.

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Q5. The final expansion brings the Boss Rush mode (finally!). Was a Boss Rush mode planned from the start as one of the additions for the final expansion? Also, any words of encouragement for fellow survivors who will be jumping onto the Boss Rush mode as well as The Dark Horizon next week?

Boss Rush is easily the best post-launch add-on for Remnant 2 (Image via Gunfire Games)

David: Was it planned? Not really. We always had the idea in the back of our minds that we could possibly add a new game mode, but we were so focused on getting the base game done that we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. However, sometime after (Remnant 2) DLC1 wrapped and we were in the middle of the DLC2 we decided that it would be fine to try a new mode. We had survivor mode in Remnant 1—which was a rogue-like mode where you started as a fresh character every run—this time we wanted to try something different where you played as your existing character. And at the end of the day, that became Boss Rush.

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Q6. Now with Remnant 2 and its trilogy of expansions all wrapped up, what’s next from Gunfire Games?

David: Lots of cool things, you will just have to wait and see.