Remnant 2 rules. I've not talked about (or played) it in a while, mind, but that's because it's not a game that overstays its welcome, nor does it string you along with battle passes and endless mandatory FOMO grinds. It's just a very competent, imaginative soulslikey shoot-'em-up ARPG that sees you gunning through multiple worlds, packed with some excellent build variety.
It's also received two generous DLCs—The Awakened King and The Forgotten Kingdom. Now the third one's on its way, and it's called The Dark Horizon. In the same way that Remnant 2's last two expansions further developed the base game's worlds of Yaesha and Losomn, The Dark Horizon will take place in the already-existing science fiction horrorscape N'Erud—a place that wears its Ridley Scott influences on its sleeve.
"Players will return to the necropolis world of N’Erud only to discover that a bizarre phenomenon has taken hold," reads an announcement post on Steam, thin on the story details—which is fair, we've not even had a trailer yet. The Dark Horizon will be coming out in September this year which, Gunfire Games admits, is a little later than it would have liked:
"When we launched Remnant 2 one year ago, we promised the release of all three DLCs in this first year. We’ve made the difficult decision to move back the release of our third DLC, so that we have more time to deliver you the best possible experience that you deserve."
While broken promises are never ideal, I'm willing to give Gunfire Games plenty of slack here because of just how solid its past two DLCs have been—if you're a fan of the base game, they're some excellent value for money.
Both The Awakened King and the Forgotten Kingdom pack eight hours of playtime punch each, are priced under $10, and add an armoury of items, weapon mods, and one class each into the base game. You can even play through them with a mate if you don't have the DLC yourself—you just won't be able to use the items you pick up until you own the content on your own dime.
These DLCs also add layers to Remnant 2's core experience to help replayability, too, because of how the game randomly assembles its base playthroughs. While the DLCs can be experienced in a linear fashion via a "one shot" campaign, their bosses and zones will have a chance of popping up in the main story as well.
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Maybe my brain's just fried in a DLC market filled with sneaky marketing techniques and $500 cosmetics bundles, but a developer coming out and saying 'hey, here's around 15-20 hours of new content, a bunch of new weapons, three new classes, and three new storylines for under $30, straight up' feels like a breath of fresh air. Waiting a couple of months isn't going to have me seething when we've been getting a fair price for honest work already.
That's not even mentioning the mystery game mode, which "will be free for everyone"—presumably everyone that owns the game—"we’ll reveal soon along with a new progression system". Yeah, I'm happy to let Gunfire Games take its time.
Harvey Randall
Staff Writer
Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.
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