Remnant 2 The Awakened King is officially the first Remnant 2 DLC pack headed to the Gunfire Games’ soulslike shooter. Part of three fully-fledged expansions for the game, you also don’t have to wait too long to play it. Principal designer Ben Cureton and Gunfire Games co-founder David Adams tell The Loadout what players can expect from the next Remnant 2 adventure.
The Awakened King will release on Tuesday, November 14, 2023, and it is a blood-soaked revenge story. Bringing players back to Losomn, fresh Remnant 2 villain the One True King emerges from a near-eternal slumber, and is looking to rid the world of anyone who betrays him. Adams explains that “one big thing we are doing with the DLC is we are building much more elaborate and expansive overworld zones. We wanted to try something a little different.”
Remnant 2 can roll any of its worlds to the player at random during the campaign, and The Awakened King can be encountered like this too. Whether you’re re-rolling an Adventure Mode campaign or starting fresh after buying the game and the DLC, Adams clarifies that “randomized quests, encounters, items” are all part of enhancing the game’s “good sense of exploration.” With a whole new area of Losomn to explore, this time in a harrowing coastal town, players can also expect new ways to experiment with their Remnant 2 classes in one of the best RPG games of 2023.
The Ritualist is a fresh Archetype arriving with The Awakened King DLC, which Gunfire Games describes as a way of “leveraging status effects to punish foes, this new Archetype is a master of pain and suffering.” Speaking on The Ritualist’s addition to the game, Cureton tells us that “we look at what can we make that the players do not have access to currently […] we try to keep it thematic to each biome, and we try to make it fit within there.” Cureton adds this evolves into “looking at new Archetype potential”, and that the upcoming DLC “definitely provides some new gameplay opportunities.”
From the 20-minute preview, Gunfire Games reveals to us the highly Bloodborne-tinged aesthetic of Losomn’s primary location in the game bleeds heavily into this new area. It is a dour, gothic nightmare of a seaside town that is home to a magnificent castle. However, Cureton won’t show us the castle’s secrets ahead of the DLC’s arrival. Don’t worry, though, there will new be enemies and bosses to slay around the castle with a “host of new weapons” joining the ranks of the best Remnant 2 guns available.
Although, if you dislike them, that is completely fine according to Cureton: “We’re just trying to figure out weird stuff to do, right? If we can create a gun that some people love, and some people hate, that’s better than creating a gun that most people go, ‘it’s okay’. That’s kind of our driving principle on that.” Cureton expresses that Gunfire Games looks to some of the best games around for inspiration, and one of them happens to be Destiny 2. ” We’re just like if you play Destiny [2], or games that have Exotic guns, we’re like ‘what could these boss guns do?'”
As for what weapons will appear in the future in Remnant 2, this is what you need to know about The Awakened King’s updated arsenal.
As you await The Awakened King’s arrival, we have more to share from our conversation with Adams and Cureton shortly. But if you’re eager for a new adventure, here are all the new PS5 games and new Xbox games on the horizon.