In gaming and quite possibly every field of commerce one often hears the claim that something truly unique is being sold, but today we saw one which may be real.

Post-apocalyptic souls like Remnant 2's developers have cranked the volume up on procedural generation all the way to the story level so no two players or single player on multiple playthroughs is likely to have the same experience.

For the sake of non-gamers, procedural generation is a semi-random process employed in many games to generate dungeons, landscapes, whole planets and in the case of No Man's Sky, several hundred galaxies.

Procedurally generated stories aren't new but we've never heard of their use in a triple A game.

Stories are usually meticulously crafted by developers, then rapaciously dismantled and critiqued by both professional critics and everyday gamers.

Can a procedurally generated story measure up?

We are both skeptical and hopeful.

Two of the standard measures of game size are the average amount of time it would take to play through the main story, and that plus all additional story.

If Remnant 2's system can produce coherent and enjoyable stories then the effective amount of story in this game could be off the scale and its replayability factor extremely high.

IGN's Travis Northup describes their experience replaying a single area several times:

One area I saw in my time with Remnant 2 was Yaesha, which returns from the first game but has now been completely taken over and corrupted by The Root. But each time I played through it, I saw completely different versions of this world that were shockingly unique. In my first playthrough Yaesha appeared as a heavily wooded area filled with lizard-like creatures that would crawl down from trees to ambush me, but in my second run, those woods were replaced with a series of floating islands that were home to hovering tentacled aliens that attacked from above and surrounded me with deadly, homing attacks. In a third blitz through the exact same area, I found myself inside a dark temple almost the entire time, where I was required to make use of my flashlight as creepy cultists waited to sacrifice me to their dark deity.

Ok so environments vary but what about story?

Not only that, but the NPCs and quests I encountered in each version of Yaesha differed. In one I met a bizarre musician and tried to solve a musical puzzle as part of my adventure, while in another I met the Pan Empress, who asked me to help her out with a problem threatening her people. Depending on which storyline I rolled, my journey in Yaesha went in completely different directions, which made every playthrough feel completely fresh and exciting. I can only imagine the confusion and amusement that will bring when Remnant 2 is in the hands of players, as they experience vastly different versions of the same game.

At least in a limited playthrough they've impressed one gamer.

And intrigued another.

Also revealed in their IGN First series are two of game's archetypes - Gunslinger and Handler - which IGN forgivably mislabel as classes because that's what they are in a broad gaming sense but not in Remnant 2 lingo.

In this game there are a range of archetypes which function like classes you'd find in other games except that you can unlock and develop them all on a single character.

Then combine any two to create a dual archetype / class.

Many gamers would instantly recognise what this means - further enhanced replayability.

If this all works and is the all important F word, fun, then it could be a very impactful title.

Remnant 2 is coming to PC (Steam and Epic), Xbox X|S and PlayStation 5 sometime this year.

[ Main Image: Remnant 2. Credit: Gearbox Publishing via Steam. ]

References

Gearbox Publishing (February 22, 2023). Archetypes Breakdown. Steam.

IGN (March 15, 2023). Remnant 2 Doesn’t Want You and Your Friends to Experience the Same Game | IGN First. YouTube.

IGN (March 8, 2023). Remnant 2: Gunslinger Class Revealed – IGN First. YouTube.

IGN (March 16, 2023). Remnant 2: Handler Class (and His Dog) Revealed | IGN First. YouTube.

Steam. Remnant 2. Gearbox Publishing.