Quick Look: Remnant: From the Ashes

Been looking forward to this QL but didn't expect a cross-coast one!

Just beat this game with a friend. It plays really nicely. It's also a bit more player friendly than the other Souls-lites. Dark Souls always felt like it didn't really give a shit if you were having fun or not. This is all about flashy guns and giant numbers so it's a bit more fun-loving for lack of a better phrase. It's kinda short though, took us 20 hours to beat and that included a fair bit of redoing areas with different hosts to see how our worlds differed. I'd totally love some DLC that adds a tileset or two.

Does this scratch the Souls itch playing solo or this game really intended for co-op?

Played most of it by myself and it’s great. Some bosses may be easier by yourself.

Can’t believe no one in the video had the sub machine gun. It’s in the home base and it’s great.

Finally! On new game +++ if you can call it that and I still havent seen everything. Best surprise game for me this year.

Fun in co-op as well.

skip to 10min30s for when stuff starts to happen

I was having fun with this game til it was time to "find the king". Found guides useless, because the maps are never the same. After wandering through every dungeon on my map I could find, I got tired of going in circles and uninstalled. The combat was fun though.

The undying king is easy to find. It’s a main quest in the desert area. Go through all the dungeons in the that area and you will find it.

I really want to play this, but it sounds like it may not be as fun solo, which I usually play.

I bought it to play solo. And it’s great either way. The enemies scale based on players, so by yourself is fine.

Some things about this game:

- there are fog doors, bonfires and flasks. You can upgrade the amount of flasks you carry

- there are consumables that can cure and prevent status effects like “root rot”. And other items that boost stamina, fire rate and health

- everyone’s world is randomly generated not just dungeons. My friend had different bosses than I did, for example. And there are random events that you have one shot at like the protect Liz event. And that purple item was a secret long gun if you can complete it

- there is an audible chime when an elite enemy spawns and then another one when it dies

- simulacrum is found in random spots throughout the game, not from boss fights

- the audio is great in this game. You hear enemies growling from far away

- there are a ton of secrets. The sub machine gun and drifter armor are very easy to get early equipment. Some of the secrets are even as obscure as to crouch through a wall or keep an NPC alive

- there is a cover system and you can slide into it

- hot tip: when exploring an area for items, turn around. There are some items hidden in a way that it’s easier to find them if you look the opposite way you were going. If that makes sense.

- almost all of the bosses have alternate kill methods that give different crafting materials to make different stuff out of

- anytime you are not sure where to go in the story, just keep going through the world and uncover all the maps. You will eventually find the correct dungeon or event.

- the voice actor for Reggie in Ward 13 played Lee from the Walking Dead Season 1. Every time I hear his voice all I think about is Lee

- for Ben, there is a zoom on the sniper rifle and a few other guns. On a controller click in the right stick after holding left trigger, not sure on keyboard.

Keep your head up!

This game really popped out of nowhere for me. I originally saw "Perfect World" and "Gunfire Games" and said nope. After Brad talked about it on bombcast last week I watched some gameplay and instantly picked up the game and have since put in about 30 hours.

After all the effusive talk on the Beastcast I guess I was expecting a little more? This seems neat but it also seems very brown and very post-apocalypse in a way that I've started to find a bit boring. The gunplay looks nice but I've read the scaling can make progression feel somewhat meaningless as baddies scale up with you - something that I never thought was a good idea since games are all about the power fantasy.

Maybe on sale at some point I would get it but I dunno. I wrote a ton about The Surge recently which is another take on the Souls formula but super futuristic and I guess that setting just inherently draws me in more than ruined buildings and chainlink fences.

Just for anyone maybe worried about the post apocalypse aesthetic that's only the visuals of the first area. This game goes some places and there's some pretty nice variation in the look of the areas.

Just the first out of four worlds looks like a ruined post apocalyptic city. After that it really shines as far as level design and enemy design.

Already did. Never got the howling key from any of them.

I'm torn. Some people I admire say they really like this game, but all the gameplay I've seen looks INCREDIBLY "meh," including this playthrough.

I want to like this game more than I do. It FEELS great. There's an impact to your guns, enemies react to getting hit, etc. But there's just so much... bullshit. Especially in boss fights. It's like they couldn't design a good fight, so they instead shoved a bunch of respawning enemies in there. The bosses aren't even remotely complicated, the hundred or so mobs they throw at you is why anyone dies.

@bloody_skirmish: the howling key goes in the spot behind the monolith checkpoint. I had a dungeon (pre patch) break where I couldn’t complete it and do the event. Maybe something like that happened. If you go through the entire map in each area you will find the boss needed to get the key, normally.

@pudge: Keep your head up!

@humanity: As others have said, this look is not representative of the whole game. I was out of this kind of environment in a handful of hours.

But as for scaling, I'm pretty certain the scaling only applies when progressing in the game, which feels like a necessity, given the random procedurally generated nature of the world. I wouldn't want to enter a new area and find the enemy's poorly scaled to my progress, in either direction. You can still go back to old areas and steamroll weaker enemies.

I wouldn't consider the average Souls-like a "power fantasy" though. They always feel deliberately designed to temper your sense of "power". Sure, there's that sense of accomplishment when you figure out how to beat a tough boss that plays into that, but then it takes away again when you reach a new unfamiliar area. But I would argue Remnant allows for a bit more of a "power fantasy" than a proper Souls game. It's a bit more forgiving and less oppressive in some ways.

I've been playing this a little since it came out. I was hoping they would cover it a while ago. So glad they finally did a quicklook!

This world design seems Nier Automata levels of uninspired.

This game is pretty cool so far. Its less Souls-y than I was expecting though, and its much more Diablo and Left 4 Dead.

Keep your head up!

For people who never liked dark souls originally and didnt "get it" and mostly thought it was hard, clunky, boring, and had limited progression or incentive to play along with not telling you enought about what to do....im surprised giantbomb now years later likes dark souls like games so much. Heck even other sites originally hated dark souls now its the bees nees. I think death stranding will be the next genra reviewers dont "get" then years later its hailed as the game ever game is.

Eh I feel like a QL for this should have come out a bit sooner than this. I'm sure scheduling and timing were issues and I'm not gonna be on some high horse and complain about GB or anything, but I do think this game is already past that "new popular game on Steam/whatever let's show it off and take a look at it" phase of its life. I mean, I could be wrong, I am 45 and old. :|

Pro tip for anyone playing this, if you get infected by rot you can dodge out of the cough animation.

I fell off this game pretty hard when I realized that there's no exploration, it's just a series of windy linear brown corridors. Brown cities in the first area, sandy brown in the second area. So the only draw is the combat and while that is also fine once I got to an area that is just all snipers I stopped caring and played other games instead.

@dgtlty: I beat this in singleplayer the other day and had an absolute blast, it's probably my favourite Soulsy game not made by From Software (haven't played The Surge yet though).

It feels like it's well balanced around both singe player and co-op. The hardest encounter in solo was the first one for me (it's randomized), getting used to managing both a boss and the minions they summon, but once you figure out the pace of how you're supposed to deal with bosses, it all comes together.

In co-op it seems like the main change is increased health of everything. While that might sound like a lazy form of difficulty, because the boss fights are always boss + adds, it means increasing the health of the adds actually requires you to operate as a team for the sake of crowd control, whereas in singleplayer adds are really just a distraction and a spatial awareness challenge rather than a significant threat on their own.

Vinny was joking but cutting off his tail does get him a weapon if you kill him it would have been a flaming sword and he wanted a sword. Though breaking the tail does stop you getting the normal weapon which is the Spitfire a fire pistol with a mod that switches it into a flamethrower.

Keep your head up!

Keep your head up!

Keep your head up!

This brings to mind one of those dime-a-dozen post-apocalyptic sci-fi MMOs from the mid-to-late 2000's meets 'Destiny 2' meets 'The Division 2'. Even if I'm being unfair in that statement and the game gets better later on, it still might not be for me...

...but I'd be remiss if I didn't comment to honour King Ben and the saves he brings in the latter half of this QL. Long may his reign continue.

Edit: And good tries from Sers Brad and Vinny at the end there!

That feeling, when you think something might possibly be overrated, but it's highly subjective and you are not even invested in the game. Commenting on it wouldn't even help anyone...Why is it so hard to just get rid of these thoughts Oo Brain's already corrupted?

I love how Brad tends to turn the camera away in grave danger instead of turning the CHARACTER away. Never change!

The random level generation is a huge turn off. Comparing it to Bloodborne, which had phenomenal level and boss design, seems unfair to Bloodborne.

Can someone who has played it let me know if the levels and enemies being randomly generated makes it feel bland and lifeless?

I ask because up until I learned that info I was about to hit the buy button on this.

@topcyclist: "For people who never liked dark souls originally and didnt "get it" and mostly thought it was hard, clunky, boring, and had limited progression or incentive to play along with not telling you enought about what to do....im surprised giantbomb now years later likes dark souls like games so much. Heck even other sites originally hated dark souls now its the bees nees."
Giant Bomb has always been pretty positive on the DS games, especially Brad and Vinny, so I'm not sure where you got the idea they hated it, then didn't. Years ago Vinny did Load Our Lost Souls and Brad did Demon's Souls, and both (along with a few others on the site) have been championing those games almost since launch. So much so that Vinny and Brad are usually the people who do the quick looks for "Souls-like" games before Ben came along.

I think Ben took Vinny's chance to get bark skin by interacting with that tree, and since he already had it it was for naught. :(

@development: I worried about that too but I found each of the worlds to be quite diverse and the level design to be pretty good, it's not as intricate as a souls game but it's better than say, Diablo or something of that ilk.

I finished the game solo not too long ago and was surprised how much different stuff i've seen in this QL and it's making me want to do another playthrough, still not sure I want to play this game multiplayer though, the scaling seems a bit weird.

I'm no "Souls pro" and so far the difficulty has been a nice curve for solo play.
Two bosses required 3-4 attempts (Mangler & Singe (the dragon)) which is far less than some Dark Souls bosses in my case. I just made it to the Labyrinth and I'm excited to continue playing.

The sound design helps a lot with Boss mob management. Every enemy has distinct noises for winding up attacks. Some bosses might have 3-4 little assholes around you at all times, with AOE/status explosions going off left and right, and I often get out of harms way just by listening and reacting appropriately.

Also, my shotgun can summon very angry monsters to fight for me, and that's just cool.

here to chime in about the design of environments shown in the QL, go look at some other footage, the worlds vary in tone and color and enemy design quite a bit, which is great. I'm enjoying the game solo as most people are already past me or are back on the grind with other games but this game is fun on your own, I was surprised.

@topcyclist: If it's any consoltation, I still don't like Souls games very much.

@topcyclist: If it's any consoltation, I still don't like Souls games very much.

@development: I haven't played it yet, but from what I understand it's not really randomly generated, it's pre-designed areas and the randomization comes from which ones you'll actually get in a campaign.

@dgtlty: no. it's super one note and lacks any sort of depth. i think souls games are defined by extreme difficulty and needing to learn enemy behaviors to exploit their weakness to beat them without getting walloped. even sekiro had this. this game is purely spam fire, spam dodge, bonfire, rinse and repeat. and god damn are these levels utterly bland and repetitious. without the mini map i wouldnt have been been able to tell if i was coming or going.

Watching this and other gameplay, I just don't see what all the hype is for. This seems fine and that's it.

Wish I was as into as other people seem to be

Apparently after a few hours in you travel to different planets and the environments change drastically is what I heard from people and one of the devs that did a sit in with easy allies. Also wouldn't the game get way too easy with no enemy scaling?

Don't be scared to upgrade your stuff. Crafting material flows like water and only really becomes grindy if you want to upgrade *everything*. I had no issues with having a couple armor sets and four or so guns as I went.

The only downside I know of is a thing I can't confirm. Enemy scaling, so I've read, is based on Gear Level average +1, based on when you first enter a zone. Not character level. So you can potentially over upgrade and make a stage harder on yourself.