Taylor Denison is the senior technical combat designer at Gunfire Games and the man responsible for some of the coolest (and most brutal) boss fights in Remnant: From The Ashes. We spoke with Taylor to learn about his approach to boss encounters, how he thinks about designing bosses, and what it takes to make a challenging, memorable boss fight.
What Makes A Boss Fight Good?
Taylor designed the vast majority of post-game DLC bosses for Remnant, including the body-splitting root monster Riptide, the optional super boss Iskal Queen in the Swamps of Corsus DLC, and all but one of the bosses in final DLC, Subject 2923 (excluding the Brudvaak, the Rider and Vargr, the Warg boss fight).
His greatest claim to fame though is Ixillis, otherwise known as the bridge fight that players encounter their first time through Corsus. Ixillis is a particularly unforgiving fight, which Taylor readily acknowledges. To him, mechanically challenging boss fights are the most rewarding for players. The fights he designed all have that in common, and the challenge was ratcheted up even further in the DLC bosses:
"I have an inclination towards very mechanical bosses that turn out to be quite hard. In my own defense, in making DLC bosses I have been specifically gearing more towards the DLC audience, which is generally the playerbase that has already beaten the main game...[players] that are already engaged and looking forward to DLC that they want to spend a long time on, so I want to give them a boss that's going to take a lot of time!"
These mechanics-heavy boss fights do end up being the most memorable ones. Taylor explains that it's not the difficulty of the fight so much as the complexity of it because it forces the player to learn something new:
"I really like bosses that have mechanics that make you learn something new while you're in the boss fight, more than just the minor difference of the pacing of the fight or the timing of the animations, but going to that next level in mechanics and having to learn the behavior of the boss and, ideally, posing some sort of cerebral challenge to the player."
Beyond technically complex boss fights, Taylor also loves creating bosses that have the potential to shock and surprise players. Big moments not only make bosses more memorable but also more rewarding:
"If a boss can hit an exciting aesthetic, has big memorable moments...on Ixillis I think one of the most memorable moments is just the second one popping out and you're like 'WHAT? There's a second boss!?' So even that form of memorable, sometimes it's shock like that, sometimes it's awe in some really awesome thing they do like Claviger when he slams the arena and spins the table, and just being this big huge thing that comes out of nowhere."
Not every boss encounter in Remnant was a hit with fans though. Taylor explained why adjustments to certain boss fights were made thanks to post-launch feedback and how crucial player expectation is to the success of any particular boss:
"Our audience does not appreciate the bosses that are more add driven...Our players feel very strongly that they want the boss to be the main threat, whatever it is that has the big health bar at the top better be the thing that I'm most scared of. We certainly didn't know that was going to be the case going into it, now looking back and seeing this boss and this boss were very much in that style so those don't hit what we now know is the quality bar, because the quality bar is defined by our players more so than just what we think is going to work.
Building Fights Around Weapon Specs
The amount of variety in weapons, abilities, and build specializations is part of what makes Remnant such an endlessly replayable game, but that level of customization has a huge impact on the way bosses are designed:
Certain mechanics and boss designs have to immediately be thrown out because of mods and weapons that exist in the game. I try to support melee only play, but at the same a lot of the focus is on 'how am I going to challenge players that have guns?' The Natural result is that a lot of those bosses are going to have a lot of ranged mechanics. Many of those mechanics don't work well with melee.
Designing bosses that challenge melee and ranged users takes special consideration. Taylor explained how the fights are designed to fit multiple playstyles. In the Iskal Queen fight, for example, the platform she stands on in Phase 1 is low so that melee players can reach her. If there were only ranged options, Iskal Queen would likely have stood on a much taller platform surrounded by God rays to add a greater sense of awe to the fight.
Designing Hard Counters
In general, Taylor's philosophy around countering bosses is that it isn't particularly rewarding for players if there is a weapon or mod that has the potential to trialize a fight. Taylor jokes that it's painful to see a boss go down in one shot that he spent so long creating, but the actual reason he wants to prevent "hard counters" is to protect the integrity of the player experience:
"It kills me to see a fight get turned into 'oh, for this fight you just need to use this mod or this weapon.' The reality of the boss fight, the strategy, understanding its moves and mechanics just gets buried under it."
That doesn't mean bosses aren't designed with counters in mind. Taylor knows how exciting it is when players discover ways to get advantages in a fight. Bosses like Riphide, for example, are meant to be weak to AOE. Taylor purposefully filled the boss arena with exploding plants that spread between the copies of Riphide to clue players in to the power of AOE in that fight:
"It's fun to connect those dots: 'This boss is weak to AOE, when I think about it, this one weapon I have has a really strong AOE, let me try that.' When you connect those dots and get heavily rewarded for it, it's great. That's a fantastic experience.
In Boss Fights, Less Is More
Taylor's favorite boss fight is Ixillis particularly because of how few moves it has while managing to be a complex and challenging fight. Taylor explained this is something he strives for in his design:
"I see streamers fighting Iskal Queen and when they get to the melee phase they're always like 'Man, how many moves is this? How much do I have to learn?' When I see that stuff I know exactly why every move exists and I wouldn't have felt comfortable removing a single one of them. But at the same time, I still look back at Ixillis and go man, Ixillis has like 3 or 4 moves and yet was a plenty challenging fight. Any boss that manages to be challenging cerebrally and just in terms of execution while having a really small number of moves, I'm always really happy with."
Remnant: From The Ashes - Complete Edition is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.