I’m pretty excited about Remnant 2’s first DLC, The Awakened King. Aside from adding a whole new area to one of my favourite games of 2023—a much-appreciated upgrade, since it’s built to be played multiple times—it’ll also add a new archetype, build-altering jewellery, and even more guns for me to tinker with. 

What’s more, if you’re playing the game with a friend, they’ll be able to join you for the ride whether they own the DLC or not, as confirmed by the official Remnant 2 twitter account yesterday.

There are, however, some caveats. While you can receive items, anything DLC-specific will collect dust in your bags until you buy it. You’ll still be getting all of the game’s default resources, though, so you’re not getting nothing out of the deal. This is genuinely pretty neat, though thinking about it, I’m not sure there was another way to pull this off.

Remnant 2 works by slotting together procedurally-arranged, hand-crafted areas on any playthrough, like a randomised mega-dungeon in an ARPG. The Awakened King takes place in the world of Losomn, but you need to beat every world once on any given playthrough. Unless the DLC breaks with that tradition, the new zone will likely be just another biome you can encounter on your travels.

All this to say, if one player has the DLC and another player doesn’t, blocking off the latter from doing the DLC content would also shut down that co-op run. “Sorry, Jeff, we rolled the DLC level, you’ve got to hang tight while I spend a couple of hours putting the Awakened King back to sleep. I’ll tell you all about it when I’m back.”

Still, as far as compromises go, this is very generous. I especially like that you still get the loot—and while filling up your bags with loot you can’t use while your co-op partner plays with their new toys is absolutely some kind of marketing strategy, it’s ultimately a win-win. The Awakened King will be arriving November 14.