The joy of cheesing bosses in Remnant 2
We haven't deserved a single victory
Liam and I have been playing looter shooter Remnant 2 in our spare time, as we realised we both couldn't stop thinking about it. Having been burned out of Destiny 2 and most live service games, we discovered Remnant 2 delivers all the benefits of blasting gangly creatures for skill points without all the live service baggage. What a refreshing thing.
Thing is, if two out of the three major bosses we've faced so far took us to court for cheesing them, we'd lose. And it brings us no greater pleasure, knowing we've carved powerful new weapons out of their remains. God, it feels good to be totally undeserving of any credit whatsoever.
Remnant 2's known for being a tricky shooter, and many say it's "Dark Souls with guns", which I think is objectively wrong but let's not get into that (it's nothing like Dark Souls, really). Liam and I have crashed our way through several hours of its procedurally generated dungeons, first finding ourselves in a gothic London with dribbly Brits who wanted us dead, then another realm where literal slabs of wall proved a threat.
The game's good at steering you in the direction of sidequests without you really knowing. You'll sort of walk through portals and collecting little statues and before you know it you're stepping into the nightmarish realm of some anguished person who's wrapped up in a spider's web. The Nightweaver - or at least, I think that's what she was called - was our first major hurdle, as she'd fire missiles, then like, swoop at us relentlessly. Sometimes she'd stop and summon some exploding ticks who'd skitter across the floor, just to make things even trickier.
We died a lot to the Nightweaver, only making it to her second phase in a creepy house where she'd come at you from the walls and crawl at you really fast. I think we were on the verge of calling it a night when one time, Liam died before the second phase and I warped into the house alone (normally I'd die first, so this was a rarity). Slowly, steadily, we realised she wasn't attacking me at all? Like, she'd just crawl up to the front door and slither about, totally ignoring me. I just stood still, rattling shots into her for ten minutes as she desperately clawed at the woodwork. Turns out, she was after Liam's levitating corpse, somehow suspended in midair.
You might think the victory hollow, as she perished into dust and lots of loot filled our inventories. No, it was fantastic. The sort of giggly thrill you might get if you and your mate nicked a Haribo Tangfastic from a classmate's open packet as they turned away for a second.
Our next cheese came in the form of a fight against, I kid you not, lots of enormous cubes. Trapped in a series of corridors, we'd need to shoot glowing white bits on large cubes that would either squish us as they clattered around, or sat suspended in the air, firing cube missiles at us. I was absolute shite at surviving the crush, so I'd often watch Liam transform into a goblin as he expressed his fear and frustration in increasingly throaty cries. Again, we just couldn't quite cross the finish line. Until one time where the final cube just… gave up. Liam had one last cube to shoot and it just decided, "These guys are dreadful", before exploding into another pile of loot.
While there's the obvious sense of achievement when you defeat a boss fair and square, I think cheesing a boss brings an equally brilliant sense of joy. It activates the opportunist in us, the hunter-gatherer ancestor flickers to life somewhere and relishes the idea of a hamstrung sequence of code to roast around the fire.
You guessed it. We immediately crafted some new weapons out of the Nightweaver and large cube. I am now the proud owner of a cube pistol that fires electricity, and Liam has a horrible rifle covered in fingers that turns him invisible and shoots really fast. We haven't won a fight fair and square in ages, yet, look at us! Thriving.