It's been nearly four years since our last significant dose of Path of Exile 2 news, but Grinding Gear Games took to the stage today to finally pull the veil back on the ARPG sequel during today's ExileCon 2023.
The major news first: Path of Exile 2 is no longer going to be integrated as an expansion with Path of Exile 1, as was initially announced back at ExileCon 2019. The sequel to Grinding Gear Games' award-winning ARPG will now act as its own stand-alone product, as game director Jonathan Rogers said during ExileCon today, the sequel just got bigger and bigger.
Gone is the shared endgame and client between Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2. Instead, the sequel will be a stand-alone product. The good news is that microtransactions will still carry over across games, meaning purchases aren't left behind just because you want to play the shiny new ARPG.
"It's far more than an expansion with a new campaign," Rogers said during a playthrough session of PoE 2. "It's entirely new monsters, skills, mechanics, classes, everything you would expect from the next generation of Action RPGs. [...] This thing is freaking huge. There was a point where we realized that our plan to replace PoE 1 with PoE 2 would essentially be destroying a game that people love for no reason. So we made a decision. Path of Exile 1 and 2 would be separate, with their own mechanics, balance, endgames, and leagues."
Six New Classes Coming With Path of Exile 2
The gameplay demo takes place in Act 3 of six acts in the Path of Exile 2 campaign. Described as During the demo, Rogers talked about the various classes of Path of Exile 2, stating that the goal here was to create classes that fit builds with every attribute combination:
- Stregnth/Int - Templar and Druid
- Dexterity - Ranger and the Huntress
- Dexterity/Int - Shadow and the Monk
The demo started with the Monk, highlighting the new class and some of its mechanics. With the Monk being a mobile melee class, Rogers mentions that pretty much every melee skill in Path of Exile 2 has some mobility attached to it, whether it's moving you closer to an enemy to cull or moving you out of harms way. This was demonstrated with the Monk's sweeping AOE skill, Wave of Frost, which sends...well..a wave of frost at enemies and moves the Monk backward to give them the spacing to pull off the Glacial Cascade skill.
Learning positioning is key, but it's helped by the fact that you can now start an attack facing one direction and have it land in a different direction. This allows you to start pulling off moves while moving into position, flipping the mouse around to where you want it to hit.
While the Monk is a highly mobile melee class, every class now has more mobility in the form of a dodge roll. This dodge roll allows you to get out of the way of attacks, though the roll doesn't make you invulnerable, though there are things that will miss you if the roll is timed right. If something hits you while you're rolling, such as a large AOE slam coming down on you, you'll feel it. But sword swings or fireballs will pass harmlessly by as you roll out of the way.
Dodge can also be used to cancel out nearly any skill. This solves one of my biggest gripes in ARPGs where I feel like I get stuck on an animation and feel the full weight of an attack if it's mistimed. Now, with the roll dodge, attacks can be canceled with a roll, getting my character out of danger.
As the demo progressed, combat looked absolutely fluid and impactful. Weaving attacks in and out, culling enemies around the jungle ruins of the Vaal Machinarium, built by the once great Vaal civilization that fell thousands of years prior, the environments looked like a marked upgrade visually from the original Path of Exile. PoE 1 is not an unattractive game by any stretch, but you can tell the last few years of work on Path of Exile 2's engine and fidelity have really paid off.
The animations especially looked amazing. In a game where combat fluidity will make or break how it feels, the animations have to be on point - and the team at Grinding Gear Games has delivered here. Watching the Monk zip in and strike enemies, flip out of danger with the Frost Wave, slam a cascading wall of Ice with Glacial Cascade - everything flowed together in a seamless dance of death.
The crackling lightning orbs that fly out when the Monk used its Falling Thunder skill illuminated the ground around them, shocking smaller waves of enemies to death. These little touches add atmosphere and make everything look as brutal as the series is known for.
The boss fights themselves looked pretty interesting as well, though the actual combat will feel more impactful when we're able to go hands-on ourselves (look for our coverage out of Gamescom and PAX West for that since GGG will be showcasing 2 there next month). In every area of Path of Exile 2, there will be a boss to fight, with over 100 bosses, each with a unique mechanic to challenge Exiles everywhere.
Major Gameplay Mechanic Changes
One of the major reasons that Path of Exile 2 is now a standalone game rather than Path of Exile 4.0.0 is sweeping changes to some pretty major mechanics.
Throughout the demo, these changes were highlighted, especially the way Frost and any other crowd control skill now works in Path of Exile 2. Instead of it being a binary status effect - you were either frozen, or you weren't in PoE 1 -
One of the most noticeable changes during the demo was the mix of two elemental specializations for the Monk and, eventually, the Sorceress, that joined the Monk halfway through the demo. In Path of Exile, it is inefficient to specialize in more than one elemental type. However, in Path of Exile 2, this is encouraged thanks to the way both the skill tree operates, as well as the weapon swap mechanic.
Now you can easily swap between two weapon sets that specialize, such as the Sorceress' staves that have either an Ice or Lightning mod on them - giving power to their specific elemental qualities. This can easily be done in-game during gameplay and combat, with the character literally grabbing the new weapon off their back in a rather fluid animation.
Your various skills can also be linked to certain weapon types, meaning you can link your Ice skills to be useable on your Ice weapon, Lightning skills on that corresponding weapon. This gives some control over your build, letting you chain between the two to great effect. This is where the cost of weapon swapping in combat comes into play, though, as it does take time to swap between the two. As such, having some skills that are useable on both weapons makes sense in order to negate that time penalty in swapping.
Passive skills will also dynamically change based on your weapon choice, allowing you to set specific weapon set points to allocate. By doing this, it means no passives are wasted while using one weapon over the other.
Skill gems are also getting a major change, with uncut gems dropping from enemies that allow players even further to customize their builds. Instead of monsters dropping specific skill gems, they will drop uncut gems. These are used for players to choose whichever skill they want - a major boon for those of us who didn't quite always hit the RNG lottery when we needed to previously.
Still a ways away
While the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the release of Path of Exile 2 out of 2020, the scope the ARPG sequel turned into likely also pushed release out even further. Grinding Gear Games is still actively developing Path of Exile 1 as well, launching new leagues and content for the free-to-play ARPG.
As such, while Path of Exile 2 is getting closer, it's still a fair bit off if you're itching to play it this year. Closed beta is slated to launch on June 7th, 2024. While this means we'll be waiting just under a year still before the betas kick off for the sequel, it looks incredibly ambitious. Going from an expansion onto Path of Exile to its own sequel, complete with its own story, mechanics and leagues, all while not cannibalizing the game that's already a worldwide phenomenon, is no easy task.
But while it's been just about four years since we've really seen Path of Exile 2, the time looks well spent. The gameplay snippet shown at ExileCon 2023 looks like just the tip of the iceberg. And it's got me excited for what the team still has to show for sure.
