With the long-awaited Path of Exile 2, Grinding Gear Games must fulfil two seemingly contradictory tasks. On the one hand, the experience needs to be expanded with new content, which is no easy task as more than 10 years of expansions have made the original Path of Exile a truly massive game. At the same time, the game also needs to be made more accessible to newcomers, but this can't be easy either when the game's skill tree contains more abilities than there are stars in the night sky.
Maybe this is the reason the game's primary innovation targets both newcomers and seasoned players. In addition to the traditional setup where you guide your character using the mouse and choose skills via the keyboard, you now have the option to move your character with the WASD keys while aiming with the mouse, similar to a top-down shooter.
Jonathan Rodgers, the game's energetic and fast-speaking director, shares that Grinding Gear Games started testing this new control method while developing the Mercenary class, which mainly uses crossbows and attacks from mid-range. However, it turned out to be effective for other classes as well.
When I get to sit down with the game myself, I also choose the Mercenary, and it doesn't take many moments before I learn to appreciate the new, more action-orientated control scheme. Opening sequences in action role-playing games are often somewhat bland affairs, where you click through hordes of monsters that are about as annoying and dangerous as pop-up windows and cookie notifications. But in Path of Exile 2, I'm on my toes from the very start, and several times I have to do quick dodge rolls followed up by precisely timed shots with my crossbow to just stay alive.
The control scheme shouldn't get all the credit though, as Path of Exile 2's opening is spectacularly designed, right from the very first moment where you select your character. Five heroes are on display at a rain-soaked city square, gallows around their necks. They represent the game's main classes and the second you've made your choice, the other four are hanged while your character escapes. A morbid, but also extremely elegant way to streamline menus, cutscenes and gameplay.
After the escape, the game starts in earnest at the edge of a bleak forest. I fight my way through the dangerous monsters and arrive in a medieval village where torches and bonfires barely keep the darkness at bay. I love the atmosphere, which brings back nostalgic memories of the start of Diablo II. This is also where I get my first uncut gem. Rodgers explains:
"Skills are tied to items with no class restrictions. In PoE2 we are really trying to simply how it's presented for the players in terms of menus and such. In PoE2 you find these things called uncut skill gems. These are world drops, but you can also get them from quests. When you right click on them you get access to a Diablo II-style skill tree, where you can level up existing skills and equip new ones. If you are a new player, you do not have to worry much about these being tradeable items, you can just equip them."
As my game is not yet cut, I can choose which upgrade it gives me access to. I choose "Permafrost Bolts", which lets me freeze enemies with my shots. Later on, this will open up for combo attacks that shatter the frozen enemies, but for now it's mostly about slowing down the numerous and aggressive enemies that constantly swarm me. At this early stage, Path of Exile 2 is still very much a pure action game, but as more skills are unlocked and new equipment is found, the game's meta and underlying statistics will of course play a more prominent role.
Rodgers illustrates this with a post-game save, where he with his Mercenary destroys tough enemies with the help of visually impressive skills and weaponry. The destructiveness of his character is not only due to a constant switching between skill gems, whose attacks complement each other, but also the so-called support gems that modify existing abilities. For example, "Multiple Projectiles" can give both your grenades or fragmentation rounds extra firepower. "We've tried to make each support gem as general as possible, so they can work on as many abilities as possible," Rodgers explains, illustrating this with another character, a Warrior. Here he shows how an attack that makes a straight line of lava can be modified in several different ways thanks to support gems.
Even in the post-game phase, where numerous abilities are available, having quick reflexes focused on action remains crucial. Rodgers demonstrates a boss that fires floating fireballs, reminiscent of a bullet-hell game. Upon inquiring about this, he confirms that classic controls can manage such bosses, yet I would prefer not to face them without the precise and responsive WASD controls. Thankfully, you can easily toggle between control schemes by accessing the main pause menu.
I also asked Rodgers how long the game would be if you just hammered through the story. Few people would probably want to play like that, but with 50-60 hours of playtime in the campaign, it's an enormous appetiser before the game's massive postgame that will probably be the meat and bones of the experience. Incidentally, you can get through the story much faster the second time around if you want to play as a new character, Rodgers explains: " The knowledge that you have as a player - even if your character wouldn't have it - is still reflected in the quest system. If you know that something can be found in a certain place, you don't have to talk to an NPC first. You can just do the quest before you are even told about it."
Unfortunately, I don't get to do many missions myself, as my time with the game was limited to half an hour. But based on what I tried and what Rodgers showed off, it seems that Grinding Gear Games is well on their way to pull of the difficult feat of delivering a game that is mechanically and content-wise deeper than the original, but also more accessible to new players. Whether this hold true, we'll learn shortly, as Path of Exile 2 releases into Early Access on November 15.