Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games announced a surprise sequel to their popular dungeon-crawler RPG at the annual ExileCon event.
Seen as a spiritual successor to the Diablo franchise for some, the game’s loyal fanbase had received no word about the new campaign.
The trailer and gameplay footage were both released by Grinding Gear at ExileCon on Friday, November 15, without any previous mention from the company about an announcement this big in the days leading up to the reveal.
So, what are in the previews?
The cinematic trailer starts out with a look at the new character selection, in which your chosen hero is the only survivor of a mass public hanging – setting the tone that PoE is known for.
We also got a look at some of the new environments coming for PoE 2, including a stage that’s entirely on the top of a giant Mad Max-like vehicle.
PoE 2 will have a new seven-act storyline that is available alongside the original Path of Exile campaign.
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Both storylines lead to the same shared Atlas endgame and PoE 2 retains all expansion content that has been created over the last six years while introducing a new skill system, ascendancy classes, engine improvements and more.
There are 19 new ascendancy classes in PoE 2 alongside the original classes, that will still be available in the old campaign.
The game’s skill system is also getting updated to make it less frustrating to use, while still keeping the depth that PoE is known for. In this sequel, it will be possible to six-link every skill your character uses.
Armor, weapons, character models and animation have also been completely redone, but all previous microtransaction purchases will still carry over from PoE 1.
There’s no release date for PoE 2 yet, but Grinding Gear did say they don’t intend to start a beta until very late in 2020. In the meantime, they will continue to release regular expansions every six months.
