Grinding Gear Games was busy at ExileCon in Auckland, New Zealand, as the developer revealed Path of Exile 2, as well as a new expansion and mobile version for the original game.
Path of Exile 2 is not entirely a new game and will be similar to the idea behind Overwatch 2. The sequel will add a new seven-act storyline that will be available alongside the original campaign of Path to Exile, and it will retain all the expansions that have been released over the past six years.
Path of Exile 2 will add a new skill system, ascendancy classes, and engine improvements, but all cosmetics will carry over from the first game. It will not be coming soon though, as Grinding Gear Games said that beta testing will it will not likely start until late 2020.
In the meantime, Path of Exile players will be able to keep themselves busy with Conquerors of Atlas, the game’s upcoming 3.9.0 expansion. It adds a new endgame story with five bosses, upgradeable maps, and new skills. The expansion also introduces improvements to bows, which should be good news for players who prefer the weapon.
The Conquerors of Atlas expansion brings with it Metamorph, the new league for Path of Exile. Players will meet a “master alchemist” named Tane Octavius, who will collect samples of the monsters that players have killed in the league. Players may then ask Tane to combine samples to build their own boss, with their choice of abilities and rewards.
The last announcement was that Grinding Gear Games is working on Path of Exile Mobile, an experimental version of the game for mobile devices. The mobile version will not have pay-to-win elements and is being developed in-house. Several other details remain unknown even to the developers, such as whether it will contain Path of Exile 2 content.
In an interview with GameSpot, Grinding Gear Games founder Chris Wilson said that he believes Path of Exile 2 will be able to stand alongside the highly anticipated Diablo IV, despite the presumably massive budget of Blizzard for the game.
“Any company with a lot of money can make really nice graphics and so on. They have amazing graphics as well and a great storyline and so on,” said Wilson. “But what we have here [with Path of Exile 2] is bringing across six or seven years of content including all the balance and ecosystem. If you make a new game, maybe it’s bad? You don’t know until you play it. Whereas we know Path of Exile is good, and there are a lot of people out there who like that.”
