With the long-awaited Path of Exile 2, Grinding Gear Games must fulfill two seemingly contradictory tasks. On the one hand, the experience needs to be expanded with new content, which is no easy task since more than 10 years of expansions have turned the original Path of Exile into a truly massive game. At the same time, the game needs to be more accessible to newcomers, but that’s not easy when the game’s skill tree contains more abilities than there are stars in the night sky.
Perhaps that’s why the game’s big innovations are aimed at both new and returning players. To complement the classic controls of using the mouse to control your character and the keyboard to select skills, you can now also use the WASD keys to control your character while using the mouse to aim – almost like a top-down shooter. The game’s enthusiastic and fast-talking game director, Jonathan Rodgers, explains that Grinding Gear Games began experimenting with new control schemes when they created the Mercenary class, which primarily uses crossbows and mid-range attacks, but it turns out it also Applies to other classes.
I would also pick up Mercenary when I sat down to play the game myself, and it didn’t take long for me to learn to appreciate the new, more action-oriented control scheme. Opening sequences in action RPGs are often somewhat bland, in which you click through hordes of monsters that are as annoying and dangerous as pop-ups and cookie notifications. But in Path of Exile 2, I was on my toes from the start, and there were a few times where I had to do quick dodge rolls and then precisely timed shots with my crossbow to survive.
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The control scheme shouldn’t get all the credit, though, as Path of Exile 2’s opening design is spectacular, from the first moment you select your character. The five heroes were displayed in a rain-soaked city square with gallows hanging around their necks. They represent the game’s main professions, and when you make the second one of your choices, the other four will be hanged and your character will escape. A morbid yet extremely elegant way to simplify menus, cutscenes, and gameplay.
After escaping, the game begins in earnest on the edge of a desolate forest. I fought my way through dangerous monsters to reach a medieval village where torches and bonfires did little to keep out the darkness. I love this vibe, it brings back nostalgic memories of the beginning of Diablo II. This is also where I got my first uncut gem. Rodgers explained:
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” “Skills are associated with items that have no class restrictions. In PoE2, we’re really trying to simply show the player things like menus. In PoE2 you’ll 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 twice, you gain access to a Diablo II-style skill tree, where you can upgrade existing skills and equip new ones. If you’re a new player you don’t have to worry too much as these are tradeable items and you can equip them.
Since my game hasn’t been edited yet, I can choose which upgrades it allows me to access. I choose “Permafrost Bolts” so I can freeze enemies with my shots. Later on, this will open the door to combo attacks that crush frozen enemies, but for now it’s mostly about slowing down the numerous aggressive enemies that keep swarming you. At this early stage, Path of Exile 2 is still very much a pure action game, but as more skills are unlocked and new gear is discovered, the game’s meta and underlying statistics will certainly play a more prominent role.
Rogers illustrated this with the post-game save, using his Mercenary to destroy tough enemies with a visually impressive set of skills and weapons. The destructiveness of his character is due not only to the constant switching between skill gems, whose attacks complement each other, but also to the so-called support gems that modify existing abilities. For example, Multi-Projectiles can give your grenades or frag rounds extra firepower. “We try to make each support gem as versatile as possible so they can use as many abilities as possible,” Rogers explains, using another character, Warrior, to illustrate the point. Here, he shows how an attack that forms a line of lava can be modified in a number of different ways with the help of support gems.
But even here, at the end of the game, where you have a myriad of abilities to choose from, more action-focused reactions are still important. Rogers showed us a boss that shoots floating fireballs, almost like in a bullet hell. When I asked about this, he assured me that you could also use classic controls to handle these types of bosses, but I didn’t want to be without precise and responsive WASD controls in this situation. Fortunately, you can quickly switch between control types by opening the main pause menu.
I also asked Rodgers how long the game would be if you just finalized the story. Few people will probably want to play this way, but with 50-60 hours of gameplay in the campaign, it’s a huge appetizer before the game’s big post-game, which is probably the highlight of the experience. By the way, if you want to play as a new character, you can complete the story faster the second time around, Rogers explains : “The knowledge you have as a player – even if your character doesn’t have it – is still reflected in the quest system. If you know something is to be found somewhere, you don’t have to talk to an NPC first. You can even Complete the task before you are told.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to do many of the missions myself, as my time with the game was limited to half an hour. But based on what I tried and what Rogers showed off, Grinding Gear Games seems to be well on its way to the difficult task of delivering a game that’s both deeper in mechanics and content than the original, but also more accessible to new players accept. Whether this is true or not, we’ll find out soon, as Path of Exile 2 will be released in Early Access on November 15th.
