Grinding Gears Games announced Path of Exile 2 today, so hold onto your PoE Currency! . The announcement was made at ExileCon hosted in Auckland, New Zealand. Path of Exile 2, however, despite its name, will be an expansion and overhaul to the original game. The Path of Exile 2 trailer has been published with the tagline "One Game. Two Campaigns."
What's new with Path of Exile 2
Set 20 years after the death of Kitava, Path of Exile 2's seven-act storyline will be available alongside the original Path of Exile 1 campaign, both leading to the same Atlas Endgame. Path of Exile 2 will also retain all expansion content from the last six years but with many new additions.
Some of these new additions are 19 new ascendancy classes that feature new abilities along with a new skill system. The Skill Gem system overhauls the old Path of Exile skill system but keeps the same level of customizability, without all of the frustrations. Other additions include all-new equipment, system upgrades, and visual upgrades, and more to be announced over the next year.
But players don't have to fret as Path of Exile will not be coming for a long while, with the beta unlikely to be until late 2020. In the meantime, Grinding Gears Games will continue to release Path of Exile expansions on their regular three-month cycle.
A fourteen-minute preview of Path of Exile 2 is available here:
Path of Exile Mobile
Fans have often viewed Path of Exile as an alternative to Diablo, even a spiritual successor to Diablo II, featuring versatile character customization, and high replayability value, features many fans believe Diablo III to lack.
It is probably not a coincidence that Path of Exile 2 is announced so soon after Diablo IV was announced just earlier this month, with key features from both Diablo II and Diablo III. And it is also no surprise that the newly announced Path of Exile Mobile is a direct jab at Diablo Immortal.
Path of Exile Mobile will be made in-house by Grinding Gear Games, as opposed to Blizzard codeveloping Diablo Immortal with mobile game developer Netease. Grinding Gear Games intends to bring Path of Exile to mobile with absolutely zero compromises, without all of what they call "bullshit trends" such as "pay-to-win microtransactions, time gates, energy bars, etc." Path of Exile mobile will be optimized for smaller screens and shorter gaming sessions but will keep most of the original game's design principles.
Watch the entire trailer here:
Another factor in the development of Path of Exile Mobile may be the acquiring of Tencent of a majority stake on Grinding Gear Games. Tencent is also involved with the development of many of the most popular mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, CoD Mobile, the upcoming League of Legends: Wild Rift, as well as many PC games.
