Path of Exile 2: new trailer and gameplay demo

At ExileCon 2023, held July 29-30, 2023 in Auckland, New Zealand, Grinding Gear Games revealed new details about the upcoming action/RPG Path of Exile 2 and showed off new bits of the game, namely a third trailer featuring new character classes and nearly half an hour of gameplay.

One of the main news of the presentation is that Path of Exile 2 is no longer a component and expansion to the original Path of Exile, but a separate game, a full-fledged sequel. There are no longer plans for a shared end-game and shared client for the two games, but all purchases that players made in the first part should be carried over to Path of Exile 2.

“This is much more than an expansion with a new campaign,” said Jonathan Rogers, co-founder of Grinding Gear Games and CTO of Path of Exile. “These are brand new monsters, skills, mechanics, classes, everything you’d expect from the next generation action/RPG. This thing [Path of Exile 2] is freaking huge. There was a point where we realized that our plan to replace PoE1 with PoE2 would essentially be getting rid of a game that people love for no real reason. So we made a decision: Path of Exile 1 and 2 will be separate, with their own mechanics, balance, endgames, and leagues.”

The upcoming game’s impressive stats can be seen in the trailer above. One of the main additions to Path of Exile 2 is the six new classes that will appear in the game. According to the authors, they should fill in the blanks in various combinations of the main characteristics of the images. So, Templar and Druid focus on the combination of Stregnth and Intelligence, Ranger and Huntress on Dexterity, and Shadow and Monk on the combination of Dexterity and Intelligence. In the thirty-minute demo of the game, one of the new game classes was shown – the Monk.

Unfortunately, Path of Exile 2 is still a long way from release. Closed beta testing of the game is scheduled to begin on June 7, 2024 (unless it is postponed, of course), which means that the game will most likely not be available to the general public until the summer of 2025.