The New Zealanders from Grinding Gear Games have high regard for their action RPG Path of Exile. With the new expansion, Path of Exile 2, the free-to-play title is even expected to be able to take on Blizzard’s Diablo 4. The title’s experience and content richness are seen as advantages. A release of both games is likely to happen no earlier than 2021.
Who’s speaking? The founder of Grinding Gear Games, Chris Wilson, is speaking in an interview with GameSpot.
Grinding Gear Games has just introduced the major expansion “Path of Exile 2”, which will be both an addon and a sequel to Path of Exile.
This is what he says: Wilson is asked whether Path of Exile can compete with “Diablo 4”. Surely, Diablo 4 has a higher development budget.
Wilson says:
“Yeah. Path of Exile belongs to the next generation of action RPGs and we think it is well positioned.”
Blizzard has the money – but Path of Exile is already popular and proven
This is what Wilson says about Diablo 4: Wilson admits that Blizzard is one of the largest studios in the world and has a lot of money. This gives the studio some advantages:
“Any company with a lot of money can create really nice graphics and so on. They surely have good graphics and a great story.”
This is the advantage of Path of Exile: However, Wilson sees a benefit in the title’s previous development history.
“But we bring between six and seven years of content and balancing with us. If you make a new game, it might be bad. You won’t know until you play it. With Path of Exile, we know it is good. There are a lot of people out there who think it’s good.”
When will the two games come out? One should not expect the duel between Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4 too soon: Neither game has a release date yet.
- Path of Exile 2 is expected to enter beta at the end of 2020 – a release could then occur in 2021.
- Diablo 4 has only said that it won’t be soon, not even “Blizzard soon”. Analysts expect a release no earlier than 2021.
However, both games were already playable in early demo versions.
Path of Exile started in 2013 as “the counter-design to Diablo 3” and wanted to establish a darker setting and more complex game mechanics. Over the years, the free-to-play title has been extremely successful. Diablo 4 is also expected to be darker again.
