(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Jonathan Rogers, one of the co-founders of the studio behind Path of Exile, isn’t afraid to call his own game too old to be the perfect action RPG. The first PoE had its moment and now it lives comfortably on updates made to please its most dedicated fans. It’s not going anywhere, but it’s also not going to be the next big thing.

Path of Exile 2, however, could be the game at the end of Rogers’ "quest to make the perfect ARPG," he told PC Gamer in a recent interview. Despite its differences to PoE 1, some of which have gone away over the last year in early access, "it was never really about making it feel distinct," he says.

In the last year, Grinding Gear Games has been navigating the treacherous waters of making a sequel that veers pretty far away from the vibe of the first game. If PoE 1 is a rampage through thousands of monsters, PoE 2 is a dance with far fewer, but more threatening monsters—a fundamental shift in the feel of the game. And not everyone has been a fan of the pivot, especially when any class that feels remotely like PoE 1 inevitably gets gutted in a patch.

"It’s been incredibly tricky to split the difference, just incredibly tricky," he says of balancing the game for players who want to slide through combat at blazing speeds and players who want an uphill battle. "There have been times where—in moments of weakness—I’m like, maybe we can’t appeal to both of those groups … But I definitely believe that you can make an experience that has both good combat and delivers on the kind of feeling of like I feel powerful and good and can do these things as well."

PoE 1’s strategy is not attracting users now.

Grinding Gear Games co-founder Jonathan Rogers

In the current version of PoE 2, some of the roughest edges have been sanded off and replaced by things that work in PoE 1, like having more than one life in endgame maps. It’s still its own game, but some compromises have been made to appease players who aren’t interested in PoE 2’s almost soulslike encounters.

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According to Rogers, borrowing ideas that worked in the first game isn’t off limits as long as they make it better. PoE 2 was only ever about "fixing the things that I perceived as problems we couldn’t fix in PoE 1," he says, and to make something that isn’t as dated.

"PoE 1’s strategy is not attracting users now," he added: It’s about pleasing the players that come back every three months for a new league. "The days of that game growing are much less likely than PoE 2," he says. "I mean just literally only for just graphics reasons. There’s a lot of people who won’t play a game that looks that old."

PoE 2 is about to add a class that never made it to PoE 1: druids. Everyone will be able to see GGG’s take on the classic RPG archetype when its next update, The Last of the Druids, launches on December 12.

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he’s driven to cover all sorts of games whether they’re broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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