In a livestream today developer Grinding Gear Games made a slew of announcements, including a first look at a new playable class in its upcoming ARPG Path of Exile 2: the mercenary.
The long-awaited sequel, which announced way back in 2019, is still a ways away from its closed beta kicking off in June of next year, but in the meantime a steady stream of reasons to get excited have come our way, including IGN's hands-on time with the druid class a few months ago.
The class revealed today though, dubbed the mercenary, is in a league all its own. Armed with a slew of crossbows, including those capable of sniping from across the map, peppering enemies with elemental effects at close-range, or even blasting away hoardes with fully-automatic payloads, the mercenary converts the ARPG experience into something resembling a twinstick shooter.
Compared to the rather expected hack-and-slash approach of the warrior and the druid, the mercenary's shameless shooting is quite a departure from anything the free-to-play series has seen before.
"When thinking about each new class, we really try to think about what can make combat feel different from all the others," explained game director Jonathan Rogers. "For the Mercenary, that difference is the crossbow. A crossbow is fundamentally different than a regular bow because it fires instantly instead of needing to be drawn back. Clicking the fire button should make the character shoot instantly, just like in a shooter. As soon as we experienced that, we realised that there are a lot of design lessons to learn from shooters, and so we fully embraced them."
"In Path of Exile 2, we have crossbows that work like sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles."
Because the mercenary's running-and-gunning ways probably wouldn't pair well with traditional point-and-click ARPG controls, Grinding Gear Games also announxed that WASD support is coming to Path of Exile 2 -- a long-requested feature that will allow players to aim their attacks in one direction, while moving their avatar in another.
The showcase also featured some news about the original Path of Exile's upcoming season: Affliction, which brings some highly requested quality of life improvements and a whole bunch of new content to tide players over until Path of Exile 2 next year.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
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