Path of Exile 2 redefines the console experience. Game directors Jonathan Rogers and Trevor Gamon take a deep dive into the intricacies of this experience.
Jonathan Rogers – PoE Game Director
When we started working on Path of Exile 2 on consoles, we knew we had to do a much better job than we've done in the past. And Path of Exile 2 is a great game to do that with because the combat is so much more visceral and action-oriented. As soon as we tried it on a controller, all of those extra features that we did to make melee combat feel so much better just really came out and felt great.
We've got a dedicated team for consoles now, and they were able to create a new user interface just for the controller. And we're really excited to show it to you guys.
Trevor Gamon – PoE Console Game Director
It's a twin-stick, so basically, the left stick is your movement, as you'd expect. And the right stick is the direction control for your character. So it allows you to do things like run backward and stuff like that. It also overrides auto-targeting, allowing you to manually target enemies that surround you, giving you much greater control. It works in combination with the keybinds. So we've got 24 keybinds that we have for the game, which sounds a bit daunting, but the way we kind of manage that is each skill that you gain is basically given a default bind, and then you can choose to override that if you want. It's completely in the player's hands to choose where they want to bind the actual skills. You have a lot of freedom with regards to your design of your build because that is the nature of the game, is that we need to allow that flexibility for players to create whatever they want to play.
Inventory management for consoles: we've basically redesigned the whole menu system specifically for consoles. It's full screen. It provides you with a preview of your character so you can actually see the full model of the character close up. But functionally, we still hold fidelity to the actual PC game. So inventory management is like picking up an item, moving it around, placing it, and equipping it as usual, but we also provide shortcuts. So, like there's a fast way to equip, there's a fast way to use an item in your inventory.
Jonathan Rogers
So when we're thinking about what would be a great reason to play Path of Exile on a couch, one of the things that we knew a lot of people would really enjoy was playing with their friends in co-op. This is actually a feature that a lot of games just don't bother with anymore, but it's something that I really love personally.
You can play through the whole game from beginning to end together, enjoying the story along the way. One of the great things is that in Path of Exile 2, we have a lot more synergy between our classes. So, if you're playing something different from your friend, you'll probably find a lot of ways to work together.
Trevor Gamon
So, the addition of couch co-op was initially a bit of an experiment, but then we started to expand on it. We introduced separate HUDs for each of the characters. And then once we got the camera system working with two characters, it really started to kind of come together and play really nicely. So then we expanded on that by providing couch co-op players with panel versions of the full-screen menus that I've spoken about, which allowed us to have simultaneous play with regard to inventory management and adjusting your passive skill tree and stuff like that.
It was really just an evolution of the original sort of single-player game that actually turned into something pretty special.
So logging in with couch co-op is pretty straightforward. You log in as normal with a single player, and then you can choose to log in with the second player as a guest on that account. Or if you've got a friend who's a fan of the game as well, who also has an account, they can log in as a second player and have access to all their content as well. So, we basically made it as flexible as possible to play anywhere you want to play.
We're really happy with the addition of it, and it's available on console and PC as well. So it's on all available platforms. I'd say it's integral to the main game now.
Jonathan Rogers
With Path of Exile 2, we're trying to introduce the game to a much larger audience. And that means that it's really important to make sure that all our mechanics are understandable. Path of Exile has a reputation for being a game of complexity, and this is something we want to make sure that we're improving while also maintaining all the depth that we have. So we're making sure in Path of Exile 2 that we've got a lot more systems around giving you more information.
Our item system, for example. It's certainly an area that had some complexity. Well, in Path of Exile 2, we wanted to make sure there weren't any hidden mechanics anymore. And so we've added a help system built into every hover. With the press of a button, you can get help about what any stat does. And we've found that's really useful to the play experience.
Trevor Gamon
Path of Exile 2 has full cross-play and cross-progression. Cross-progression basically allows you to play your game on your PC, and then if you want to move to the couch and continue playing, then you can. You just switch on your PlayStation and continue playing.
It makes sense for us to release this on PC and consoles at the same time. The models we're supporting are PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series models.
Jonathan Rogers
People around the office have had a huge amount of fun on the console version of Path of Exile 2, especially with the couch co-op. We'll be having a beta on console simultaneously with PC at the end of the year. I'm really excited to see what you guys think.
Trevor Gamon
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to converting everyone to use a controller when they're playing Path of Exile 2.
Conclusion
Cross-play, cross-progression, and couch co-op will be available simultaneously when early access begins in late 2024.
