Path of Exile 2 is in development, Grinding Gear Games announced during yesterday's ExileCon. Interestingly, it won't be a brand new game as one might have assumed, as the developers are taking a rather unique approach, labeling it as a new campaign instead.

　　That said, Path of Exile 2 will still feature a laundry list of improvements that one would usually associate with a sequel, starting with a massively improved engine for both graphics (through physically based rendering) and physics.

　　Path of Exile 2 is a new seven-act storyline that is available alongside the original Path of Exile 1 campaign. Both the old and new storyline lead to the same shared Atlas endgame. Path of Exile 2 retains all expansion content that has been created over the last six years and introduces a new skill system, ascendancy classes, engine improvements and more.Since the death of Kitava, society has been slowly rebuilding. Ambitious men rise to fill the void and their thirst for power is once again corrupting Wraeclast.Path of Exile 2's characters are a new set of Exiles who fall into the same class archetypes as those in the original game. As such, they can pick from a set of 19 new Ascendancy Classes that differ from the old ones that are still available in the Path of Exile 1 campaign.Path of Exile 2 introduces the next generation of Path of Exile's iconic skill system. Support Gems are now socketed directly into Skill Gems, removing many of the frustrations present in the old system while maintaining all the previous depth. It's now possible to six-link every skill your character uses.The entire progression of armour and weapons has been redone from start to finish, alongside entirely new character models and animations. All of your old microtransactions are still compatible.Over the next year, we'll announce a lot more information about the improvements in Path of Exile 2, such as changes to the Passive Skill Tree and other core game systems.Over the years there have been many changes that we would have loved to make to Path of Exile but couldn't, because they would break existing characters. Path of Exile 2 is an opportunity to make all of these changes in one large update.

　　It will be quite some time before fans can get their hands on it, though, as Grinding Gear Games said a beta test won't take place before the very end of 2020 at the earliest. In the meantime, the usual three-month expansion cycle will continue, starting with Conquerors of the Atlas and the Metamorph League.

　　Grinding Gear Games had one last big announcement at ExileCon: Path of Exile Mobile. In development in-house, this project has no release date and seems to be fairly early in development. Check out the brief trailer below.