Path of Exile E3 2017 Coverage, Beta Update

Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath has made an appearance at E3 2017 and now the folks at Grinding Gear Games are kind enough to round up all the coverage on their official forums. And while a lot of it is focused on the upcoming Xbox One version of the game, we can glean a few general things from there as well. For example, here’s an excerpt from MMORPG.com’s hands-on preview:

For starters, Oriath will expand the story of Path of Exile from five acts into ten. The beginning of chapter six will have players making their pilgrimage back to their homeland, the titular Oriath. You’ll battle wolves, knights, and other ghastly monsters while making your way over snow-covered mountains to find your way back via the portal at the top. But once you get there, well, let’s just say things have not been going great for your hometown.

In order to save what’s left of your city you’re going to have to duke it out with the Gods. Yes, Gods plural. Overall there will be 23 new boss fights to satiate your endless thirst for battle. The deity I got a look at during my hands-on time was encased in a massive statue and did not take too kindly to my meddling. If the size of the boss is any indicator, the devs are really going big this time.

Of course anyone taking out a God should be rewarded with epic loot. And that’s where the game’s new Pantheon system will come into play. When you defeat a God, you’ll get to claim their powers as your own and switch between which of those powers you use at will. Each power will give you a very specific defensive buff. What exactly those buffs are though has yet to be seen.

On top of all the new content, players will get a chance to revisit areas from the first five chapters and see the consequences of the actions they took on the people and environments they left behind. And in order to accommodate all this new content and your new Pantheon abilities Path of Exile’s current difficulty level system will be going away with the new update.

Additionally, an official announcement informs us that the currently ongoing The Fall of Oriath Beta will receive a new update next week. It will introduce Act 8 into the mix, along with some gameplay tweaks. And with this announcement, we get a new boss fight preview: