Piranha Bytes, creators of the Gothic, Risen, and Elex series, was recently closed by parent company Embracer. That’s a shame, but there’s still one studio out there carrying the torch for ambitiously janky mid-budget European RPGs, and that’s Spiders.
The French studio responsible for games like Steelrising, The Technomancer, Bound By Flame, and Mars: War Logs is currently developing a sequel to its 2019 RPG Greedfall, which was set in an 18th century-esque colonial fantasy world and was basically a Eurojank version of a BioWare game. Greedfall 2: The Dying World has just announced it will be coming out in early access on September 24.
Greedfall 2 is actually a prequel, beginning three years before the original game. This time, rather than playing a diplomat who stands apart from the setting’s factions, you’ll be playing a native of Teer Fradee who is torn from their home and transplanted to the war-torn and plague-ravaged lands of Gacane.
One complaint about Greedfall was that its quest design involved a lot of backtracking and fetching across areas that looked and felt quite samey, so hopefully the sequel can improve on that. And hopefully early access can help cut down on some of the bugginess, though frankly if it wasn’t at least a little rough around the edges I suspect it would lose some of its hardscrabble appeal.
Greedfall 2: The Dying Worlds will be available on Steam. A gameplay video is due in August, and a community livestream, including an updated roadmap, before its September 24 early access release.