Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile has remained a popular free-to-play action-RPG since its debut in 2013. While the current game is still getting regular updates, the developers also have plans for a sequel, which was announced in 2019. Unfortunately, 2020 turned out to be a chaotic year for many, and developer Grinding Gear Games had to adapt to sudden changes in plans.

Along with our chat about the Echoes of the Atlas expansion, managing director of Path of Exile Chris Wilson gave us an update on Path of Exile 2. The sequel is Path of Exile's next leap forward as a free-to-play action-RPG, adding in a new story, world to explore, and classes to level up and outfit with loot. While development is still progressing, Wilson spoke candidly about how the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the progress, and it may be a bit longer before we see the sequel's release.

"[Development] has been a bit slower than I would have liked, it was the biggest casualty of COVID--and I hate to blame COVID because it seems like everyone is doing that--but it really has had an impact on us," said Wilson. "That's mostly because we're still committed to getting our normal expansions out, we're not going to allow problems to affect our current maintenance of the game, so that means we've had to pull developers from PoE2 from the last year back onto this game. That's been fine, and there's plenty of work there, but that does mean it's been a bit rocky with the sequel's work being done behind the scenes. It also doesn't help that with New Zealand's borders being closed, we can't hire other developers from overseas. But to cut a long story short, things have been slow."