New Zealand game developer Grinding Gear Games just announced the third major expansion for popular online multiplayer video game Path of Exile.
The next major expansion is titled Heist and will launch on Sept. 18 on PC and Sept. 23 on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. In this upcoming expansion, players will hire a crew of specialized thieves to assist them with infiltrating secure facilities to retrieve valuable Artifacts. There are several alarms so they must be careful not to trigger them or else they will be swarmed by guards. Retrieving the artifact will also trigger the alarm automatically and players will have to rush it to the extraction point to survive. If they fail to escape, they lose everything they have stolen.
Mark, Path of Exile Game Director stated:
The experience of knowing exactly what rewards you’ll lose if you can’t successfully complete the Heist is a new type of game tension we’re excited to explore. It’s all about the rush of the escape.
Players who successfully complete the Heists will lay the groundwork for a thief’s ultimate goal, which is pulling off a Grand Heist. They will need to gather wealth and intel to reveal the Blueprints of these facilities where the Grand Heist will take place.
In order to make this heist successful, players will need to recruit crew members that are trustworthy and have the skills to make it happen. They will need to make sure they are well-trained and equipped for the job. Grand Heists provide access to many tempting new rewards like Alternate Quality Gems which enable more build variety, Weapon and Body Armor Enhancements for more power, Replica Uniques which are mutated remakes of classic items, and Thieves’ Trinkets which give players more control over their rewards.
Chris Wilson, Grinding Gear Games Co-Founder and Managing Director
Heist explores some concepts that we have always wanted to try in Path of Exile. With new guard formation and patrol AI, low-level equivalents to end-game maps, equippable hireling NPCs, and the chance of losing your rewards if you can’t escape with them, this league explores some corners of Path of Exile’s design philosophy that we had not yet entered.
Path of Exile: Heist Key Features Include:
● Download and play for free but never pay-to-win.
● The Heist Challenge League
● 13 new active NPCs which have rich backstories, advanceable skills, and can be equipped with new craftable items.
● A new town-like area, The Rogue Harbour.
● Itemized world-areas that contain Heists and can be accessed from the outset of your character progress.
● New Item Types: Alternate Quality Gems, Replica Unique Items, Thief’s Trinkets, Experimented Base Types, Body Armour and Weapon Enchants.
● Seven new skills alongside reworks to existing Curses, Spells and Steel Skills.
● Over 25 New Unique Items.
● A new equipment slot for Trinkets.
● Now available on macOS.
Heist is one of Grinding Gear Game’s most ambitious expansions yet. Development initially began in March before New Zealand experienced a mandatory government-issued lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Due to the enormous scope of the expansion and the challenges of working from home, Heist’s release date was moved to September, with the smaller Harvest league released in June. Ironically, several key weeks of Heist’s development continued in lockdown after restrictions returned to New Zealand in August. Continuing to pull off a 13-week development cycle with a project as significant as Heist under working from home conditions was a challenge but well worth it.
Source: Press Release
Check out the trailer here: