Published , by Lucas White
Published , by Lucas White
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into GreedFall 2: The Dying World, Spiders’ new RPG that has just been released via Steam Early Access. I missed the first game entirely, but luckily this story is a prequel, one of a few reasons starting here didn’t make me feel lost. The story itself is constructed in a way that stands alone as well; fans of the first game will benefit from a world-building perspective of course, but there’s nothing that doesn’t feel like normal video game onboarding. Instead of worrying about canon, I was instead able to focus on the premise, which has an intriguing hook in inverting the oft-revisited colonial setting in RPGs.
You play as a kid from an indigenous village in Teer Fradee, the mystical and mysterious island that is the main setting of GreedFall. You and another peer are taking on the right of passage to become Sages, and are charged with two major tasks. You have to find out why some of the villagers are getting sick with an unknown illness, and you have to find out why the local wildlife population is rapidly thinning out. From here you wind up coming face to face with the political and existential threats brought by colonization, as both of these issues are caused by settlers arriving, establishing power, and disrupting the ecosystem.
This angle is tragically uncommon in games and other media, and even when a story does show up to challenge the harsh consequences of colonization, it’s often still from the perspective of the invading side. Spiders goes whole hog with this premise, even having the main characters speaking in their native language when they aren’t communicating with settlers. It feels weird to consider this a bold move, but is cemented as such by complaints I’ve already seen crop up in discussion spaces. Reading subtitles is not a source of psychic damage for me, so I was able to follow along just fine.
Following these tasks unearthed the two gameplay pillars holding up GreedFall 2, which are combat and investigation. It seemed like for nearly every beat in the opening scenario, that there were multiple ways to solve issues without combat. For example, chasing off a group of for-profit hunters presented choices such as helping a nearby settlement to earn their legal support, offering the village’s skin stores, paying them off with money directly, or of course violence. Each of these options touch on complicated issues colonization brings, adding an extra layer of disappointment or regret to each solution no matter your choice. The adventure eventually moves from Teer Fradee to the “mainland,” through harrowing means. I’m interested in seeing how the dynamics shown on the island play out when getting by in enemy territory.
Combat is interesting all on its own as well. GreedFall 2 seems interested in exploring a homage to Dragon Age: Origins, combining MMO-like automated action and cooldowns with a tactical mode that lets you pause the action to set up character positioning and areas of effect. This is where GreedFall 2 feels the most like a work-in-progress, taking on something much more complex compared to the previous game’s more action-oriented approach. There are already mixed feelings on it in the fanbase, so seeing how these systems develop over the coming months will carry a lot of weight.
As an Early Access title, there’s a lot that can and will change for GreedFall 2 over time. There are certainly issues and glitches on day one, such as a particularly game-disrupting one that deactivated fast travel on multiple occasions. Other times the bugs were just kind of silly, such as my character’s hair disappearing when entering a new area. Either way, it’s important to understand what you’re getting into with Early Access, and in this case in particular the goal seems to be heavily engaging with the community to really hammer this game out. The full story won’t be available for a while, which will be rolled out alongside additional features and fixes, planned and otherwise.
GreedFall 2 seems like an interesting game, and benefits quite a lot from its strong hook and prologue scenario. The game is very much still in progress though, and in about the most literal way possible, so getting in now will be a ground level experience. There’s a lot of potential though, and plenty of room for improvements, adjustments, and surprises along the Early Access path. And it’s going to be a long path, with no planned release date besides “when both we and you are satisfied” as stated on the game’s Steam page.
GreedFall 2: The Dying World is available now, in Early Access on Steam. There is no currently announced release date otherwise. A code for PC was provided by the publisher for this preview.