I see there are some rumors about a sequel to Grim Dawn. I wouldn’t like that. Why?!
Not because Grim Dawn is bad, but the opposite. Grim Dawn is really good.
What makes GD unique? It is a game I have been playing since early access around 2015. It has been constantly improved and expanded, both through free patches and sold expansions.
In my eyes Grim Dawn has become an always expanding universe and sandbox for build develepoment and class recombination.
If there were no technical limitations, I would actually like crate to just continue on this route. Make GD the endless game and just keep populating this game world with more regions, quests, loot, masteries and especially secrets and secret areas.
I have the impression that all the progress made over all these years would be lost, if crate just made a GD 2 and everybody would migrate to the new game.
I actually dont get the hype of making sequels at all. Why not expand one product and keep supporting it, making it better?! Is that economcially not viable? If so, I guess, GD seems to have survived quite well so far.
Also considering the hype for retro grafic indie games, the grafics are not really that important anymore. I think the engine looks pretty good and runs on anverage machines. GD runs perfectly on a 10 year old PC i still own…
Ok. I could write a book about the many many reasons I would like GD to just continue on this excellent and unique path it is on…
I think it is quite unique what crate has going here. Literally every company can make sequels. And no sequel ever lives up to the original… at least in most cases.
Yes Diablo 2 and Half Life 2 are some of the examples why I corrected myself to “in most cases”. But the point is valid, that almost all sequels are worse, with another steep drop in quality after the second one.
Another problem with just keep going is that it makes the game so long players will never finish even Normal difficulty, let alone any of the others. Plus sooner or later you’d have to increase the max level and probably devotion points too and that would mean adding yet another tier - or two - for gear which means more balancing has to be done. And then probably extra masteries as well which is more balancing, items, etc.
Don’t worry, any GD2 is years away yet. Crate are working on a new generation of their game engine which will first be used for their RTS game which will be set on Cairn in a pre-GD era. Then maybe after that GD2 will eventually happen.
Yeah I thought it might be a mathematical issue with exponentially becoming more complex and difficult to handle. But tech is also getting better. Of course at one point it would probably get out of control. Lets see first how much new stuff FoA will add. They are not done yet…
edit: But thinking about it I now really doubt why a sequel of such a thing would ever make logical sense. Why reinvent the wheel. I get it. A new engine, up to date grafics maybe compatible with modern OS and hardware. But why reinvent the entire data structure and loot system. That just makes no sense to me. Then you could make an entirely different ARPG with fundamentally different systems that warrant a recreation of the loot database.
So far though, crate has made significant changes to the basic system and with great success.
I mean. Look at the success of D2 Resurrected. I my opinion Blizzard could have gone for a grafic overhaul as a patch and sold another awesome expansion after LoD. INSTEAD of making … man… I cant even pronounce it… how bad things went downhill after D2 … I think you get my point. Consider D2 Resurrected. And I am even a huge fan 2D grafics. Improvements can be made on many different levels and obviously can be successfully monetized. Is a suequel necessary? Not necessarily! Can it be good. Sometimes. Can it be an unspeakable abomination and scourge of mankind? The chance rise dramatically starting after 1.
I think the developers are reaching a point where they want to rest their ARPG ideas and stuff for a moment. While, yes, a new XPack is releasing, I see it as a “shut up, people, take this and enjoy it while we are on a break” type of thing.
By all means it’s nothing to be concerned about, and even more so, it’s good because nobody can’t or should keep all eggs in one basket.
While it’s very nice that I see myself and others being very passionate about the game, it has to end somehow. All good things end somewhere. However you can also see some other creators make their games and push more and more content and since the spark is drained, the content is soulless, therefore, people start to hate and leave instead.
EDIT: Sequels are interesting things, I adore two specific, uhm, franchises where the sequels were better than their primary and that is Dead Space and Borderlands. So, it’s very doable, however, pulling it up takes some creativity power.
Dont get me wrong. I am not arguing for adding stuff just for the sake of adding something. I am arguing against making a sequel just for the sake of making a sequel.
If anyone considers making a sequel. Then I must assume that energy and ideas and resources are available. So the “soullessness” should be ruled out.
I now argue that these resources be invested into refining the progress that has already been made instead of starting a sequel.
I could imagine a new and up to date, actually and logically improved engine for sound reaons. Then reuse the entire data structure and all locations. And make meaningful improvements or expansions to that. It shouldnt be a no brainer to make a sequel. Other avenues should be considered, considering how things went in the history of the genre and what players actually want and like.
There are actually major hurdles to continuing to use this engine without significant and fundamental rewrites. We are quite literally hitting the limits of what the Grim Dawn engine can do and our items are bursting at the seams from supporting 45 mastery combinations.
There are systems that are so ingrained in the game that improving them would take just reworking them from scratch.
The game’s visuals are frozen in time, and while one could say there are aspects of the game’s look that could be said to be timeless, there’s plenty that is not, such as the lighting and vfx.
Not to mention there is actually a point where a game gets too big and bloated for its own good. This isn’t an MMO where content becomes obsolete. Imagine someone trying to get into the game with 5 mandatory expansions. Not only does that create a significant cost of entry, but it’s downright overwhelming.
A sequel is an opportunity to reset, not just for the players, but for the developers. It’s a clean slate to address past mistakes (and make entirely new ones) and tell a new story.
Thanks for the reply! Yeah I thought there are probably technical limitations to the idea.
But I still think GD did a good job so far in improving upon itself. I really enjoy watching the world map getting more regions to explore with each expansion. I also forgot to mention, that the hand crafted nature of the environments add a lot to the uniqueness of GD. And this is also confirming my point, that it would be kind of illogical to give up on the progress made.
For most arpgs, which have randomized environments this is not an issue anyways.
The main reason for a sequel is to see what these developers can do if they have a clean slate. They have a good understanding of how to make an ARPG, but they are limited by all the current mechanics and systems of Grim Dawn. If they add to Grim Dawn, they can only make more Grim Dawn.
Personally I’d love to see some physics based innovation. Like “damage = weight_of_weapon * speed_of_swing”. With body blocking and friendly fire. Maybe borrow some ideas from Exanima.
Wow - ‘friendly fire’. My god I cannot even imagine how that would kill a pet build in GD. Not criticizing the notion though. It is just amazing the degree to which the friendly fire is necessarily ignored in GD!
A game needs a fresh start of ideas, which means taking a break from the idea by making a new game other than GD at a point in time. Also, making a new game other than GD from scratch with making their new game engine gives them things of what worked and what did not from making their new game engine they can apply it on a GD sequel.
I’m not an expert, but I would say the company who developed GD is a smaller game company so they have limited resources in terms of what they can do to support a game such as manpower, time and budgets. I would like to think if they had more resources similar to Blizzard Entertainment who developed WoW and is one of the longest game with support (because they have the resources), they can make more content such as Berserker like forms.
If the game’s engine is at its limits, then I guess the idea of adding some items from mods such as GD League (that doesn’t drop in the base game) in the future is out of the question.
I think game is already very big and it’s a lot of info for a new player, imho it would be better to release Fangs of Asterkarn, finalize the balance and new mastery and give Crate a piece of mind to recharge and focus on other games, so they come with Grim Dawn 2 if and when they see fit.
And that’s the reason why crate is working on a new engine and hopefully eventually GD 2. Current engine has quite a lot of technical limitations I would dare to say.
And also Pokémon: Crystal.
Well, I’ve only played LeafGreen and HeartGold, so maybe my experience isn’t super valid.
To add to this, I’m not even sure that the “endless updates” format can apply to a structured game like Grim Dawn. It’s more suited for something like Dwarf Fortress or Unreal World.
I could be wrong, but Sacred 1 is bigger than Grim Dawn. Despite the handcrafted world, that game got a sequel. So, it’s not really illogical.
Dear developers. Make a sequel or a prequel, no matter what you call it. Let it be “Bright Sunset” - I am sure that you will have a great game. Based on all the experience that you have now. We will be happy to see her in our Steam!
I would like to say that, I prefer Grim Dawns graphics to something like Last Epoch.
Last Epoch looks weird to me, even if the graphics could be said to be better than in Grim Dawn.
It is really amazing that we keep getting mileage from the engine that is, so closely related to Titan Quests engine.
I don’t know how profitable this game is, but it is amazing and it would be really great if it was supported in different ways in the future.