Path of Exile Interview

Kotaku's Jason Schreier is offering a long article-style interview with producer Chris Wilson for the free-to-play action-RPG Path of Exile, which touches on a variety of subjects, including Act III, a content expansion that will be added to the title at a later date.

Here's a snip:
"With regard to Diablo III, I'm very impressed with the level of polish that Blizzard has on the game," he said. "We're quite different, though, in terms of, the character customization we have available is both a little more complicated and a little more unforgiving than a game like Diablo III.

"So to give an example, we have a passive skill tree which you'll see in game, that has I think 1,315 nodes. And the player travels through this tree as they level up their characters. We don't allow them to respec their choices very easily. We feel it's important that locking them into their choices means they'll feel more ownership with their character."

Wilson compares it to Magic: The Gathering in the sense that it's all about customization. You'll roam around the world, collecting skills in the form of gems not unlike Final Fantasy VII's materia. Like in Square's seminal role-playing game, you can blend and combine Path of Exile's gems to create crazy combinations. You can build attacks that split into multiple projectiles, passive fire traps, totems that summon minions for you, and all sorts of other interesting things, Wilson says. "We've seen some really wacky builds come out of the community."

...

You're standing at the edge of Sarn, the ruined capital of the Eternal Empire. Not so eternal now. Its citizenry is gone, taken by death and undeath in equal measures. Where hawkers shouted their bargains, ladies browsed for silks, young lovers walked hand in hand... creatures of nightmare stalk and feed. Beasts born of corruption. The restless dead, bitter and lethal. A cursed city of painful promises and preternatural peril.

This is Path of Exile, Act III: The Eternal City of Sarn

You are an exile, banished for your crimes to Wraeclast, and given a life sentence in the land of the damned. But Wraeclast wasn't always like this. It was once an empire of ten million souls, a beautiful and bountiful continent that prospered for more than a thousand years.

Something happened. A cataclysm. A corruption beyond reason. Wraeclast took itself off to bed one balmy evening and, come morning, it failed to wake. It slumbers, tossing and turning in the perpetual nightmare that enslaved it during the darkest hours.

Whether Witch, Marauder or Duelist, Templar, Ranger or Shadow, it's up to you to slice and slaughter your way through the squares, marketplaces, and abandoned homes of this necropolis...

...to answer a question.

Who murdered Wraeclast?