I worry about GreedFall 2. I’ve been playing the early access build that’s just released on Steam and it’s not great, and it confuses me, because the original game from 2019 managed to do the almost impossible: it broke into a busy RPG market and made a success of itself, despite being janky and having some problematic New World colonisation themes. It had nice ideas and had heart, and it gave us a kind of BioWare experience that was missing at the time, and shipped something like 2m copies as a result. But the sequel takes all of that good work and seems to step backwards from it. It’s a less enjoyable game to play, it’s less distinct, and the ways it has tried to evolve the series have worsened it.
GreedFall 2Developer: SpidersPublisher: NaconPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Releases 24th September in early access (Steam). Will come to PS5, Xbox Series S/X for a simultaneous 1.0 launch at some point in the future – roughly a year from now
Big caveat: I understand this is an early access release and there’s huge potential for change implicit in that, but to hear developer Spiders say it is “relying heavily” on player feedback to show that it’s heading in the right direction concerns me, because it suggests a lack of confidence. Early access also suggests a need for funding, and on top of that, there are lingering reports of bad working conditions at the studio. GreedFall didn’t need early access, it just came out, and I worry that introducing people to the sequel in this state may do more harm than good.
The big differences between GreedFall 1 and 2 are the setting and the combat system, both of which have significantly changed. The sequel takes place three years the events of GreedFall 1, so it’s still in the 18th century, but it tells its story from a completely different point of view. Whereas you played the perspective of a European-kind of coloniser in the first game, you now play the perspective of a native Teer Fradee islander, which more brightly shines a light on the issues experienced by those people, which is to say a people who have experienced a foreign force showing up and forcibly occupying land they live on. Within that, you are someone with supernatural ability and are therefore a great hope for your society, so it will be your responsibility to deal with this destructive invading force.
That’s generally the theme, and there are strong Pochahontas vibes to it, as you’re called “savages” by the invading people and generally degraded and abused by them. The parallels with the real-world exploitation of the American continent by Europeans are, then, huge, but GreedFall 2 attempts to sidestep them somewhat by Teer Fradee being fictitious. Except, the comparison is inescapable, and so when you hear their fictitious language in the game and see the game’s depictions of this culture and people, you cannot help but compare them, and when you do, you wonder who on earth was consulted about it. Was anyone, or was it just a European studio’s, a French studio’s, best guess? It jars. It jars when you hear the actors speaking in the game’s Yecht Fradí language because, as impressive as it is that a game has its own language, its mash-up of Celtic dialects doesn’t feel right. It’s also a questionable design choice when it means you have your voice actors speaking in a language they obviously don’t understand, because you can hear that, and because you spend your time looking down at the subtitles instead.