GreedFall 2 mystifies me: it's currently a step backwards for the series
I shed a Teer Fradee.
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.
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 before 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.
But I'm more confused by the decision to move to a pseudo turn-based combat system, not because I don't like those kinds of systems - I love them - but because here, it doesn't work as well as what the series had before. In GreedFall 1, there's a familiarity to play: you enter combat and directly control your character, running up to your enemies and hitting them, or casting spells at them, or whatever. It plays like many other games, and there's an immediacy and fluidity to it, and from it, an inherent sense of fun. But GreedFall 2 is different. It moves away from the console kind of approach for a more tactical 'pause and issue commands' approach. You use a tactical overlay to freeze the game and issue commands to your companions, telling them what to do. If you don't, they'll perform a default auto-attack but you don't directly control in the same way as the first game any more. The intent is fine; it's the execution that's not. The button presses are odd and the system is clunky, and it can be inexplicably hard to do what you want to do. Frankly, it's infuriating, and I don't know why Spiders has backtracked on what was a perfectly enjoyable system before.
Perhaps it's to signal that GreedFall 2 is a slower and deeper kind of role-playing game, which of course is no bad thing. It actually reminded me a lot of Dragon Age: Origins at first glance, with a similar brown kind of layout and look, which is exciting to someone like me. On closer inspection, though, it's not the case, nor is that comparison particularly fair to either game. GreedFall 2 looks a lot nicer than DAO, as you would expect for a game made decades after it - the Teer Fradee wilds are pink and red and kaleidoscopic in colour - but it isn't as intuitive to play as DAO, not by a long stretch.
There is an open-world here though, and GreedFall 2 does have its own unique kind of depth. There's an emphasis on the investigative nature of the original game, whereby you're given a problem and then, using a kind of detective mode, you go and scout around and find clues and then think of a way you can solve it. There are usually multiple ways you can do so. You can solve things by being sneaky, you can solve things by being charismatic, or you can solve things by being crafty, as in, a craftsperson. You can build a bridge somewhere, say, or set some dynamite by something to blow it open. It's a nice system - it's something I haven't seen implemented in this way before. But I'd much rather have a default jump ability than have to lay a plank so I can cross a small gap. As an open-world game, it can feel very hemmed in.
Perhaps worst of all, GreedFall 2 is dull. I applaud the decision to flip the viewpoint and tell us a story from the opposing point of view, but in doing so, the game has lost a lot of those overt 18th century European trappings that gave the original game its sense of style - those fancy hats, those capes, those pointy pointy beards and moustaches. It feels like a much more generic fantasy RPG this time. There's nothing much particularly interesting going on, either, no sense of high stakes or urgency. You're just slowly proving yourself to your tribe while talking to some 'foreigners' and working out why people are falling sick. And though a great deal of effort has clearly gone into having dialogue available with characters, few of those characters are very interesting. Perhaps there'll be a rewarding story here in the end - there's only a small portion in the early access build - and perhaps it will tackle the thorny issues the setting flirts with, but at the moment it's cringingly stereotyped and forgettable.
Couple that with a general sense of un-optimisation in the game - texture pop-ins in dialogue, a procession of bugs, and what feels like a far from finished user interface - and it makes for an experience you are better holding off on to see if Spiders can put right. But there's a lot to do. I only hope Spiders gets chance to do it.