One of our favorite action RPGs of 2019 shows off 4 years of updates at Gamescom
We liked the action-RPG Last Epoch an awful lot when we most recently looked at it, calling its skill system "a brilliant new twist" on those offered by Diablo and Path of Exile. But that was in 2019, and we haven't heard anything from the game since—until tonight, when Judd Cobler, founder and CEO of developer Eleventh Hour Games, appeared on the stage at Gamescom's Opening Night Live to show off its upcoming Runes of Power update and the powerful new Runemaster mage class.
Eleventh Hour was founded by members of the /gamedev subreddit in 2017, with the singular goal of developing "the perfect ARPG." After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018, Last Epoch went live in early access on Steam, slowly evolving its systems based on player feedback and becoming a low-key ARPG hit in the process.
«From the beginning, we wanted to create a different kind of studio that actually involved the player base in fundamental design decisions,» Cobler said. «It's fair to say that the 800,000-plus gamers who've purchased Last Epoch have enjoyed unprecedented levels of communication and collaboration with us.»
The highlight of the Last Epoch presentation at Opening Night Live was the Runemaster, a mastery class for mages that uses a unique «Runic Invocation» ability to bind 40 spells to a single keypress. Each time a Runemaster casts a standard spell of a particular type—fire, lightning, or cold—a rune is generated, visible above the character's head. Once two or three runes are collected, an associated spell based on the types and order of the runes can be triggered—or players can opt to continue throwing around regular spells instead, changing the types and orders of the invoked runes until a desired combination is achieved. Like
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