Last week developer Wolcen Studio announced codenamed Project Pantheon, the studio's next title. I recently sat down with members of the development team to get a very early look at Project Pantheon, as well as to hear more about t?he ambitious future for the title and how Wolc?en Studio plans to get it there.

At its core, Project Pantheon mashes together two popular genres: Action RPG and PvPvE Extraction. Or, as the team liked to put it, ExtrAction RPG. Players will have their own Sanctuary, essentially a base of operations that they can customize and upgrade as well as manage their loadout, akin to that in other Extraction-base games like Escape from Tarkov. From here they will queue for matchmaking before being dropped on a map where they will slay ferocious creatures to level up and acquire gear and other loot while other players are doing the same thing, all with ARPG-style gameplay. Once their inventory is filled or they've received a piece of loot they want to hold on to, players must then successfully ext??ract from the map before being taken out by other players trying to get their loot.

It's important to note that Project Pantheon is currently in its very early stages of development. According to Wolcen Studio, despite the upcoming Closed Alpha test, Project Pantheon doesn't plan to release into Early Access until Q4 2025 or even Q1 2026, with major updates to be released every four ?months.

While this may seem too early to some, Wolcen Studio is deliberately making the decision to get eyeballs—and soon, hands-on Project Pantheon, as they want the community and player base? to play a massive role in shaping the game. The team lamented the development process of its previous ARPG, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, and is looking to avoid the pitfalls of that title by including the community from a much earlier stage in the development cycle.

Project Pantheon is set in a post-apocalyptic universe where all the various mythologies of the world are real but have mysteriously all been killed. Players take on the role of a recently deceased soul reaching the afterlife only to be recruited by none other than Death himse??lf to be a worthy agent in inv??estigating the demise of the gods.

To do so, players must hunt down Undying creatures and mythological beasts against other agents of Death, scavenging resources and acquiring powerful artifacts along the way. The goal is to incorporate Project Pantheon with several different mythologies. At the moment, only Norse mythology is present. However, the current plan is to add Egyptian, Greek, and Aztec mythologies over the course of Early Access, as well as more post-1.0 l?aunch m?ythologies based on community feedback.

As part of the preview, I got to w?atch a couple of matches between Wolcen Studio developers, with them jumping into the same map together, going their own separate ways, killing creatures and looting up, before eventually coming ??across each other and duking it out in PvP. Due to its very early state, there were a few bugs along the way, and there were evident temporary placeholders like the simple and block gear and item tooltips. But the gameplay loop was evident, and it was a lot of fun seeing one of my favorite genres, ARPGs, get a worthwhile approach to PvP, something currently missing from the genre.

In Project Pantheon, your abilities and playstyle are dictated by your gear. Weapons act as a sort of "soft class," giving you access to specific abilities for that weapon type. Armor provides passive abilities, while Artifacts grant the player powerful and unique finishing moves. This creates the possibility for players to mix and customize their own gearsets that revolve around their preferred playstyle. It reminded me a lot of the itemization and PvP in Albion Online, giving players the freedom to build their own playstyle through gear rather than locking them to specific abilities based ??on a class choice.

At the moment, there are only three weapon types available. But Wolcen Studio already has eight weapons currently being designed for Norse mythology, each with 10-12 abilities. Armor and Artifacts? add another 50 abilities per mythology, meaning that when all? is said and done, Wolcen Studio hopes to have about 150 abilities for each mythology that they add to the game.

Project Pantheon is set to kick off its Closed Alpha 1 test this weekend for European players on January 25 and January 26, while North American players will get access on February 1 and February 2. It will be the same very early in-development build I got a look at, as the goal of this Closed Alpha is primarily to test the overall technical efficacy of Project Pantheon, focused on validating the stability and performance of the title's backend systems and server infrastructure. Essentially, Project Pantheon is making sure it can walk before trying to run.

While it is way too early to have any real opinion on the actual gameplay of Project Pantheon, I greatly admire Wolcen Studio's approach to involving players this early to allow them to shape and influence the development cycle. As someone who enjoyed Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, I'm? happy to see the team learning from its development mistakes and ensuring Project Pantheon doesn't fall into the same issues. I'll be keeping a close eye on its development and looking forward to seeing what it evolves into over the next few years.

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Wolcen Studio, developer of the 2020 action RPG Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem unveiled a new title today codenamed Project Pantheon. According to Wolcen Studio th?e team plans to merge the recently popu?lar extraction genre with the always popular action RPG genre.

Project Panethon will launch as a free-to-play live service game where players are tasked with journeying into the afterlife to restore a shattered reality at the behes?t of Death itself. Along the way, players will traverse a variety of maps while battling enemies in PvPvE combat, and then must successfully extract from the map to hang on to any valuable loot they acquired along the way. According to Wolcen Studio, players will have their own hidden fortress that acts as an upgradeable base?? and offers a nice reprieve from battle where players can customize loadouts and interact with a player-driven economy via an open market.

"Project Pantheon delivers a unique experience by merging the fast-paced combat of ARPGs with the tension and risk-reward gameplay mechanics of extraction shooters. Project Pantheon is what would happen if Diablo and Escape From Tarkov had a baby"

- Andrei Chirculete, Game Director of Project Pantheon at Wolcen Studio

Those interested in checking out Project Pantheon can sign up for a closed alpha starting later this month on January 25-26, 2025 for European players and early next month on February 1-2 for No??rth American players.

I enjoyed my time with Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem when it released back in 2020. It had a solid and lengthy campaign with high build variety—an important feature of the ARPG genre—and working multiplayer. However, after completing the campaign, the post-game content required a lot of work and some rather game-breaking bugs with certain builds really eliminated true build variety. Wolcen Studio continued to update and add content to Wolcen over the next few years before shutting down the game—and its online servers—just a few months ago on September?? 17, 2024.

I'm always down for a good ARPG, and while I'm not the biggest fan of the extraction genre, I'm certainly willing to give it a shot when mixed with the genre I love. Hopefully Wolcen Studio learned a lot from the development process of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem and incorporate that knowledge into Project Pantheon.

The post ??Wolcen Studio reveals new Extraction ARPG Project Pant?heon appeared first on Destructoid.