You’ve recently released Beast of Winter and Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is up next. What can you tell us about the forthcoming expansions and how will they continue to evolve and iterate on PoE 2?

BA: On each of the DLCs, we wanted to explore a different aspect of the game. In the first DLC – Beast of Winter – it was important for us to focus on exploration and puzzle elements. And even digging a little deeper into the lore of things.

With Seeker, Slayer, Survivor we’re focusing on the combat, trying to explore how far can we take the combat system, and what kind of stuff can we be doing with this. What kind of cool encounters can we be setting up with this?

And then with The Forgotten Sanctum we’re going to build and provide the best dungeon experience. So it will be very dungeon dive-like and will really appeal to players who love Fort Deadlight, it’s going to have the same kind of feel. A big, cohesive dungeon.

So, we’re just taking what’s already in the game and evolve it to the max.​

We know it builds on some character choices and we got a bit of a taste of that in Beast of Winter, one big decision in particular. Can we expect a bit more of that in The Forgotten Sanctum?

BA: I will say – without spoilers – I think the choice at the end of that one is going to be really, really cool. People are going to be digging it.

So, each of the DLCs focuses on one of the Gods. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is Galawain and Beast of Winter had Rymrgand. The next one I can’t talk about just yet, but it will be one of the gods and will be a bit more mysterious.

What I can really get into is that it is spellcaster focused, so for those who’ve rolled a spellcaster they’re going to have a lot of new things to dig around in, like new spells and things like that. Lots of new equipment for them. As mentioned, we have a big focus on the dungeon-diving aspect and delving overall. That will be a big part of it and how we explore those different spaces.

There are also Arch Mages in the world and they’re all trying to figure out what do we do with Eothas. There’s this big, gigantic God, tromping around, smashing up everything. They all had different ideas on how to deal with him and so you’re going to be dealing with them in some respects. Like, do you back certain Arch Mages, do you betray certain ones? Do you say ‘screw it’ and do your own thing? So that’s some of the choices going to be in there as well, and dealing with that.

The description of the DLC suggests that your actions and consequences will be felt all across Deadfire at the end. Does that potentially link up to future additional content / build toward a third game? What is that description meant to convey?

BA: We are planning to have some additional reactivity with the game, even more so than we had with Beast of Winter and planning for Seeker, Slayer, Survivor. We will have more of a direct impact on some of things that deal with Eothas. I can’t get into exactly what that is but that will be there.

Currently we do not have plans for any additional paid DLC after the third one, obviously that would depend on the perception of the content and what we’re doing.

The franchise itself, there’s a lot of different things we want to do with the IP. And it’s not even just isometric games. We really want to support the IP long term in a lot of different ways. For instance, I know Josh was talking about pitching a Final Fantasy tactics type game using the Pillars universe. I know there’s a lot of people at the studio who want to do something in the vein of an Elder Scrolls. So there’s a lot of things we’re kind of exploring for that.

For the third game, we’re still talking about that and seeing what make sense right now.​