Last week developerWolcen Studio announced codenamedProject Pantheon, the studio’s next title. I recently sat down with members of the development team to get a very early look atProject Pantheon, as well as to hear more about the ambitious future for the title and how Wolcen Studio plans to get it there.
At its core,Project Pantheonmashes 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 likeEscape 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 extract from the map before being taken out by other players trying to get their loot.
It’s important to note thatProject Pantheonis currently in its very early stages of development. According to Wolcen Studio, despite the upcoming Closed Alpha test,Project Pantheondoesn’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-onProject 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 Pantheonis 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 himself to be a worthy agent in investigating 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 incorporateProject Pantheonwith 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 launch mythologies based on community feedback.
As part of the preview, I got to watch 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.
InProject 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 inAlbion 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 Pantheonis 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 ofProject Pantheon, focused on validating the stability and performance of the title’s backend systems and server infrastructure. Essentially,Project Pantheonis making sure it can walk before trying to run.
While it is way too early to have any real opinion on the actual gameplay ofProject 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.
