GreedFall 2 Is Much More Ambitious and That’s Why It’s Going to Early Access; Saves Won’t Carry Over to 1.0

French game studio Spiders took the main stage of the NACON Connect 2024 to unveil that GreedFall 2: The Dying World will launch in early access this Summer via Steam.

It's the studio's first game released in early access. During a dedicated live stream, the developers explained why they went this route. Producer Reda Isber said:

After GreedFall 1 was released, we found out that lots of players wanted to give us feedback on specific areas of the game. Some features of GreedFall 2 are quite new to us, so we wanted to take our time working on them. We can't just develop them; we need opinions on them from experienced players. GreedFall 2 is certainly a much more ambitious game than the first one, and so early access seemed like the right path to take. We're relying heavily on early access to collect player feedback and see if we're heading in the right direction. There will be several early access phases. To be clear from the outset, saves won't be compatible between the various updates. 

The developers also showed a roadmap while Spiders CEO Jehanne Rousseau said that around 25% of the full game will be available at the start of the early access.

There will be the beginning of the game, so it's I would say a short part but not that short, I promise you will have things to go through. Still, compared to the whole game that we're planning to develop, it's a small part. I would say it's probably a quarter of the content of the game. There will be the first companions, you will already meet a big part of your team and also you will go through different places and not just only Teer Fradee, which is the island of the beginning of the game, but then also some new places already, some dungeons. You will be able to create your own character and choose from different skill sets. There are also some regional quests, which is something new,  by the way. To expand the exploration system, we really wanted to add a little more content also just to give more life to the environment, so there are plenty of small things. We try, through these small quests, to bring some more lore about the environment but also give some other way to solve the main quest. You're not obliged to do them, obviously, but it's giving you more cues, more information, or even leverage on some characters.

Rousseau also said they don't want to take too long, so we're probably not going to have to wait three years like with Baldur's Gate 3. However, it seems unlikely that the full game could be available in less than a year from the early access launch.