Wolcen Studio reveals new Extraction ARPG Project Pantheon

Wolcen Studio, developer of the 2020 action RPG Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem unveiled a new title today codenamed Project Pantheon. According to Wolcen Studio the team plans to merge the recently popular 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 behest 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”

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 North 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.

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