Asgard’s Wrath 2 brings the nordic-themed fight to Egypt this winter

Announced at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, Asgard’s Wrath 2 will launch this winter. The fight to take Loki down will arrive in Egypt this time, with plenty of mystical enemies to take on, along with new upgrades and powers. Priced at 59.99, it’s sure to be a bombastic experience you’ll have to see to believe. Check out the trailer along with all the info directly from the Meta blog below.

Surprise! Asgard’s Wrath 2, the sequel to the hit fantasy VR action game, is coming this winter to Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 2, and Meta Quest Pro for $59.99 USD. As shown during our annual Gaming Showcase, Asgard’s Wrath 2 is a standalone title—no knowledge of its predecessor required, and we’ve even built-in a recap of the first game to get you up to speed. But for those who’ve played the original, the sequel picks up right after the events of the first game. Upgraded from a fledgling god to a Cosmic Guardian, you must use your new powers to find Loki and thwart his evil plans in a brand-new mythological realm: ancient Egypt.

Check out the gameplay trailer and developer deep dive over on YouTube (age restrictions apply).

Pre-order the game now and immediately get access to an exclusive Asgard’s Wrath 2-themed character skin and the title of “Cosmic Guardian” in POPULATION: ONE. Additionally, you’ll receive a free digital copy of the original Asgard’s Wrath for PC VR, which you can play with a VR-ready PC either on the Rift Platform or wirelessly on your Meta Quest headset via Air Link. Last but not least, pre-orders unlock the Great Sand Sea Home environment for you to immerse yourself fully in the desert sands of Asgard’s Wrath 2.

When the game arrives later this year, those who pre-order will also unlock exclusive gear for their in-game character: the Sword of Ra and the Sun God’s battle armor. Check out this post for details on how to access and redeem the pre-order bonuses.

To celebrate Asgard’s Wrath 2’s big reveal, we caught up with Sanzaru Games Studio Creative Director Mat Kraemer and Creative Director Grace Lingad to find out more details about the game, how it greatly expands on the narrative and gameplay systems established in Asgard’s Wrath, and why it’s the biggest game ever made for the Meta Quest Platform.

Setting a New Standard for VR Games

It was shortly after the launch of Asgard’s Wrath in 2019 that Sanzaru started thinking about what a sequel might look like. While the team appreciated how well both critics and fans responded to the game, they knew there was so much more they could build and improve on.

“With every game we make, we want to push boundaries,” says Kraemer. “We want to make something that people haven’t seen on the platform yet, be it feature-wise, graphical fidelity, or scope. When we kick off a new project, we go through those high-level pillars. What’re the things we want to push for in this next game? How does it align with the hardware we’re aiming for? We really want to just sock everybody in the face when they put the headset on, so they’re just like, ‘Holy cow, I can’t believe you made that. I’ve never seen a game with this fidelity on Quest 2.’”

While the first game was designed with the Rift Platform in mind, Sanzaru built Asgard’s Wrath 2 specifically for Meta Quest 3 + 2. That opened up the game design in a way that wasn’t possible before, as the team knew that all players would be able to enjoy freedom of movement with their wireless headsets when it comes to combat and exploration.

“I feel like this was always the way the game was meant to be played—without wires, without sensors, it’s all in there,” says Lingad. “You’re free to move around. If there’s an enemy behind you, you can quickly turn around and not get tangled or lose tracking. All those problems are a thing of the past.”

From the outset, the team wanted to make Asgard’s Wrath 2 a much bigger and more complex game than the first. And for more than three years, they’ve been busy doing just that: expanding the story with a new cast of heroes, villains, and companions; creating vast environments for players to roam in; adding deep RPG leveling mechanics; and optimizing the game to get the best performance possible out of Quest 3, 2 and Pro. The main story campaign alone will take you more than 60 hours, and that’s not counting the infinitely replayable Uncharted Rifts mode (we’ll get to that later) or the countless hours you’ll spend exploring temples, caves, oases, and more in the sprawling worlds.

There’s a lot to see and do in the game, and it’s up to you on how to tackle it all. One of the devs’ main goals for the sequel was to give you more freedom in how you experience the game. As the Cosmic Guardian, you’ll possess the bodies of four different mortal heroes, and they each have their own sagas to complete while you search for Loki. The first hero is Abraxas, a fiery warrior and tomb robber seeking vengeance against the Egyptian goddess Sakhmet.

But you don’t have to follow a linear path as you progress through these stories. You can take your time exploring the huge, free-roaming levels within the Egyptian and Norse realms and more. You might stumble into a hidden cave filled with loot (and possibly a group of enemies), or maybe you just feel like chasing down a few side quests before returning to the campaign. Sanzaru wanted players to feel like they have total control over how their experience unfolds.

“It’s a powerful moment when people can make those decisions,” notes Kraemer. “They can choose to move Abraxas’s story forward, or they might want to investigate some new area because they just unlocked a new follower and now they can check out a whole section of the map that they haven’t been to before. It just makes it a lot of fun to have those mental checklists in your head that you can go back to and discover.”

Major Combat Upgrades

This philosophy of player choice also applies to the fully physics-based combat system. In the first game, you had to use a defensive approach and parry enemy attacks before you could damage them. But in Asgard’s Wrath 2, you can chip away at your foes’ shields with a barrage of attacks, or use your parries to open up opportunities for counter attacks that let you land critical blows.

“We have an entirely new set of heroes, new characters, and totally different weapons,” says Lingad. “We really challenged ourselves to come up with very unconventional weapons that suit a multitude of play styles. Abraxas is our most well-rounded character, and even though he has a very melee-centric loadout, his boomerang ax can be thrown and recalled because we know that’s a fun and solid mechanic.”

During his journey, Abraxas’s sword will also gain the ability to transform into a whip, and that’ll fundamentally change the way you navigate the game. We showed this off during the Gaming Showcase: You can use the whip to bring enemies closer to you or pull yourself up to places that were previously unreachable. The whip is both a dynamic way to outmaneuver your foes and an essential tool for traversing the realms.

The other playable heroes have their own version of the whip, as well as a unique set of weapons that make them feel distinct from one another. You can further expand their arsenal of moves with the new leveling system. The experience you get from completing quests and defeating enemies will earn you skill points, and those points can then be fed back into the characters’ skill trees to unlock new attacks and upgrades, including super abilities that can help turn a tough battle in your favor.

“The heroes that you meet later in the game feel completely different than Abraxas,” says Kraemer. “We do the same thing narratively, too. So when you get to a new saga, you meet new heroes, you meet new followers—it almost feels like you got a new game because they all have their own mini story arc that pulls together through the whole game. And that’s something we’re always conscious of, making stuff feel very different and really surprising players.”

Another fan-favorite feature that returns in Asgard’s Wrath 2 are your animal companions: AI-powered followers who fight alongside you and can help out with solving puzzles by using their powers. You’ll meet these helpful characters as you progress through the story, starting with the panther warrior Subira. But their roles have been greatly expanded. They can now transform into powerful beasts that you can ride on while exploring the game’s massive landscapes. And with your whip in hand, you can latch onto their saddles from a distance for a quick getaway during battle.

Like the mortal heroes, followers earn experience points, and you can unlock additional abilities through their respective skill trees. The more time you spend with them, the more you’ll learn about their personal lives and what they’re fighting for.

“The followers are their own characters with their own backstories, which is really cool,” Lingad explains. “That was something I personally heard from fans and even from within our own team, like, ‘Hey, what’s the shark’s deal? What’s their story? Where did they grow up? Where did they come from? I want to know more about them.’ We took that to heart when writing the story for the second game.”

You can build deep friendships with your companions, to the point where even the smallest interactions you have with them take on a whole new significance in Asgard’s Wrath 2.

“It means something when you fist bump them, it means something when you high-five each other, and it means something when you keep those followers out in play for a long time,” says Kraemer. “And so the more you’re doing all those interactions with your followers, the more you’re going to increase your friendship with them.”

All these new weapons, characters, and companions won’t let you bulldoze your way through the game, however. The enemy AI has also been upgraded to match your arsenal, and they’ll respond with smart counters and super attacks—including powers that can heal their allies or boost their damage. They can also call for reinforcements and will level up alongside you so that you’ll always have worthy foes to fight against.

Endless Replayability

In addition to the lengthy campaign and side quests, there are plenty of other activities in Asgard’s Wrath 2. The biggest among these is The Uncharted Rift, which you unlock early on during Abraxas’s saga and can venture into at any time. The Uncharted Rift is a Rogue-lite mode where you explore procedurally-generated dungeons filled with puzzles and enemies, which means you’ll never experience the same level twice. The goal is to see how long you can survive before you die, and doing so will earn you unique gear, loot, and treasures that you can then bring back to the campaign.

The Uncharted Rift has an asynchronous multiplayer feature as well. Whenever you perish in the dungeons, you have a choice: You can send your hero off as a Divine Soul that’ll automatically aid other players during their rift adventures, or you can send in a Dread Soul that’ll try to harm them instead. No matter which one you choose, you’ll receive additional loot and resources for participating.

You can spend hours just completing challenges and moving from one dungeon to the next. Get enough points and you’ll end up on the Uncharted Rifts leaderboard, where you can check to see how far your friends have progressed, too.

“We’re always thinking of how to keep players in the ecosystem of the game as long as possible, and what kind of fun surprises we can give them as they’re playing,” notes Kraemer. “We also want to cater to multiple types of players. You might have one player that just really enjoys doing the rift runs and going through that loop, and it’s fine if they want to put a lot of time into it and put the story on the backburner.”

“And unlocking stuff works both ways,” Kraemer adds. “As you progress through the campaign, more story content gets unlocked in The Uncharted Rift portion of the game and vice versa. So we kind of push people towards other parts of the game, and they all feed back into each other. If you want to have the whole Asgard’s Wrath 2 experience, you should be checking out all these different parts of the game.”

But if you just want a break from the fighting and puzzle solving, you can pursue tranquil pastimes like fishing, cooking, and crafting. You can also play mini-games and learn more about the Egyptian gods and mortals by talking to NPCs. Asgard’s Wrath 2 is a living world full of different characters and storylines, so you’re sure to discover something new every time you jump back in.

Sanzaru wanted to push the boundaries of what’s possible in a VR game, and the team is confident that they’ve created something that can stand toe-to-toe with the epic flatscreen RPGs on PC and consoles.

“We really wanted to create a new standard for what a full-fledged game on an untethered headset could look like,” says Kraemer. “The people who’ve seen what we’ve created are blown away by the art fidelity and the open and expansive world we’ve built—and how we’re pushing the hardware. So I can’t wait for people to try the game out and see that for themselves. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done here.”

We’ll have much more to say about Asgard’s Wrath 2 in the coming months, but we hope this gives you a good idea of what the full game will offer when it arrives on Meta Quest 3 + 2 this winter. Make sure to pre-order today to secure a bunch of digital goodies, including a copy of the original Asgard’s Wrath for PC VR!

Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for more Asgard’s Wrath 2 news and info!

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