Greedfall: The Dying World is now out of early access, arriving on PC and console after 18 months of development work that leaves considerable gaps between the game's best and worst elements. The French studio Spiders has demonstrated genuine ambition in its prequel to the 2019 original, yet the finished product suggests development time pressure rather than polish.
The game launches on March 10 for PC and March 12 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, completing a journey that began with September 2024's early access release. What should have been a controlled path to refinement instead reveals a project wrestling with fundamental technical and design challenges.
The narrative framing represents a genuine creative choice. Rather than follow the colonist protagonist of the original, players now assume the role of a native of the Teer Fradee tribe, playing as a Doneigad, a kind of spiritual leader or spiritual protector. The prequel is set three years before the first game, with players taking on the role of natives who are taken by colonisers back to the old world. This narrative inversion has genuine thematic weight, putting the player in the position of the dispossessed rather than the conqueror.
The problem is execution. Multiple reviewers report that the end product is buggy and messy with uninspiring combat, combined with slow pacing that gives three false endings to the opening before players access the open world. This introductory period stretches approximately 10 hours. For a game positioning itself as an immersive RPG experience, asking players to endure three separate false conclusions before meaningful exploration begins is a significant design misstep.
The technical state at launch undermines the creative vision. Players report placeholder names from the game's code appearing on guards, enemies respawning after moving around a corner, conversations being referenced despite characters not having had them, freed creatures standing still rather than engaging enemies, and explosions failing to trigger distraction mechanics. These are not edge cases. They reflect systemic issues that persist after substantial development time.
On the positive side, the world and map designs reward exploration and finally represent the fantasy world as it ought to have been. The prequel improves upon its predecessor considerably, with a new real-time combat system with pause ability representing the right direction for the series, whilst world and map designs are much better, rewarding exploration. The character writing, particularly in companion work, shows genuine craft.
The combat redesign exemplifies the tensions throughout. The shift from action to real-time with pause ability is exactly the right direction for the series, according to some observers. Yet the combat is so full of technical oversights that it's practically unenjoyable according to others. This divide reflects legitimate design philosophy disagreement rather than universal failure.
The broader question haunts the release: was early access the right decision? Only about a third of the story was finished at launch, with the next update delayed without a new date, meaning players experienced rough, frustrating content in incomplete form. The pacing is all over the place and parts of the narrative feel unfinished, with the finished material being fantastic but the rest leaving potential unexplored.
For players willing to overlook technical issues and grinding opening acts, there is something here worth experiencing. The world-building aspires to depth that few mid-budget studios attempt. The narrative choice to centre indigenous perspectives rather than colonial ones addresses legitimate criticisms of the original. Yet these ambitions remain partially unrealised, buried beneath bugs that should not persist in a full release and design decisions that prioritise scope over completion.