I'm Getting My Hopes Up for The Ascent 2 After the Developer Told Me It Had Big Franchise Plans

The Ascent 2 is a game I’ve hoped developer Neon Giant would make ever since I finished the wonderful The Ascent back in 2021 — and after speaking to the studio at gamescom, I’m convinced it’s now in the works.

Neon Giant is currently hard at work on No Law, a first-person Cyberpunk-style game with immersive sim elements set to be published by parent company Krafton. But it has also confirmed plans to turn The Ascent, which has had over 12 million players, into a franchise.

“It's something we always wanted to do,” creative director and co-founder Arcade Berg told me. “Creatively, after we were done with the first The Ascent — that was a smashing success for us — creatively, we just wanted to go somewhere else. We weren't ready to do more The Ascent there and then. And team size and also investment wise, we weren't prepared for multiple projects.

“But one of the great things that we are now working with Krafton is that we now have backing and support that we can take creative risks. So together with them, we've actually built a franchise plan. We're moving The Ascent from a game to a franchise. And we'll be dropping more news as we figure things out, because it's a longer-term plan. But it's really exciting for us to now know that we have backing and support to do more. And what that is, I can't really go into details of.”

Neon Giant’s twin-stick action RPG impressed players for its punchy action, highly detailed environments, and beautiful cyberpunk aesthetic. In IGN’s The Ascent review, we said: “The Ascent’s satisfying gun-tastic action-RPG gameplay loop mixes with its beautiful cyberpunk aesthetic to create an overall enjoyable experience. Neither its story nor its characters are all that memorable, and its enemy encounters can stumble toward the end, but its gunplay and ultra-violence in a neon-soaked world combine to craft a co-op-friendly game you don’t see every day.”

In July, Krafton announced that an upcoming The Ascent update, due out in November 2026, will bring “a smoother more dependable experience for solo and co-op players, including improvements to co-op teleportation, the encounter system, save-game reliability and player-progression reliability.” The update comes out five years after The Ascent's release.

Krafton has teased that The Ascent will expand into new genres, which sparks speculation about what type of game the sequel will be. Will The Ascent stick to twin-stick action RPG, go first-person, or perhaps something else entirely?

The Ascent — and it looks like No Law will do the same — punched above its weight. Neon Giant was made up of just 12 staff before it doubled in size, to the heady heights of 24, to make No Law a reality. It remains an extremely small setup that’s able to get a huge amount of density and detail into its games. I can’t see Neon Giant ballooning in size as it works to make more The Ascent games, but perhaps it will take on a few more staff when the time is right.

In the shorter term, No Law is due out in 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.