A large chunk of the PC gaming world seems positively frothy in anticipation of Diablo III, but there are other dungeon crawlers on the horizon too, including the splendid-looking Torchlight, from Runic Studios. It’s by some of the same chaps who worked on Fate, so it’s easy to get an idea of what to expect: randomly generated levels, lovely design, and lots of goblins. It should be super-playable, too, and allow us to create our own levels and scenarios. I’ve posted the trailer below, and blimey, it’s looking good. Check out that troll!
The game is out on the 27th of October and will be a $20 download.
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@Yahoo and Nero68: as Bremze pointed out, Matt Uelmen —of D1 & D2 fame— is composing the music for Torchlight. It sounds familiar because that idiosyncratic “whining strings driven by harsh drum loops” style is Uelmen’s creation, and it’s found throughout Blizzard’s music (Uelmen didn’t work solely on the Diablo games).
Tangentially… y’know that creepy guitar piece from the original Diablo where you’re introduced to Tristram? Bits of that were carried into D2 by Uelmen and the composer for D3 (Russell Brower) has said he is drawing inspiration from Uelmen’s Diablo work for D3. In fact, they used opening guitar riff I mentioned to tell the public that they were working on Diablo 3. Broswer pointed out in a forum post that music in these big game franchises tends to take on a life of its own. Just thought that was neat.
Regards Torchlight: the gameplay looks like fun. Decent smashey and choppy… but in my view, the real linchpin of an Action RPG isn’t the story or even the music — it’s the mechanics. If it’s not fun and interesting to keep mashing your foes into gibs then the game quickly gets boring. We can’t really appreciate what it’ll “feel like” to play this via YouTube — we’ll have to play it ourselves…
You guys know what the odd thing will be? There’s a new FATE game coming out of WildTangent also in the near future. I just can’t help wonder at how they’ll jive stacked next to each other.
Check the Preditor videos on their website’s devblog…that thing looks blood amazing and you can see they are shooting for intuitiveness the likes of which is rarely, if at all, seen.
27th Oct? Wow, that release date snuck up on us. Is that for America or UK or both?
I’m pretty excited about Torchlight not just because it looks like a fun hack ‘n slash which will tide us over until Diablo 3 releases in 2014 but also because they planning to add a MMO component onto it later. Should be very interesting.
Looks…………. ok actually.
I never did understand the problem in emulating Diablo’s success though, yet no one has come even close…
Incidentally, while it’s certainly not going to have the ridiculous level-of-detail as Nethack or Dwarf Fortress, they do seem to be heading in that direction a bit. For example, the dog (I think they said you would have a small choice of different pets) is really quite helpful, and the room generation seems a lot more varied and generally less rectangle-y than Diablo 2.
On the sliding scale of serious vs. silly, it falls somewhat in-between. It doesn’t take itself completely seriously in the story department, but it’s not a parody. The graphics are colorful but not really cartoony.
Those worried about the fun factor shouldn’t. The mechanics are those of a hardcore dungeon crawler, but scaled back somewhat so that casual players can play it too. As a long-time but not completely hardcore Diablo 2 player, I was pleased by the explore-kill-loot-repeat feedback. Presumably there will be different difficulty-hardcore/softcore settings in the final version.
I concur with MarkN, Nox was definitely great. Also, the second trailer Marius posted is far better, will give a look at the demo as soon as it is available.
@plant42
B-bu-but… shooting ancient evils in the head with an old gun is hilarious! My werewolf in Champions Online recently got a set of flintlock pistols, and he’s been running around doing just that! It’s surprisingly effective, even against ghosts!
Comic-book Universes, I love you.
Then again, it would be far less amusing if the guns in Champions were realistic. The fact that the average person can take 50 bullets and still be okay is what makes guns acceptable, that and I can shut up an ancient sorcerer with a common, everyday gun.
“I am Nithraxygul the Decayer, I bring Entropus – Lord of Entropy to your pitiful plane, your feeble technologies and sciences cannot stop my magi–”
*bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang!*
“Auuurrrgh!”
/clap
There’s something so inherently appealing about guns > magic.
Looks very Fate-y
I’m in.
I got to play this for a while at PAX this weekend and thought it looked great. I really like the artwork: more cartoony than World of Warcraft, which gave it a more coherent look, like the characters the environments and the spell effects were all part of the same cartoon instead of different pieces patched together. Yes, you can zoom the camera out much farther than is done in these videos.
Also the level design of the cave I was running around in was pretty nifty – a lot better than the bland desert of the Diablo 3 demo. I didn’t realize it was randomly generated – if so, I’m impressed!
I played a ranged-specialist whose primary weapon was a pair of steampunk-ish pistols (with flared muzzles like a trumpet). I didn’t get much of a feel for the skill tree, but the combat, inventory, and loot seemed very Diablo / Titan Quest. The pistols were quite fun though! As was the pet dog.