By Jim Rossignol on September 4th, 2009 at 12:54 pm.
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.
04/09/2009 at 12:59 Zaphid says:
Mythos was in my opinion the only hack n’ slash to come close to dethroning Diablo 2 and this looks like more of it, count me in.
04/09/2009 at 12:59 postmanX3 says:
I love the character designs. Gameplay-wise, it looks like just another Diablo-Clone… but I’ll definitely try the demo when it comes out.
04/09/2009 at 13:20 Chiablo says:
R.I.P. Mythos…
I’m saddened by it’s demise.
04/09/2009 at 13:20 Yahoo says:
The music features SO many tones that feel like they’re straight out of Diablo or Diablo 2.
Overall, color me interested, but a demo is a must.
04/09/2009 at 13:21 Chobes says:
I can’t touch hack-n-slash RPG brainrot without at least one other person to keep me anchored to consciousness anymore. Here’s to hoping this solid looking cutie pie will have online coop.
04/09/2009 at 13:23 Z says:
WoW gayn3$$!!!11!!eleventy!1
Looks pretty nice, actually.
04/09/2009 at 13:30 Nero68 says:
@Yahoo: Well considering Matt Uelmen is part of the Runic Games it might not be a surprise.
Looks quite nice, gotta get me a new mouse soon after Titan Quest sort of killed my left mouse button :( I’m also sad I never got to try Mythos.
04/09/2009 at 13:51 rocketman71 says:
Looks nice (and Diabloish), but this being Single only, followed in a couple of years by a MMO kills all attraction for me.
Diablo’s main appeal was LAN with friends, people!. When will they learn?. It’s bad enough that Blizzard is fucking with the formula!.
04/09/2009 at 14:14 Wacky says:
@Zaphid,What about Titan Quest?That game was loads of fun,and it had an interesting skill system!
04/09/2009 at 14:15 Ben says:
People love this game design, but imagine if Diablo 3 had the same art style – I don’t think the response would be quite so positive!
04/09/2009 at 14:20 c-Row says:
Too many colours.
04/09/2009 at 14:34 Coldstream says:
Excellent stuff. The cartoonish style bodes well for both an amusing tone and aesthetic longevity. I’ll definitely be checking this one out.
04/09/2009 at 14:40 Sam says:
Oooh. Pretty.
I’ll want a demo, but if it’s good, I’m there.
04/09/2009 at 14:40 Bremze says:
You know that this is being made by the same team that developed Mythos, right?
04/09/2009 at 14:46 Simon says:
“Development of the game is led by Travis Baldree, designer of Fate, and Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II, joined by the team that developed Mythos.”
Insta-win! :)
04/09/2009 at 15:03 Berzee says:
Wat? The trailer looks like a slow-moving guy doing the same three mildly swooshy attacks against the same four enemies over and over. o_O I do not see promise dripping from this like honey from the comb.
04/09/2009 at 15:05 Bremze says:
Also, Matt Uelmen is writing music for this game for some extra awesomeness!
04/09/2009 at 15:05 Diji says:
I hearted Mythos, yay for this!
04/09/2009 at 15:13 El_MUERkO says:
looks lovely, i hope we can zoom the camera out a bit more thou, it’s a bit to close for my liking
04/09/2009 at 15:14 Lobotomist says:
Diablo 3 is coming somewhere in 20011 …ouch
So this game is a must for hack & slash fans. Also remember that MMO version is in making as well.
04/09/2009 at 15:40 Xercies says:
Did someone say troll?
Well whats with the wow graphics
Oh you meant the other kind of troll…
04/09/2009 at 15:41 jsutcliffe says:
WoW-like it may be, but I really like the art style. I’ve never played a Diablo game (or clone) before as I’ve always had the impression, perhaps misguided, that they are best played with other people. The random dungeon aspect appeals to the roguelike fan inside me though. I’ll be looking forward to a demo.
04/09/2009 at 15:47 MadTinkerer says:
I actually had the privilege of talking to the Mythos guys at E3. They were waaaaaaaaay in the back of South Hall with a playable build of their game running.
It’s actually less “Some of the guys from Fate and a few guys from the former Mythos team” and more like “The entire Mythos team and the lead designer and another guy from Fate and maybe a couple others”. Basically, when Mythos was canceled, the guys in charge of the team scrambled to put something new together and when they did, the rest of the team jumped on board instead of abandoning each other. The Fate guys happened to be recently (fired? quit? department-downsized? not sure, but they were available) so they were part of Torchlight from the start.
So basically it’s a Frankenstein’s monster cobbled together from Diablo’s two best competitors. As someone who’s played it, I can say that it’s definitely a game to check out.
04/09/2009 at 16:07 HolyShitMatt says:
Thanks for the info MadTinkerer. The camera they’re using looks similar to console action and brawlers. Don’t know if I like what I saw but I may feel differently once I play it.
04/09/2009 at 16:26 Zyrxil says:
Wacky says:
@Zaphid,What about Titan Quest?That game was loads of fun,and it had an interesting skill system!
Wrong, Titan Quest had an interesting class system. The skill/talent trees themselves were terrible. They were full of passive talents or abilities redundant across classes or extremely simple abilities that were very boring.
Plus the game didn’t have random maps, that’s like negative bajillion points to replay value for a dungeon crawler.
(making manual quotes is annoyinggg)
04/09/2009 at 16:28 Zyrxil says:
(damnit no edit)
And I’d say FATE suffered from the same problem of a boring character system and uninteresting skills, which is why I don’t carry much hope for Torchlight (though I never was in the Mythos beta).
04/09/2009 at 16:32 Zaphid says:
I second your comment about randomly generated levels, any hack n’ slash without it can’t hope to compete with the legends.
Hear that, Sacred devs ?
04/09/2009 at 17:02 ZephyrSB says:
I adored FATE, so it always puzzled me why I could never get into Mythos. Hopefully this new attempt can draw me in and sate my dungeon crawler hunger while I wait for D3…
04/09/2009 at 17:04 Vinraith says:
This looks promising. It’s nice to see an apparent resurgence of non-MMO action RPG’s. I’ve missed this genre, and the last good entry I can recall was Titan Quest which feels like it was ages ago.
04/09/2009 at 17:05 yogSo says:
Hear that, Sacred devs ?
Errr… no, I think they cannot hear you anymore…
04/09/2009 at 17:16 Serenegoose says:
Wasn’t that just a remix of some D2 music in the background? It was the same chords and drumbeat and everything. Looks potentially fun though. I’ll need to try a demo before I decide. I mean I’ve never finished titan quest, despite much trying, whereas I’ve finished d2 several times. Sometimes there’s something that, despite overwhelming similarities, dungeon grinders either have, or don’t.
04/09/2009 at 17:18 GuiSim says:
Torchlight uses http://www.ogre3d.org/ for its graphic engine.
04/09/2009 at 17:35 Dave says:
WANT.
04/09/2009 at 17:46 Lucas says:
I don’t know anything about the game, but this video is really terrible. Every one of it’s many brief segments is a single attack or action by the player. Presented like this it looks more like WarioWare than a proper game!
I now suspect they will put such a mode into the game, for the sole purpose of causing my death by unceasing laughter.
04/09/2009 at 17:54 Howl says:
You lost me at randomly generated.
04/09/2009 at 18:10 Lafinass says:
Ah Mythos. I barely knew you.
A pox upon you people for reminding me of what could have been.
04/09/2009 at 18:20 RyePunk says:
‘Sploding bodies, and lots of them… May be useful in the quest to kill time until Diablo 3 appears.
04/09/2009 at 18:28 The Great Wayne says:
The art very much looks like Dungeon Party which, if totally ok for the said game, is a weird choice for something that seems to take itself quite seriously.
04/09/2009 at 18:48 Wulf says:
From the trailer, I made two observations.
- The main character has a helpful dog! :D The presence of any sort of canid in a game makes everything better.
- This looks a hell of a lot more visually cohesive and less dated than Diablo III, in just about every way.
I eventually see Blizzard buying Runic just so that Blizzard can steal that beautiful visual cohesion and talented art direction for themselves, considering how much they need it.
Seriously, this looks like what Diablo III could be in more talented hands.
Also, to restate: DOGGY! :D
04/09/2009 at 18:54 Alaric says:
This looks pretty cool. I’m not a big fan of dungeon-hacks and I hated Diablo II, but I think I wanna try Torchlight. I like the colors and the cartoony graphics. Gonna drop a line to my editor and see if anyone else got dibs on a review copy. =)
04/09/2009 at 19:03 Tworak says:
Myyyytthoooossssssss :<<<<
this looks pretty good, though
04/09/2009 at 19:10 plant42 says:
Arrrgh! Not again! Fantasy, axes, spells, goblins, trolls, glowing weapons, armor, shields and… a freaking gun??
Damn it, that drives me nuts. Same thing in Fable 2 – you’re supposed to be this awesome wizard channeling fireballs and then just get bored, whip out a pistol and shoot everything in the head.
*pouts*
04/09/2009 at 19:11 MarkN says:
Nox is my favourite Diablo-alike. I found Diablo too dry and serious, whereas Nox had bags of charm and humour. I wish I knew where my copy was now…
04/09/2009 at 19:29 amishmonster says:
I just hope this comes closer to Mythos and farther from Fate. I was in the Mythos beta for one glorious week right before it shut down, and I agree that it’s the closest the genre has come (yet) to successfully updating D2.
Fate, on the other hand, was charming and had some cool mechanics, but failed on the mechanics end of things. There just weren’t many interesting abilities you could get other than attacking and healing (unless you went straight Magic, and then that was pretty much all you could do). Unless I was doing it wrong, it just didn’t have that much variety.
So, looking forward to this but waiting for reviews.
04/09/2009 at 19:49 Joe says:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/69637
Interview and gameplay from E3. Looks very impressive.
04/09/2009 at 19:52 Hybrid says:
ehh, i have Titan Quest and it’s expansion to finish. I’ll pass.
04/09/2009 at 19:52 Joe says:
According to the TTH video, the game will have three classes on launch, extensive level editing and modding, and will be the precursor to an MMO.
Also, brownie points for the use of Ogre3D.
04/09/2009 at 20:01 Marius says:
This is the old E3 trailer. The new PAX trailer can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PD5HJvEUCU
04/09/2009 at 20:07 Heliocentric says:
Do i have to click to hit? I never finished titans quest because it actually hurt my hand. Maybe a can dig up an auto fire application.
04/09/2009 at 22:26 Tei says:
IMHO
Diablo 2 > Mythos > Hellgate London > Sacred > Titan Quest
05/09/2009 at 03:01 Jambe says:
@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…
05/09/2009 at 04:10 getter77 says:
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.
05/09/2009 at 11:32 We Fly Spitfires says:
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.
05/09/2009 at 12:22 Butler` says:
Looks…………. ok actually.
I never did understand the problem in emulating Diablo’s success though, yet no one has come even close…
05/09/2009 at 15:53 MadTinkerer says:
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.
05/09/2009 at 16:22 The Great Wayne says:
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.
05/09/2009 at 17:11 Wulf says:
@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.
08/09/2009 at 00:22 NeonBlackJack says:
Looks very Fate-y
I’m in.
08/09/2009 at 20:49 Urthman says:
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.