Just over a year ago Mythos and its company, Flagship Studios, “crashed and burned in spectacular style”, a demise thus described by co-founder Max Schaefer. Mythos, the second game from the start-up, was lost to South Korean Hanbitsoft and Schaefer, having left Blizzard, Diablo and now Mythos behind, ventured onward with a dozen or so teammates to form Runic Games. One relatively short development cycle later and they are bringing Torchlight to fruition, geared up for an October 27th release of the single-player campaign. Like Diablo with a more playful cartoon flavor and a bit more humor it’s the game’s undeniable personality that makes it so engaging. Torchlight is just a world you want to be part of. Fans of action-RPGs will feel at home here, fans of Diablo even more so, with a familiar control scheme even a relative PC noob like me can latch onto, deftly navigating and firing off spells.
Set in a mining town right over a lode of Ember, a magical resource, miners pour into the town looking to improve their fortune. As the ruins of ancient civilizations are unearthed beneath the town of Torchlight it becomes clear you aren’t the first drawn to this deposit of Ember, and that the discovery might not be for the best. This lode of Ember clearly brought down people before you, and is threatening to do the same all over again. Ancient civilizations, their architecture and history and the mysterious properties of Ember set the stage for a compelling game. Torchlight acts as the hub where you can pick up additional quests, make exchanges with NPCs, sell and purchase items, and like Diablo, dungeons web out from this one location.
The single player campaign has a level cap of 100 and is estimated at about twenty hours, promises countless dungeons, encounters and loot – all of it randomized. The items are not class specific, which I love, so even if you’re playing as a Destroyer you can pick up a bow and make use of it – though if you’re a Vanquisher you will get all the associated perks for using that item. In a gaming world of the increasingly popular anti-hero, Torchlight uses a more traditional model – fighting demons and monsters. As Schaefer says, “Everyone supports the killing of zombies.” It’s true, at least when I think about gaming, there’s a pure satisfaction that comes from dispatching the truly evil when fighting the murky middle ground. From imps to arachnids, unless you have a fondness for ill-intentioned spiders the good guy-bad guy divide is as clear cut as they come.
Dungeon-crawling can be a lonely pursuit, particularly since the single-player campaign is characteristically void of human interaction. Runic offers welcome respite from the solitude by giving you a pet. Choosing from either a lynx or a wolf your pet is your constant companion, except when you send him off to sell inventory in town. You can feed your pet fish from the mini-game, and transform it into some nasty creatures to use in battle, and while some of the mutations may have a lasting affect on your pet it will not die. Nor can it be killed off (I’m talking to you, Molyneux), and doesn’t interfere with your path (again, take note dog that forever barks at treasure while I’m battling bandits). Kudos to Runic for delivering an in-game fellow that not only facilitates gameplay but functions as a self-preserving combatant (when your pet takes too much damage, it wanders off to heal up for awhile).
Speaking with some folks at Runic, they seem marvelously tuned into a more adult audience – no, I don’t mean Age of Conan “adult”. Rather, adults that have jobs, families, and want to get their game on in convenient and concentrated doses. Torchlight is streamlined, and having your pet deal with the tedium of selling off inventory is only the beginning. There is an accessibility here, with scalable graphics and addictive yet manageable dungeon running and in a shrinking market “accessibiity” is not a dirty word. For gamers that have more time, Runic delivers a big ol’ bear hug to the modding community by shipping the game with “Preditor”, the tools Runic used to make the title. That means that for $19.99, you’re getting a single player campaign plus the potential to LittleBigPlanet the hell out of it with new levels, loot, even classes.
A very cool sense of continuity is gained upon completion of the game, which allows you take advantage of retirement, a “New Game Plus” mode. You can bequeath your in game items to your descendants, and upon beginning a new game you start off with that same cool stuff you acquired in the last go round. Of course, this sort of carryover is only possible in the single player, and when Perfect World rolls out the MMO in 2011 your character will not transfer. Unlike the single-player model of dungeon-running in digestible chapters, the MMO will follow a more traditional scheme with an overworld and guilds, while still maintaining the ability to tackle things solo.
Torchlight will release as a single player campaign on October 27 for $19.99. The MMO, published by Perfect World, is scheduled for 18 months later. Following a free-to-play model, the available purchases are as yet unconfirmed but will not have a detrimental or game-changing affect on players that don’t make purchases. According to Schaefer, they “fully expect most of the people to never to buy anything…to play for free forever. Which is great, it’s designed so you can be just as powerful, basically, playing free as you can buying stuff. You might get there a little faster buying stuff but for the most part the game is geared to the free players.” As yet untested territory in the US, the free-to-play model is a staple in Asia. Torchlight’s creators are benefiting from their time-tested wisdom, incorporating purchasable items that will affect convenience and character customization.
With Blizzard’s third installment in the works, saying it’s another Diablo is not only a potentially scary categorization for Torchlight, it’s a cursory stereotype of a game that possesses its own identity – albeit one infused with some of the most likable aspects of Diablo – and a fair bit more whimsy. Add in the fact that Diablo III is going for a different gameplay approach this time around, and Torchlight will hold draw for Diablo fans after a fun take on the familiar. There is a friendly accessibility in the cartoon wrappings, mesmerizing dungeons and endless, endless loot. As you navigate the puzzles, traps and demons in the ruins of destroyed civilizations gone before, you are rewarded with a compelling world where the same thing never repeats in quite the same way, a fitting metaphor for a development team that’s built upon its own ruins to deliver Torchlight.
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