TorchlightSometimes I wonder why I subscribe to 4 gaming megazines even though most of the information I get from the internet (I got them for 20 bucks for a full year subscription i guess). But I get surprised I find out something I didn't know about.

The last issue of PC Gamer had been sitting on my bookcase for almost a full month, before I finally ripped it out of it's plastic and read it. I read a few things, but scanned a lot of previews for games, because either a) I didn't care, or b) I already knew everything about the game that had been released thus far.

I did a double take at a game called Torchlight. Of all the big games in the issue of the megazine (Supreme Commander 2, Star Wars Old Republic, Modern Warfare 2, Monkey Island, Left 4 Dead 2) this game caught my attention the most with the simple sub headding "Don't call it a Diablo-killer."

As I started scanning, the first Paragraph contained the name "Schaefer" which I reread and it said "Max Scaefer." I paused and went to the deep depths of my mind to see where I heard that name. Hellgate London. That's where the name was filed in my brain, but Max Schaefer is actually attatched to Mythos, Flagship's other game before their demise. Now Max is filed under "Runic" and the second I read "DEVELOPER: Runic" in the sidebar, I knew somethign was up. History lesson time.

Bill Roper founded Flagship Studios with several other members from former Blizzard North, who were behind Diablo series. They left because of some disputes with Vivendi (waaaaaaay before Activision Blizzard merger). The Schaefer brothers were in Seatle and were working on a smaller game for Flagship Studios, and they were called Flagship North. Hellgate London flopped, Flagship lost all money, Habitsoft owns Hellgate and Mythos now, and Flaghsip studios is dead. Flagship North, made of 14 people, formed a new company called Runic Games. I didn't expect them to make a new game for a long time, so I put them on the back burner and would check up with them in 2 years or so. Unless something surfaced with their name attatched to it...

Which brings us back to the present. They formed in August of 2008 or something like that. So I didn't expect to look at their web page until 2010 or so. Their game, Torchlight, is set to release this fall. 2009. Don't get turned off to the game just because of the short development time. Although it is true that all code for Mythos could not be used, Runic is using an interesting 3D rendering engine (it's not a game engine for some reason. I'm not sure what that means, but oh well). The 3D rendering Engine is OGRE. It's an open source engine, which is something I didn't expect, but makes sense because they are a new, independent company. From the video on their website, and the screenshots, the game looks nice, graphically.

There are two versions of the game. The first one, which is going to be released this fall, is a single player only version. The game will be released for $20-$30. So that's a good price point. That should perk your ears up. The single player game will establish the world, and give the developers inspiration for the other version of the game (which I will talk about in a second).

The game has a lot of Diablo elements, such as randomization and the top view camera, and the point and click fun. I think the most cool part of the game is that it will be bundled with the game editor, which means mods. This means that someone could mod the game to allow LAN support. This just expand's the game's replayability. So if you pay 20 bucks, and beat the game with all the classes, you can look for mods and still enjoy the game.

A new feature that I have never seen is the retirement option for characters. If you have a character, and it's leveled and pimptastic and all that, you can retire the character and some of its skills can be transferred to a new character. Kinda like a master-apprentice thing. It's cool sounding.

The second verison of the game won't be out for 18 months to 2 years after the single player version. It will be an MMO based in this newly created Torchlight universe. While the single player version is being published independently, The MMO is being funded by a Chinese online game publisher, Perfect World. I don't know much about Perfect World, but I hope they don't screw over Runic like Hanbitsoft did.

So cool beans that Runic is making games. FYI, Bill Roper is with Cryptic Studios, and is the Design Director and Executive Producer of Chapions Online, so he found a home as well. I hope other members of Flagship Studios found jobs. Anyways, I wanted to share that game, because I want it to be successful. Looks like it's coming along well.

I was going to rant about Activision, but I'll save that for another time.

Also, I'm puting the finishing touches on "Games to the Video 6." Expect that soon.

I'm out.

"This idea for World of Warcraft was originally 'We're going to make the best EverQuest that's ever been made.' Now, you can't say, 'Let's make the best WoW you could ever make.' Blizzard already did that."
-- Bill Roper