GameTopius - The Geeks Paradise.

Everyone watched as Hellgate struggled, matured, and fell, and they’re watching as Diablo III inches toward us. What they should be watching is Torchlight, Runic Games’ first title since their formulation in the wake of Flagship Studios’ demise. This game looks like a truly interesting take on the hack-and-slash RPG genre, something we haven’t seen in a long time. In this interview, various designers at Runic answer a variety of questions, so that you can get a look at what’s going into this awesome-looking game. Read on.

TC: Runic’s development team has some impressive credentials: you have people who worked on Diablo and people who worked at Flagship Studios on Mythos. You have a lot of experience with action-RPGs. What do you all bring with you from those various backgrounds that really makes Torchlight something interesting and different?

The entire Runic team was developing Mythos, and our leads created Fate and Diablo, so we are really lucky to have that background and be able to apply that expertise towards Torchlight. The more we play and work on games, the more features stand out to us that we love - like any fan, it's easy to pinpoint exactly what makes a game really fun to play - interesting lore, satisfying combat, great loot, charming mini-games. Our history has really streamlined what we would list as 'the best of the best' when it comes to RPG,'s so that's what we're doing with Torchlight - making the game that we ourselves would buy and play!

TC: In the same vein, what was your goal in making Torchlight? What were you shooting for when you started out?

Probably one of the biggest goals in making Torchlight was to start fresh and do it right. Mythos was made using the Hellgate London engine, which was always a challenge just because the games were so different. This time, we get to make the game we want, from scratch. That means writing our own tools, designing brand new characters with art styles we all really enjoy, drawing on everything that we love and find addictive about RPG’s to make one kickass game.

TC: While Diablo and Mythos are obvious influences, the version of Torchlight I played had something you rarely see in games: it was incredibly easy and smooth to play. It wasn’t over-simplified, it just felt like all of the extraneous stuff was gone. It was free of the unnecessary clutter that a lot of action-RPGs have. What did you have to do to attain this feeling?

Thanks for the high praise, that’s definitely a feeling we’re going for.

We all love games at Runic, but as we get older and take on more personal responsibilities, gaming time is harder to come by.  Since play time is becoming more precious, our tolerance for the tedious or boring parts of games is getting pretty thin.  We want to get right to the meat of the experience, anything else is just frustrating.

That ties in with our tendency to iterate a lot.  We have ideas and put them in the game, and then everyone tries them out.  If the new system overcomplicates game play or creates a boring distraction, people are vocal about that and we will either fix it or rip it out.  Features that have become standard in the genre also have to pass this test, which is why we end up with things like auto gold pickup and pets that sell your loot for you.

Oddly, item identify passes the test.  It seems like it would be one of the first things to go, but the games feel less satisfying without it. 

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