A bit of good news to read over this morning’s Diet Coke: Torchlight 2 has been announced. This time there will be some much needed multiplayer via peer to peer and LAN. I just know there’s probably some comments like “LAN? Already better than Diablo 3!” popping up out there. The first, since it lacked multiplayer, didn’t do too much for me longevity-wise. It’s fun and all smashing skeletons, but it’s infinitely more fun smashing them with a friend.
The first one was a solid game. It was a bit of mindless dungeon crawling like the rest of the games in this genre but there’s really no comparison to the gameplay of Diablo. That’s something I hope the team at Runic is going to address. Repetitive is the name of the game with these hack’n’slash “action rpg’s”, but I believe in order to be called a “action rpg” there needs to be more story. Torchlight is story-lite but embraces that identity with solid gameplay. Torchlight 2 just needs to expound upon their storytelling and give people a reason to want to dungeon crawl and anticipate their future MMO.
Overworld play might be just what the game needs. Randomly generated overworld and dungeons is already 2x the scope of Torchlight. If they can create exciting ‘outside’ areas with the same type of diversity they were capable of achieving with nothing but underground caverns in the original, then this will be a treat.
It’s simply a case of more is better with Torchlight. Diablo 3 is the next big title in this genre and to go against a Juggernaut like that and not be forgotten as a tide-me-over means they’re going to have to wow us. The original was priced at $20 which was generous. I’m hoping that Torchlight 2 is more game and with that I would expect a higher price. I would happily consider the first game a trial run and the second to be the real deal. Personally, I hope that’s their plan. Building a community around an IP — a universe — and then creating a MMO seems like a solid plan and one we’re seeing more of these days. I hope they ramp it up.
Sweet. Sounds exactly what we’re looking for my office Friday night games sessions 😛
All in all, nice strategy from Runic Games – a sequel will help build up the profile for the MMO.
The first one was amazing for like 3 days (about 2 hours per play session) then I got bored silly and haven’t loaded it up since.
Story can be important to me if it icludes decision trees that affect my character development and if it is clever/funny; otherwise most stories become predictable and I end up esc’ing through the cut screens. KOTOR and Jade Empire are two examples of immersive storylines that enhanced my gameplay experience (…and left me in tears at some points; Black Whirlwind: “Wang said something about a screwable power horse. You should get that, then maybe we can get going. Kang: “Kang! It’s *Kang*, not Wang! And it’s an inscrutable power source, you dumb ox.”)
Keen are you not playing any mmorpg’s anymore? You never talk or review them anymore…well with an exception of WoW 🙁
@Johnny Lane: I would ask you this: What MMO’s are there to play, other than WoW?
There are currently no MMO’s (That I can talk about) worth playing other than WoW. It’s why I returned to the game.
True, they are dying off….you see nothing on the horizon that may be worth while to follow?
SWTOR tops the list of games that will be worth watching. FFXIV and TERA are both games that I think might be interesting but I have a gut feeling that they’ll end up being giant disappointments.
A few titles are out there a ways with little info like Rift: Planes of Telara and Dawntide. Other than that, the rest of the games are looking like 2012 or 2013 releases.
With so little information available it’s hard to really comment on mechanics or anything about the games. Speculating off of almost no information just leads to let down and false hopes. I’ll definitely comment on MMO’s when there’s stuff to say. 🙂
I bought Torchlight during those crazy Steam sales last winter. Maybe I better actually play it.
I have to say I was pretty thrilled when I saw LAN in there.
With all of the buzz around Runic’s possible work on a Torchlight MMO, I’m glad they’re at least stepping toward multiplayer this way first. LAN inclusion really demonstrates these guys are more interested in good gameplay than just leveraging their game toward online monetization.
Besides, at this point with almost all of the virtual worlds out there disappointing, the key aspect to me is just co-op gameplay with friends and I’m tired of paying subscription fees for that.
I hope they ramp it up too, but I also hope they keep their “release often” development approach. Whether they get to that MMO or not, a stepping stone like this is exactly the right direction.
Keen,
I notice you didn’t say Guild Wars II. I don’t know how good it will be but their videos are sure nice looking. Also they are at least trying something different(breaking away from holy trinity). Plus it’s the box + no sub model.
you should check out Earthrise Keen 😉
Guild Wars 2 is definitely worth watching imho, but the release date is pretty foggy on that one. No sooner than 2011 and likely a quarter or two after SWTOR launches, which means fallish.
Heh, I totally forgot about GW2. 😉 That just goes to show you though how little there is to talk about with these games so far out there.
2011 and 2012 will be years of epic MMO theorycrafting and discussions. Just you wait.
I think it needs to stay at the $20 mark, it’s a good game and fun, but with a certain price tag, expectations are lower which is better for a smaller company. I think it will probably stay at it’s $20 price for longer with no. 2. Since the price cutting on the 1st game got it into a lot of homes, which it may not have got into.
To compare it to Diablo 3, isn’t really fair. The polish between the titles will be significant and the resources put into each game will be a magnitude apart.
Yeah wish there were some decent mmo’s out now but nadda 🙁 Was hoping FF XIV would be killer but hearing some iffy news on that front.
This Torchlight 2 and some other games should be cool though.
Torchlight was a great small game and i am happy to know they’ll be reeleasing a Torchlight 2 before of the MMO.
I just hope they expand the storyline as Keen pointed out but i also expect them to maintain the price on the 20$ mark.
If they release with a prrice similar to Diablo 3 then they are screwed because more direct comparisons will be made.