Anyways, thread derail aside…
Weird thing is, there are enough details on the images to show that the artist is more than capable of creating his own content. Just doesn’t make sense.
Anyways, Grim Dawn looks awesome in a way that Diablo 3 doesn’t. I think I have to give these guys my money.
Ho boy, I’m really liking how this looks, even in a pre-pre-pre-pre-pre alpha stage apparently. How it plays is another thing, but I absolutely loved Titan Quest, and have poured more time into it than most recent game purchases. These guys are getting my money. I just hope they go ahead and look at the peformance issues (I’m guessing in the game engine) that Titan Quest had in certain points and fix them.
Now, why the hell didn’t I see this thread earlier on, as in, six months ago?
Pre-ordered.
Titan Quest had it’s fair share of flaws, but it had a lot of interesting mechanics. I’m looking forward to seeing what the devs do.
cool - Anyone know when alpha that Legend pre-orders gets a shot at will arrive?
I was checking out their site just now to see what was new, and I saw they had another interview over here at Big Download.
There is one thing from the interview that really stood out for me:
Grim Dawn was an idea that developed after Iron Lore and after we had met with defeat while trying to pick up where Iron Lore had left off pitching Black Legion. In retrospect it is such an obvious idea and one we probably should have thought of much earlier but there were reasons that it was not obvious to us at the time. After Titan Quest debuted to poor sales in North America and THQ subsequently declined a TQ2 citing lack of interest in a PC-only ARPG, many of us felt disappointed in what we had invested years of our lives to create and demoralized by the state of the PC-market in general. We questioned ourselves, lacked confidence in our creation and generally just wanted to move on in a different direction.
Then something funny happened. Those low initial sales that were supposed to rapidly drop off to nothing never dropped off. The monthly sales never increased to anything impressive but they just kept going and going, longer than anyone could have imaged. After Iron Lore had shut its doors and Crate was struggling through its first year in existence, sales of Titan Quest just kept rolling.
According to the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Institute, only 20 percent of games that are released onto store shelves ever become profitable. At the end of 2008 I found out that Titan Quest had managed to claw its way into that 20 percent. The game had not only reached profitability for THQ but it was very close to surpassing a million copies sold. It became obvious that we needed to make another game for this audience. Our good fortunate was that Iron Lore had retained ownership of the engine, tools, and other technology it created while developing Titan Quest. We knew these tools well and frankly, were very excited to get back to doing what we knew how to do.
Firstly, what the…? Only 20% of games are profitable?
But secondly, while I respect the business decisions of THQ at the time, with the surrounding pressures upon them, I am still pissed off, whilst wearing my retrospective goggles that there won’t be a Titan Quest 2 considering the game can now finally be considered a success, over a million copies sold.
Anyway, I’m increasingly interested with the changes in the game. Destructable environments are in, and looking promising.
I’m surprised TQ became profitable with only a million sold, much of it likely at a discount. Games sure were cheap to make back in the day!
So Grim Dawn is going to be a better Titan Quest with a faction system, dynamic weather, and randomized dungeons. Sounds great to me! They also plan to do regular mini-expansions with new quests and areas.
And they have a pre-order system in place… regular price is $20 but you can pay $32 or $48 for access to pre-release versions, and to see your name in the credits. Now I’m tempted to epically pre-order the game…
It’s awesome to see that TQ was a grinder in terms of sales. It makes me wonder if digital distro budget-sales (Steam, et.al.) are the key to keeping PC gaming viable over the long term, by at least keeping a game in the public consciousness if they’re being sold at fire sale prices.
Had completely forgotten about this and just ordered legendary fan edition. Appreciate the thread bump as a reminder.
Well, yeah, I reckon Digital Distribution helps immensely with maintaining sales. After all, Rise of Legends fell on its face, and yet, if released online, coupled with sales, I’m sure it too would have landed in the same boat as Titan Quest. Common sense really, game stores only have so much shelf space to store games.
My only concern with Grim Dawn so far is the use of the mini-expansions to keep the game moving. So far, it sounds like the current game world is equivalent to the size of the first act in Titan Quest (Greece). That alone I thought was a fairly long act anyway, however, by fleshing out with mini-expansions, well, it will be interesting to see how things are resolved with any possible compatibility issues in multiplayer when people of differing content try and play. I’m guessing it will be like Borderlands where the areas are simply locked off.
It’s also supposedly releasing for $20. I’d prefer to have it longer for more money myself. But maybe $20 is a better price point and they may be right about this being the best marketing strategy.
Plus it reduces the amount of time they need to be in development before they find out if this type of game is still viable.
Just preordered the legendary edition as well. Figured I’d feel bad paying less for the Titan Quest successor than what I paid for StarCraft 2 – after all, Crate needs my money much more than Blizzard!
Looks like NWN2 at a glance.
NWN2? In what way?
Must have been a very quick glance.
The older screen shots, not so much the newer ones. Just reminds be a bit of NWN2 in the graphics and color scheme. Reminds me of the beginning of NWN 2 (post-tutorial), just that these have a lot more detail.
The cemetery screenshot especially. But I guess if you’ve seen one fantasy RPG cemetery you’ve seen them all?
But these pics look great - I always loved Titan Quest’s look, glad they’re using the same engine.
i can only hope this means they’ve learned that small statistical increases don’t count as actual skills.
lol i know rite!! Wait, what?