Looks like this was just announced, and according to an IGN article has more Diablo developers on the team than original Torchlight developers! Good thing or bad thing? Maybe neutral thing? In any case, I liked Torchlight and its follow up, though I wasn’t crazy over them like I was Diablo III, and so I’m always up for more of a good thing.
More info here:
From what I can gather, it’s some sort of persistent online world where you and your friends can PvE all day long, which could be interesting. Hopefully they have some sort of single player/offline mode as well, but I haven’t done more than skim some of this stuff so far. I’ll edit this post as I learn more.
Developed by Echtra Games, which is where Max Schaefer (Diablo I) went after co-founding and leaving Runic Games. Not a lot of details are known right now, so we’ll have to keep an eye on the horizon as Gamescon approaches, where I guess this will be playable.
I have this same concern, honestly. Skimming the interview it doesn’t seem like they intend their to be an offline mode or private mode, but a wide open, MMO style online persistence. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Oh boy, is he ever doing his own thing. The little teasers he’s released look phenomenal. The Rebel Galaxy thread is covered in drool at this point, it’s quite disgusting.
Can’t say I blame them. Been enough stories throughout games history of developers becoming tired of being locked into doing the same thing over and over while wanting to cut their creative teeth on something different.
Not sure how I feel about the always online, games-as-a-service model that Perfect World is pursuing with Torchlight Frontiers, but I’ll keep an open mind to it and see what the developers at Etchra Games come up with. I’m not sure I really get all the fuss about how being an MMO allowing you to be part of the world of the game, I mean it sounds good but I can get the same connection out of a single-player game as well thank you very much. Comes off more as an attempt to validate the always online requirement to me, we’ve already been down that road with Diablo III and SimCity 2013 and the verdict was rather mixed to me.
So somewhat interested, but also rather cautious about it all.
If I was making a new ARPG, I would make it hero-based like Overwatch and LoL. That would be my grand innovation. Kinda surprised nobody has really done that yet.
That’s kind of like what Marvel Heroes did, though that failed primarily because Marvel itself is awful at managing games from what I’ve read. You’re completely right that it’s ripe for innovation.
I don’t get it. What do those games do that ARPG classes don’t already do? Each class has their own skill tree usually, and in some ARPGs, like Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, etc., you can combine two classes. The only thing different I can think from my brief time with Overwatch and LoL is that each hero has only a few skills, so maybe you’re saying spread out the skills across more characters?
