LOS ANGELES – Not only is action RPG Torchlight II bigger and better than its predecessor, but you can play it with friends.
[eventbug]Developer Runic Games showed Wired.com a build of the new PC game at E3 Expo, and it looks great. Blending the gorgeous isometric art direction and click-click-click hack-n-slash combat of the first game with an array of new environments and features, Torchlight II could have that same oops-I-stayed-up-all-night-playing quality that entranced players back in 2009.
Runic promises a ton of new improvements for this sequel, which it will price somewhere between $20 and $30 and distribute both in retail stores and digitally via Steam. The game will be out at some point before the end of 2011, though it sounds like we might not see it until much later in the year – Runic is still playing around with both the user interface and multiplayer hub, among other features.
It's impossible to talk about Torchlight II without bringing up Diablo II, Blizzard's similarly absorbing dungeon crawler that has ensnared the lives of millions since its release in 2000. Torchlight II unabashedly takes almost all of its gameplay from the 2000 loot crawler – an understandable theft, since Runic Games was founded by the former Blizzard employees who created Diablo II. Still, the blatant lack of originality doesn't make Runic's take any less fun.
Playing the game is simple: Right-click to use special abilities; left-click to do everything else. You'll hack apart baddies, beat up bosses and collect a very large variety of loot across what Runic says will be three full-fledged acts, each the size of the first game. Along the way, you'll adventure across tundras, forests, icy plains and deserts. Whereas Torchlight had a single town, Torchlight II has many, along with a wide variety of randomly-generated dungeons to explore.
The highly touted new feature is cooperative multiplayer.The team has yet to decide how many people will be able to play at a time, but players can team up to take down the game's myriad dungeons and bosses. Runic says people won't have to worry about their friends stealing their loot, since each character will only be able to see his or her own set of drops. Ninja looters need not apply.
One of Diablo II's biggest flaws was the rampant cheating on its online servers. Hackers and modders populated the game's multiplayer like nerds populate E3. So how will Runic games fight the inevitable influx of cheaters? By not fighting them, it says.
Rather than maintaining draconian security measures or banning modders, Torchlight II will come with its own tools for changing pretty much everything – in fact, the game will ship with the very same level designer that Runic used. Players can mod their own characters and take them from single-player to multiplayer without a hitch. Runic hopes to foster an online community of players that will moderate themselves, allowing people to give ratings to other peoples' characters based on whether or not they decide to play "clean." The studio also hopes to create mod-free maps and sessions for those players who want unaltered experiences.
So is Runic Games worried about the eventual release of Diablo III? The team says no: As a low-budget cult title, Torchlight II could forge its own path. Still, Runic says, Diablo III might hurt them in other ways – like stealing all of their spare time for months after it's released.
