Hot for Torchlight
Back in October of ’07 I picked up a game called Hellgate London, developed by Flagship Studios. FSS was headed by a bunch of former Blizzard employees who were involved in the creation of Diablo, and Hellgate promised to deliver Diablo like game play in an FPS style. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. I don’t want to get into the reasons Hellgate London failed, but it did, let’s leave it there.
While I was playing Hellgate I came across another game that Flagship was working on called Mythos. Mythos was initially a networking technology test for the studio that eventually took on a life of it’s own. It was a much more traditional take on the Action-RPG genre, like Diablo or Fate but with a few innovative features thrown in for good measure. In fact Travis Baldtree the lead designer behind Fate lead the development of Mythos. Soon I found myself playing the free beta of Mythos more than I was playing Hellgate. There was something about the Art Direction that I immediately liked, it felt fresh and it didn’t take itself too seriously like a lot of other overly grim RPGs. Of course it had the same addictive hack and slash gameplay that one would expect from a game like this and it catered to the loot whore in me.
When Flagship closed it’s doors, Hellgate London and Mythos went with it. I was crushed (Well, not so much crushed as mildly disappointed, but I like to be dramatic). I had long since stopped playing Hellgate, but Mythos was something I still enjoyed when I only had a short window of playtime available. It was the perfect pinch-hitter, the cheap quickie when you didn’t feel like going through the hassle of dinner, a movie and foreplay. Hell I didn’t even have to call it back or make it a mix tape. (Have I taken the lame analogy too far yet? Check.)
Lucky for me (and you) the team from Flagship Studio managed to stay intact and have reformed under the name Runic Games. Their first offering picks up where Mythos left off with a new a action-RPG called Torchlight. This is a completely new game built on a completely new engine that Runic developed themselves called “Ogre (**edit- I’ve been told by Wonder at Runic that they didn’t develop the engine, but they did develop the tools to create the game, the same tools they’re shipping with the game for modding**) “. As with Mythos, the art direction looks great and uses a highly illustrative style. Every screenshot I’ve seen so far looks like a frame from a comic book and while that may not be everyone’s “thing” I think it works really well. The character designs are imaginative and the monsters look frightening and cuddly at the same time.
You’ll start out with your choice of 3 characters, The Destroyer, the Vanquisher and the Alchemist. You’ll also get to choose a pet that will fight by your side and even head back to town to sell your unwanted loot for you! There’s no mulitplayer for the game, which is disapointing, but at a mere $20, who can complain? The game will also come loaded with toolset Runic used to create the game, so game mods won’t be far behind, giving the game a longer shelf life. Finally Runic have also announced a Torchlight MMO is on the way that will be built with the same engine.
The game launches October 27th and will be available on Steam. I for one see many late night bootie-calls in our future.
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Hi there! Always great to meet a former Mythos player.
We didn’t develop Ogre – it’s a free open source graphics engine : it “throws polys onscreen” as Max says. We did develop all the tools that made the game run on Ogre – the same tools we are shipping WITH THE GAME! just thought i’d say that.
Also, did you see our newsletter that came out today?
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=fe2851c0e23281777e69134a7&id=a1d2ca2b0c
Thanks for the heads up Wonder. Any chance I might be able to get some contact info for you. I’d love to talk to you about a possible guest spot on our podcast if you’re interested. You can contact me at grokhoof@gmail.com
Yay! Mythos is back. I remember when you got me hooked into the open beta for it. Was a blast for the small amount of time that I played it. Glad to see it survived…
Sounds pretty sweet, and the videos on the site look great too. I’ll definitely have to give this one a try. It looks like it will scratch that itch that began way back when I dallied with Gauntlet. Oh, Gauntlet. So many quarters. So many “elf needs food, badly”s.
If this game turns out to be anything like Gauntlet (which is definitely looks like it might) I’ll be sure to buy it and recommend it to my friends!
I miss Mythos like you wouldn’t believe…that was one of the few games that my significant other and I could actually agree to play together. Toward the end they were making some amazing progress. I was so sad when it was gone in a flash!
I can’t wait to try Torchilight but am pretty disappointed that the multiplayer won’t be coming for some time. If it’s anything like Mythos, though, the wait will be WELL worth it! These guys definitely know what they’re doing.
I hear you Dean, I’m dissapointed by the lack of a multiplayer option as well. I am however, optimistic that the inclusion of the toolset will create a community of mod builders and resulting content will make up for the lack of multiplayer action, at least until the MMO version arrives.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the FATE community jumped on board with Torchlight and started creating mods for it. I believe that FATE was developed by some of the same folks as well. FATE spawned Mythos spawned Torchlight…interesting evolution.
8 comments
Hi there! Always great to meet a former Mythos player.
We didn’t develop Ogre – it’s a free open source graphics engine : it “throws polys onscreen” as Max says. We did develop all the tools that made the game run on Ogre – the same tools we are shipping WITH THE GAME! just thought i’d say that.
Also, did you see our newsletter that came out today?
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=fe2851c0e23281777e69134a7&id=a1d2ca2b0c
Thanks for the heads up Wonder. Any chance I might be able to get some contact info for you. I’d love to talk to you about a possible guest spot on our podcast if you’re interested. You can contact me at grokhoof@gmail.com
Yay! Mythos is back. I remember when you got me hooked into the open beta for it. Was a blast for the small amount of time that I played it. Glad to see it survived…
Sounds pretty sweet, and the videos on the site look great too. I’ll definitely have to give this one a try. It looks like it will scratch that itch that began way back when I dallied with Gauntlet. Oh, Gauntlet. So many quarters. So many “elf needs food, badly”s.
I miss Mythos like you wouldn’t believe…that was one of the few games that my significant other and I could actually agree to play together. Toward the end they were making some amazing progress. I was so sad when it was gone in a flash!
I can’t wait to try Torchilight but am pretty disappointed that the multiplayer won’t be coming for some time. If it’s anything like Mythos, though, the wait will be WELL worth it! These guys definitely know what they’re doing.
I hear you Dean, I’m dissapointed by the lack of a multiplayer option as well. I am however, optimistic that the inclusion of the toolset will create a community of mod builders and resulting content will make up for the lack of multiplayer action, at least until the MMO version arrives.
If this game turns out to be anything like Gauntlet (which is definitely looks like it might) I’ll be sure to buy it and recommend it to my friends!
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the FATE community jumped on board with Torchlight and started creating mods for it. I believe that FATE was developed by some of the same folks as well. FATE spawned Mythos spawned Torchlight…interesting evolution.
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