Now, as we all know, Diablo III is the next installment of our favorite action roguelike game, a legendary colossus looming in the horizon, advancing slowly but surely in our direction, and in the best tradition of Blizzard, not even having a release date announced yet, as master gamecrafters toil in their magical workshop to ensure it doesn't see the light of day until it's a polished flawless trend-setting masterpiece.
And then, there is
Torchlight. Torchlight is made by a team of guys some of whom worked on Diablo and Diablo II, including the music composer. It will not be groundbreaking by any means, but it will have solid gameplay, solid graphics, solid music, a plot (but not too much of it), and modding options galore with the ability to create your own skill trees and all.
Torchlight is a boomtown built on top of a rich deposit of a magical stone called Ember – the rare and valuable keystone of magic. Shortly after its discovery, all sorts of adventurers came to Torchlight to make their fortunes. Unfortunately for the miners, they weren’t the first to discover this particular vein of Ember – the mines are in fact a layer cake of ruined civilizations, growing more ancient the deeper one descends. Before long, ancient horrors that were once locked safely away from the world boil out of the mines, terrorizing the populace.
There are three character classes in the game:
The
Destroyer, who excels at melee combat and channels the power of his ancestors;
The
Vanquisher, a superb marksman, who uses traps to debilitate her foes;
And the
Alchemist, who channels the power of Ember to attack from afar and summon minions to his side.
I suspect Torchlight will be as close to an up-to-date 3D version of Diablo II as possible without getting sued by Blizzard. Which makes it a spiritual successor of
Darkstone. And I don't know about you, but I enjoyed that one immensly, and another Darkstone with better graphics is exactly what can make these dark, cold evenings tolerable while you wait for Diablo III to crawl to the finish line.
The best news of all -
Torchlight is coming out exactly 10 days from now.
It will cost 20$, or 18$ if you pre-purchase on
Steam.
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Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!
[Last edited by Maurog at 10-18-2009 05:42 AM]
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