Torchlight Preview with Travis Baldree

Read our other Penny Arcade Expo 2009 articles here.

From the demise of Mythos and Flagship Studios arose a new studio entitled Runic Games. This studio contains alumni from both Flagship and Blizzard North, developers of the computer role-playing game classics Diablo and Diablo II (with its expansion, Lords of Destruction.) With Mythos, Flagship attempted to resurrect the isometric perspective-style RPG that was prevalent in the Diablo series, with an emphasis on simplicity of hack-and-slash gameplay. Unfortunately, the game never came to fruition, as Flagship shut down in mid-production. The following year, Runic Games was formed, and Torchlight was born. While at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Game Central had a chance to meet with Travis Baldree, Torchlight’s lead designer, who demoed the current state of the game for us.

Torchlight is a single-player only action role-playing game. However, to address the non-mutliplayer aspect, Runic is releasing a free-to-play MMORPG in the same vein of Torchlight in the near future. As with most other hack-and-slash RPGs, the game takes place within a high fantasy setting in a land of orcs, killer arachnids, and other typical fantasy enemies. To fight these ugly menaces, there are three playable classes to choose from: Destroyer, Alchemist, and Vanquisher. To simplify their uses, Travis boiled down their descriptions as a warrior, mage, and assassin/rogue, respectively. What all the classes have in common is a companion pet who helps you along the way. To appease casual players of the action RPG genre, the companion pet is an invulnerable asset to the player, whose main purpose is to help attack the enemy. At the beginning of the game, this pet is either a dog or cat, but later on can be morphed into a different form. These forms are brought about by a fishing mini-game, in which the fish transforms your pet into a random other being. The buffed form we saw was that of a spider; this gave the pet new abilities, such as spitting poison and webs, which stuns enemies.

The Destroyer class at work.

A big emphasis from Travis about Torchlight was the level design. There are seven distinct tilesets of randomized environments, these include sunken ruins, mines, and crypts. Instead of the carefully mapped out topography of other such titles as Titan Quest and Diablo II, Torchlight features completely randomized levels. You won’t notice this unique characteristic on your first playthrough of this 20-hour game. However, it will be wholly apparent on return visits of the game; excluding the pre-designed “boss” portions, each room will appear to be totally different. It’s understandable why players could potentially be skeptical of this mechanic, as past games have been criticized for lack of depth and personality in the design. With Torchlight, Runic is attempting to combat this plague.

We questioned Travis about the narrative structure of the story progression, specifically how it will be possible in a game where levels are totally randomized. We learned not every single level is randomized, but a vast majority of them are. The story will remain the same, since there will be certain key dungeons that will appear in each playthrough.

Torchlight has your typical high fantasy setting.

The game’s artstyle, as pointed out by Travis, is sort of akin to the film The Incredibles. The “chunky” look of the graphics is reminiscent to past games such as Beyond Good & Evil and Psychonauts. One of the reasons Runic decided to go this route was for performance. A critical goal in developing Torchlight was to get the game playable on all systems, even netbook computers. As of the build at PAX, the game is currently playable on a GeForce 2-era graphics card, and a 1GHz processor system. Another reason for the artstyle is the reasoning that “cartoony” and less realistic graphics makes the game visually relevant years after release. Travis made the point that the Nintendo GameCube Zelda game, Wind Waker, still looks compelling even to this day. But perhaps the biggest reason for Torchlight’s semi-simplistic looks is because of the modding community. Runic traveled down this path so their ever-loving community can accessibly modify their game, as most modders don’t have access to the assets to professionally create game art.

On that note, Torchlight will be completely moddable. In fact, Runic is championing the 3rd party malleability of their game. They’ve already released video tutorials on how to use the game’s level editor, and are actively involved in the modding community.

The game focuses on vertical level design.

At a debut price of $20 USD, Torchlight is a definite title to be on any PC gamers’ radar. Expect our review of Torchlight around the game’s release in late October, and the release of the free-to-play MMO in eighteen months.