Torchlight Frontiers

Torchlight Frontiers
Developer(s) Echtra Games
Publisher(s) Perfect World Entertainment
Series Torchlight
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Release 2019
Genre(s) Hack and slash, action role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Torchlight Frontiers is an upcoming dungeon crawler hack and slash role-playing game and the third game in the Torchlight series. It is being developed by American studio Echtra Games and published by Perfect World Entertainment.

Gameplay

Torchlight Frontiers is an action role-playing game where the player controls a character in a high fantasy world. From an isometric, top-down view, the player controls their character to move about the game's world, using hack and slash with a variety of weapons, magic spells, and skills to fight monsters, collect new items and treasure, and sell and buy items in a centralized town to improve their character's abilities.[1]

Torchlight Frontiers will be a massively multiplayer online game, introducing large surface levels that allow players to join together to fight monsters that respawn over time, and travel between the game's primary dungeons, many which are procedurally generated.[1] Players can party together to explore these dungeons. To balance players' overall abilities, Torchlight Frontiers uses item-based experienced levels rather than player-based levels. Players with high-level items entering a dungeon with lower-level players will have their items temporarily weakened to the lower levels while in the dungeon.[1]

Development

Series background

The Torchlight series was originally developed by Runic Games; the first game, Torchlight, was a single-player only game released in 2009, and its sequel, Torchlight II, released in 2012, added in cooperative play with a second player. Runic was founded by several video game industry veterans with experience from action role-playing games (ARPGs) like Diablo, Hellgate: London, and Fate, many of whom had been at Flagship Studios at the time of its closure in 2008. Flagship had been developing Mythos, another action RPG but with significant massively multiplayer online (MMO) components. With Runic, the company wanted to "finish what they started" with Mythos, but to redevelop all portions of the game, lore, and art for this title.[2] With only fourteen employees to start, Runic decided to stay closer to their roots and develop a single-player game without an online component so as to get a product out faster and then build upon that in the future; this ultimately became Torchlight.[3] On release of Torchlight, Runic's Max Schaefer asserted that it was a first step toward a planned Torchlight MMO.[4] Torchlight II represented a partial step toward the MMO, giving them the opportunity to expand and test multiplayer elements.[5]

During Torchlight II's development, Perfect World Entertainment invested US$8.4 million into Runic Games, gaining a majority control of the studio. This investment was targeted toward the development of the Torchlight MMO that the studio has previously presented.[6]

In 2014, studio co-founders Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer left Runic Games, ultimately forming Double Damage Games and releasing Rebel Galaxy. While Runic had grown under Perfect World's investment, Baldree and Schaefer wanted to get back to smaller scale development, the reason for their amicable departure.[7] Co-founder Max Schaefer (Erich's brother) recognized that both developers were part of the critical team behind Runic's development, and with their departure, they had to rethink their plans for the Torchlight MMO. This required them to shift away from the action RPG genre into a new type of game, ultimately released as Hob, a puzzle-driven adventure game.[8]

Schaefer was still keen on the Torchlight MMO, but with the direction the studio had taken with Hob, he decided to leave Runic games along with additional programmers to try to fulfill this vision. He founded Echtra Games, a developer under Perfect World, in 2016, hired a number of developers with background in the action RPG area, and was able to get the rights for Torchlight through Perfect World.[9] Ultimately, Perfect World closed Runic Games in November 2017, although they did state that news about Torchlight would be made in the future.[10]

Announcement and promotion

Torchlight Frontiers was first announced on August 9, 2018, [9] and early versions of the game were available to play at the 2018 Gamescom trade show and PAX West later that month.[1]

The game is anticipated to launch on Microsoft Windows first in 2019, with releases on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to follow.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Petty, Jared (August 20, 2018). "Torchlight Frontiers: Exclusive First Hands-on". IGN. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  2. ↑ Jason Beck (2008-09-03). "From the Ashes of Mythos: The Art of Torchlight". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2009-09-11.
  3. ↑ Nick Breckon (2009-10-21). "Torchlight Interview: Runic Co-founder Peter Hu Shows Us the Light". Shacknews. Archived from the original on 2010-02-25. Retrieved 2009-10-22.
  4. ↑ Alexander, Leigh (2009-05-04). "Interview: Runic Games' Schaefer Goes In-Depth On Torchlight". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  5. ↑ Graft, Kris. "Interview: Runic CEO On Torchlight II, Digital Strengths". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2010-08-06.
  6. ↑ Brice, Kath (May 18, 2010). "Perfect World acquires majority stake in Runic Games". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  7. ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley (March 27, 2014). "Co-founders of Torchlight dev Runic exit studio to go indie". Eurogamer. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
  8. ↑ Kuchera, Ben (August 17, 2015). "How Runic Games Was Reborn After Torchlight: The Story Behind Hob". Polygon. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  9. 1 2 O'Conners, Alice (August 9, 2018). "Torchlight Frontiers taking action-RPG to 'shared world'". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
  10. ↑ Nunnelley, Stephany (November 4, 2017). "Torchlight studio closed up by Perfect World, but there's "some news coming" on Torchlight series". VG247. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
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