Meanwhile we live in the timeline where Torchlight III is some more Torchlight, but you have a fort for no reason. In an alternative timeline there’s a version of Torchlight III that’s inspired by the decade of roguelites that have dominated PC gaming, that has learned lessons from the evolution of the ARPG and the massive breadth of a genre that spans from Dark Souls to Hades, and brings in the best of these new ideas to a solid core action role-player. And one that is, tragically, driven only by a failed desire to be a gaming format that had already had its time ten years back. Which brings us to… oh, yeah, another single-player Torchlight game. That left only Max Schaefer of the original Diablo team still interested in realising this dream, and so Perfect World-owned Echtra Games was formed by him and some Runic colleagues. Then with Perfect World investing to finally have that MMO realised, well, two of the company’s founders left and Runic made Hob as their final game instead. Then Torchlight II came out, and was, er, a test for that future, they claimed. The original game by Runic was supposed to be the precursor to an online multiplayer world. The Torchlight series, originally created by the founders of Diablo and Fate, has always been plagued by the same failed ambition to become an MMO. It’s in playing T元 that I’ve finally realised what it is: it’s the last decade of gaming.

While the game had been well loved on its release, including by me, something was wrong. I recently replayed Torchlight II, and found myself embroiled in a confusion of ennui. Torchlight III (T元) feels an awful lot like 2012’s Torchlight II, except massively spaced out, featuring the corner-cuttingiest static cutscenes of all time, with a bunch of leftover F2P ideas that don’t seem to do anything any more. Manage cookie settingsīecause despite its Damascene moment, it doesn’t feel like it ever quite shook off its Sauline roots. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. If I didn’t already know the path it had taken, I’d have spent my entire time playing the game being gnawed at by wondering just what it was that made it all feel so off. Torchlight III feels an awful lot like what it is: a free-to-play multiplayer game that thought better of itself, and decided to become a proper full-price microtransaction-free primarily solo release.

One is 'This should be fun.' The other is 'Let's make it interesting.' I couldn't help but hear both as the ignored voice of a quiet developer at the back of a Torchlight III planning meeting. Torchlight 3 is an action RPG haunted by the ghost of the F2P game it almost was, and lacks any clear idea of what game it actually wants to be.Īt the end of the first of three acts in Torchlight III, there's a boss character who repeats two of the same barks over and over.

Torchlight 3 2018