Titan Quest Developer Blog #2

Titan Quest lead content designer Tom Potter stopped by the TQ Vault’s developer blog feature to give us a development update for the action RPG. A bit of what he had to say:

One of the challenges we faced, and one that was really exposed by testing, is how to design gameplay boundaries that are obvious to the player but don’t look artificial. We’ve got a pretty amazing looking world with realistic looking assets, but this doesn’t translate into great gameplay areas by default. In many of our prototype levels we created boundaries with incredible detail and of irregular shape. But we found pretty quickly through testing that simple gameplay edges read better to the player and provide a better overall game experience. The challenge we set for ourselves was to create boundaries with realistic detail, but ones that created obvious non-gameplay areas. I think our efforts ensure that gamers won’t have to keep a constant eye on the minimap while playing the game; we don’t want that because it takes you out of the game and prevents you from enjoying all the hard work we’ve put into the game. But obviously we’ll only really know if we were successful once the game ships and gamers start playing the game, potentially in ways we had never imagined. So trust me, however excited you are to play the game, we’re just as excited, and anxious, to see you do it.