Torchlight II Interview

I.Eat.Games has an interview with Runic’s CEO Max Schaefer on the launch of Torchlight II. Aside from dealing with the post-launch situation and sales, the interview also touches upon the post-release plans for the title, the feature of the game Schaefer is most proud of, PvP, the older MMO iteration of Diablo III that was scrapped at Blizzard, a possible Torchlight III and more.

Here’s an excerpt:

Will Runic make a Torchlight 3?

Yes. However I don’t know if it will expressly be a Torchlight game but with more, in the sense that Torchlight 2 was the same as Torchlight 1 but with more. I would imagine the next iteration in the Torchlight universe would involve a twist, and I don’t know what that would be just yet. Our team have made the Diablos, Mythos, now we’ve worked on the Torchlights and they’ve all been action RPGs. We’re eager to break that mold a little bit.

So a move to a completely different genre?

Nah, I’d just say a related genre. We’re not going to do a puzzle game or anything.

What do you think it is about the isometric ARPG that Runic connects with so well?

I think it might just be our one good idea in the world [laughs]. It’s our sole marketable skill and if we weren’t doing this we would probably working at Home Depot or something. I think it’s just something we had a lot of early success with in Diablo 1 and it just sort of stuck with us. We kind of have a head start on everyone else in making them. Travis [Baldree] our president and lead programmer made Fate. He’s got a lot of experience and has had success with this genre. Starting a new company it seemed like the obvious and most responsible thing for us was to stick to what’s in our wheelhouse make something we know we can do really well. Something that would allow us to build a foundation beneath us before branching out and taking some risks. That’s kind of part of the deal with Torchlight. It was really really fun making Torchlight 2 so I suspect we’ll never get too far from that but we definitely want to put a twist on it for the next thing.