Runic Games Interview
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There's an interview with Runic Games' Max Schaefer up on N4G, in which the studio CEO addresses questions about the development of Torchlight II, the design changes they've made to the Torchlight series over time, and what the future of the series will bring.
HONESTDRAGON: The character classes are vastly different compared to the previous classes in Torchlight. Did the team know what classes they wanted to add in the sequel? Were there any classes scrapped from earlier days of crafting the different classes?
MAX: Our character classes follow a pretty basic foundation, but evolve over the course of development. For characters, we use a theory that an old colleague termed "familiar novelty". Meaning we want to make characters that are all new, but whose characteristics are familiar to players seeing them for the first time. In other words, even though you've never played an "Engineer" before, just by looking at the character, you can get a sense for how he fights and what his skills are. Of course, as we go, we scrap a lot of skills and add new ones, but it should all follow the formula and the nature of the character.
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HONESTDRAGON: Any future plans for the Torchlight series?
MAX: Yes. We love Torchlight, and have a lot of great ideas on new directions for the series. We still don't want to make a traditional MMO, but we'll infuse some new flavor into Torchlight's ARPG roots.
HONESTDRAGON: Can fans expect to see Runic Games at any conferences coming up?
MAX: One of our favorite things is showing off what we have at game conferences. Not only do we learn a lot about our games at conferences, but we get to communicate directly with our community. Apart from the PR and media attention, we feel like our development improves by showing our game in public. However, we have to have a proper, playable version of the game, so that limits when and where we show. We'll see how our development progresses, but chances are we'll be at some show in the next 12 months.
