Diablo III team "love" Torchlight

By Fred Dutton Published 18 February, 2011

Blizzard hails hit look-alike RPG.

It's been an awfully long wait for Diablo fans since the second entry in the beloved action RPG series saw the light of day in 2000. But for many, the thumb-twiddling has been made easier to bear by Torchlight, Runic Games affectionate riff on Blizzard's classic beast-slaying formula.

While by no means identical, the 2009 dungeon crawler clearly pays a sizable debt to Diablo, so much so that you might imagine Blizzard's hackles would have been raised. Well, not a bit of it – the Diablo III team are huge fans.

"We play those and we generally love them," said art director Christian Lichtner when Eurogamer asked what the team thought of games knowingly riding Diablo's coat tails. "Torchlight – we love it, we play it a lot."

Lichtner then went on to single out Gearbox's 2009 first-person shooter Borderlands as another office favourite.

"I'd say Borderlands is inspired a little by Diablo – we love Borderlands," he said, before explaining how keeping an eye on the likes of Torchlight can help in the development process.

"It's always great. We love it, we talk about it, we scrutinise them from a gameplay standpoint to see what we can learn, to see what they've improved on. It's all good as far as we're concerned."

Created by some of the same team responsible for the original Diablo, Torchlight won a glowing 8/10 from Eurogamer when it launched on PC a couple of years back.

"It's the best Diablolike since Diablo II, and a very real rival to the upcoming Diablo III," wrote Alec Meer.

"Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all, that it so confidently and prettily takes the fight to Blizzard is an enormous compliment."

The game gets a belated Xbox Live Arcade release on 9th March, with a full PC sequel due later this July. Discounting a miracle, that will be well before Diablo III finally emerges from Blizzard's demon forge.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Spekingur #1 1 year ago

    "Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all..."

    Oh, come on now. I could have the same claims about Diablo 3 (and WoW). I'll still play Diablo 3 but the above statement is just being mean.

  • Quint2020 #2 1 year ago

    At the end of the day Torchlight is basically being developed by Blizzard North and thus is awesome and probably better than D3.

  • Marshall2008 #3 1 year ago

    They had better like it. Its made by Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II.

  • samred #4 1 year ago

    I should hope they think so! Some of the folks at Runic helped BUILD the Diablo series in the first place.

    EDIT: Figures someone beat me to this observation.
    Edited by samred at 18/02/11 @ 10:41

  • HurbleBurble #5 1 year ago

    Currently playing through Torchlight after picking it up very cheap and have to say it's one of the best games I've played in ages. I'd actually turn it around and say Blizz should be very wary about taking it on.

  • jonfon #6 1 year ago

    "Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all..."
    What about the super Dog/Cat courier service? Why do those boring Store runs when you've a helper who'll do it for you!

    And in fairness Blizzard in the past have never been innovators either, they're much better at taking existing ideas from elsewhere and polishing and honing them until they gleam.

  • peak_performance #7 1 year ago

    I always enjoy it when developers aren't afraid to recognize and give credit to competing games. I love you Blizzard.

    (*Should buy Torchlight sometime soon*)
    Edited by peak_performance at 18/02/11 @ 14:21

  • dloob #8 1 year ago

    The dog/cat courier service is great, no more "I am overburdened".
    Although I have my suspicions about the service.
    penny-arcade

  • Butr0sButr0s #9 1 year ago

    Torchlight 2 looks great, I'm planning on picking it up but am passing on Diablo III. The two things I love about the torchlight series are a) the pricing and b) the support for community created mods. Putting your fans to work can result in some really incredible content (free to boot!), and I've found that for games like Half Life 2 and Left4Dead2 I spend as much or more time with mods than I do with the base game itself.

  • dfunked #10 1 year ago

    Torchlight 2 is a guaranteed pre-order for me, whereas Blizzard still have to prove that they can come up with the goods.
    Just because you own an IP doesn't mean each sequel you make is going to be good without the talent who made it great to begin with! (Max and Erich Schaefer)

  • specular #11 1 year ago

    Nice, TL2! I thought they were making a MMO for the Perfect World people first.

  • Kain201 #12 1 year ago

    @specular:

    Nope. After the success of Torchlight Runic Games decided to push the MMO back and go for the second part instead. Perfect World bought also most of the stock of Runic Games and is now the biggest shareholder.

  • Kanjin #13 1 year ago

    The PW MMO is still raking in the cash so no rush to get a new one out.

  • DrMGinius #14 1 year ago

    @Spekingur Diablo's art design makes it unique, as so does it's writing. Torchlight is generic and uninspired, and can be out-classed in storyline by your average 90's platforming game. That's not saying it's not a good game. It's fun to PLAY, but what about all of the other things a videogame can do? A game that is only fun for how it plays its basically a glorified Pac-Man ripoff.

    Nothing to say about WoW, however...

  • Javier·de·Ass #15 1 year ago

    "so much so that you might imagine Blizzard's hackles would have been raised"

    haha. this is an incredible news story. why would that ever be, Fred? Christian Lichtner has no prior experience with the Diablo games or franchise. the Runic teams consists of Blizzard veterans with something like 16 years of experience working on action rpgs, not only that but diablo was THEIR game, that team also consists of key people from the Fate team with 6 or more years experience working on action rpgs. the diablo3 team had no prior experience with the diablo games, no personal involvement at all. they're not going to feel any ownership or have any bad feelings towards the people who made that franchise come into existence. the whole premise of this story is ridiculous and laughable.

  • SavemeMDX #16 1 year ago

    @DrMGinius, that's why for TL2 Runic hired an actual writer to do the story

  • DrMGinius #17 1 year ago

    @SavemeMDX A good thing to do, they really need that.