Drift into the Den
After ploughing through Wood’s Edge for about five to ten minutes, I felt I had reasonable enough gear to take on Wideload. The portal to the Den of Upheaval suggested that it was a level 1-3 region, and most of my shiny loot was at the higher end of that spectrum. It was time for me to clank into the cave and face the goblin leader.
Just as with Torchlight II, the cave counted as a private instance for me and anyone I chose to have in my party (currently: zero). As a result, I could engage in some classic clearing, hoovering up loot from the dungeon floor like a demonic possessed vacuum cleaner. In a twist, however, bringing up the inventory doesn’t pause the game - instead, the camera pans in tight to show your character as well as anyone who sneaks up and attacks.
That camera control is used in other areas, although not as aggressively, as Schafer explained. “In some of the levels we’re making, we’re changing the camera distance because it looks better in some landscapes more than others.”
By now, I was beginning to look like a patchwork jumble of random gear, and I was wondering if there’d be a way to smarten up that look. Transmogs and costumes are something that Schafer’s currently on the fence about, but that may change. “My personal feeling is I don’t like that, because I like the authenticity of you look like what you found. But there’s ways to do it that are halfway, like you could transmog to other things you’ve found, so at least you had to do the work to look like that. But it gets rid of the sense that you could look at someone else and see what their attributes and powers are, and with transmog that all goes away. So I understand both sides.”
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Big Boss Battles
As I reached the end of the Den of Upheaval and entered into Wideloads’s Lair, an in-game cutscene triggered to introduce the boss. Wideload himself was a monstrous goblin clutching a door for a shield and some type of axe made from bone. In the area around him were tram tracks and mine supports, even though the place must have been long-abandoned.
Wideload’s attacks are slow and ponderous, giving me good time to get some significant damage in. Before long, however, goblins are pouring in from all angles as the difficulty starts to ramp up. I’m having to swap between clearing out the green invaders, getting some quick hits in on the boss, then stepping back and venting to bust out some AoE. For the first time, I’m also having to keep an eye on those health potions and tap away when they come off cooldown.
The action ramps up further as stalactites start to fall from the ceiling, reducing my opportunities to stand still and vent, and pushing me into shorter attacks so that I can stay mobile. But eventually, after a sustained assault, Wideload falls to reveal a mammoth chest of loot. Victory definitely comes with benefits.
And although it’s early days, I also asked if there would be trophies for killing bosses that we could display on our housing forts. Schafer strongly confirmed there would be trophies, but added: “The fort is not just a trophy room and storage, it has things that will affect each character on your account. Things that will materially affect the game.”
Random Replay
The randomised nature of private dungeons definitely encourage replayability in other ARPGs, but Schafer is determined to push that concept further. “We’re going to encourage players to create a suite of characters, because they all have ways to benefit each other. [...] One of our metagames is that you’re going to create multiple characters, level them all up, and give them all different specialities. We’re de-emphasising your player level because it’s not a 1-60 thing, it’s ‘what is your character good at, what is its speciality.’”
Although we’ve heard hints on what this means, such as setting one of your characters as an enchanting vendor at your fort to sell enchants to other players, I’m hoping that we’ll find out more at PAX West this weekend. Schafer and the crew are bringing Torchlight Frontiers to the show floor so that players and press can try it out.
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Even so, Frontiers feels every inch a Torchlight game - so much so that I even went back to the first game after Gamescom 2018 just to do a quick comparison. That’s hugely impressive, considering that Schafter confirmed that it’s completely new from the ground up, built in Unreal 4. “There’s not a single bit of art that’s shared between the two. It’s all new characters, all new monsters. Everything.”
Even so, the attention to detail is impressive, especially considering that Torchlight Frontiers has only been in development for two years. “It is an endless fine honing to get the combat to feel like a Torchlight game. That’s something that’s literally taken until now to get right.”
“Sometimes it’s not right but you can’t quite figure out why. So we did a lot of having Torchlight 2 running and our game and going ‘OK what is the difference here, why does it feel better to hit something with a sword in Torchlight 2 than it does in our game.’ Eventually you figure it out, and it’s often times not what you think it was. Like one point we made the impact particles a little bigger and it was like ‘oh my god, that’s a lot better.’ And you’d never have guessed it would have made that much of a difference,but everyone was like ‘why does combat feel better,’ and it was just a slightly bigger flash when you hit something.”
Torchlight Frontiers is anticipated to hit beta by the turn of the year, with launch currently projected for sometime in 2019. As soon as we get further news - possibly at PAX West - we’ll be sure to share it.
