Torchlight II will feature a narrative that'll take us across a continent. That is the initial clue that Runic Games is attempting to lift the series out of the doom and gloom and into differentiated areas, a not-so-subtle flip-flop for a game whose predecessor was defined by, in part, its one-dungeon confines. But what kind of places will we see above the ground? According to Runic CEO Max Schaefer, a variety of cities and open expanses will welcome us when we adventure in the game at some point in Spring 2011.
"People felt a little claustrophobic with the structure--Torchlight is just one town [Torchlight] and a series of dungeons underneath. So, the obvious remedy for that is to make big overworlds and different cities," Schaefer told Gamasutra. "So, we're doing that."
This'll be a meaningful change that addresses one of the easiest criticisms one could lob at the original hack-and-slash title: the constant retreading over the same, almost never-changing ground.
== TEASER ==Torchlight II's MMO-like approach with its co-op, and now apparently its world map, doesn't mean Runic Games has scrapped its plans to create a Torchlight MMO. We discovered that when speaking with a representative. But Torchlight II does mean the Torchlight MMO won't be the next title from Runic.
"The more we thought about it, we could give people what they're asking for, and give them a nice, co-op Torchlight experience a lot faster than we could do an MMO," Shaefer told Gamasutra. He explained that Runic felt there was a void and wanted to fill it because, well, it "ran out of excuses not to do it." Kinda like how we're running out of excuses not to build a one-use time machine to Spring 2011.
