We all know Torchlight, but do you know the story of Torchlight? It's rather dramatic and highly entertaining. I'll keep it brief, I promise.
A little studio called Flagship Studios was formed under the overwatch of several key Blizzard figures--specifically, the individuals responsible for conceiving Blizzard's Diablo-birthchild. Their first release was a little game called Hellgate: London. Remember that? It was goddamn awful, so don't try too hard. It was a big budget post-apocalyptic science fiction shooter heavily routed in Diablo mechanics. We're talking Borderlands, well, before Borderlands. It earned nothing but 'fair' reviews that lead to utter disappointment after steamrolling with hype and a massive fanbase.
In the background, a portion of the team was working on a little game called Mythos. It was essentially their idea of 'testing network technology' while (as my assumption) scratching that Diablo-development itch. It was going to be a Diablo-styled free-to-play MMORPG with randomized dungeons, hub cities, heavily instanced environments, and all running off a cash shop. At the time, it was incredibly exciting. Development made it into a fairly large closed beta. Critics and journalists were ecstatic about this game (and so was I).
But then Flagship Studios, due to the massive failure of Hellgate: London's release, closed down. It was a 'very' sad day for Mythos. But the team apparently had few health pots hidden away. Shortly after Flagship Studios' closing, it was announced that a new studio, Runic Games was formed from part of this development team. Runic Games took what they were working on with Mythos after seeing their rabid fanbase of Diablo-hungry minions, and released an eerily-similar Torchlight to help set the studio in solid water. The logic behind their game development was simple: we're going to create Torchlight to support the (re-)development of a Diablo-styled free to play MMORPG while establishing netcode, mechanics, and the like. But you know the rest of this story, as Torchlight 2 will be the foundation to the Torchlight MMO's networking infrastructure.
But this story has a happy ending for Mythos.
The Revival of Mythos
What happens when you're a publisher with a recently-closed down studio who had some promising work just about finished? Well, you hand off the rest of the polishing bits to another developer, and release their work several years later. Enter: Hanbitsoft. They've resurrected the game, continuing with the philosophies of Flagship Studios' development. It's a free-to-play, Torchlight/Diablo game (let me restate how eerily similar it is), with loads of customization, skill trees, profession trees, a rich crafting system with item breaking down, allocatable attributes, randomized dungeons, identifying charms, insane bosses with crazy attack patterns and forms, assignable achievements with stats buffs, and all the Diablo dungeon-crawling you could want.
So what's the catch to all of this? Well, there are item shops. With real earth monies, you can buy the ability to respec your character's skill trees, buy additional health potions, and buy stuff like additional inventory space. It's all non-intrusive, and there are no ads. You have the ability to respec in the game without earth money, health potions are obviously available for vendor purchase, and the inventory isn't much of a problem as you can break down any item into it's core crafting materials on the fly (which are stored in a separate crafting inventory).
So, if all this sounds like it's worth your time, I'd highly recommend it. Just stop on by the Mythos Europe website and sign up (don't worry, you don't have to live in Europe). The installer isn't particularly large, roughly around 3gigs.
If enough of you Giantbombers start playing this game, I vote a Giantbomb Mythos guild. Ya?
Log in to comment