I.Eat.Games.

“ I would imagine the next iteration in the Torchlight universe would involve a twist, and I don’t know what that would be just yet. Our team have made the Diablos, Mythos, we’ve now worked on the Torchlights and they’ve all been action RPGs. We’re eager to break that mold a little bit.”

Mark: Hi Max! Let’s start with the launch of Torchlight 2: The game has been out for four days. What’s the general mood in the office right now?
Max: Has it only been four days? Seems like it’s been an eternity and yet it seems like it was yesterday!

The mood is very good, however we got some obsessive compulsive lead engineers who can’t accept that someone’s having trouble. They haven’t slept in four days making fix after fix for people. So yeah, people are pretty tired but the mood is very good. Reviews are coming in and they’ve been super-nice, and people in the forum are just being super-cool; so yeah, the mood is definitely very good.



What about when the game unlocked on Steam? Were you on a conference call with Valve when they pushed the big red release button?
Oh we were all huddled around computers checking out how things looked for sure, but we kind of had been doing that already since we were being pre-sold on Steam. So we were camped out on there to see how those numbers were looking. Seeing people begin to show up in games was really exciting and fun! Then things started to break…as expected. We immediately went into fix-stuff mode—our website still isn’t completely back up!

Never-the-less it was still really exciting because the vast majority of people were getting in without any problems and having a good time. The reactions from those people were great.

Oh and yes the Valve guys came over with a great big box full of booze, and that was pretty fun [laughs]! We just all hung out and drank some champagne for a little while and then we went right back into fixing stuff. It started out as a day of celebration and then ebbed back into a work day—it was really weird.



When you say you were able to see the numbers, I’m curious if you were using Valve’s tools?
We were using Valve’s tools and our own dashboard as well. We were able to see the number of people who’re using our lobby service and then the number of concurrent users on Steam’s public page (and on there you can see how many people are playing).

“We wouldn’t be able to do a $20 game of this size while running servers and trying to maintain a secure economy. It just doesn’t happen, and so that’s why you have $60 boxes for things like that.”

When I interviewed you at E3 in June you said Torchlight 2 pre-sales on steam shot up 40% when Diablo 3 released, and continued to stay up. How many pre-orders did Runic end up selling before launch?
Oh gosh [thinks]. We haven’t even gone back and totaled the numbers yet but it was probably 20 times more than what we had for the original Torchlight.



Did you guys break 500,000 units?
Not in pre-sales no, and that’s just on Steam. We would need to go back and look at the smaller sites there too. But it was really good, and we’re obviously not a very large company so seeing numbers like that are pretty cool.



Regarding the launch of Torchlight 2 you also said “with any luck we’ll have our own version of [Diablo 3’s] error 37”. Did you get your wish?
[Laughs] we did! There’s no way to simulate 50,000, 80,000 or whatever concurrent amount of people made things go wrong with our website, our lobby and with our account servers. It wasn’t a complete mystery that required rocket science to solve but just stuff we had to grind out to fix. I don’t think we had anything as pervasive as [Diablo 3’s] infamous error 37, but anytime there’s a situation where someone can’t get into their game it’s a crisis to them; so we just jumped on the issues one-by-one as fast as we could. I’d say we had several pop up but most were minor issues that kept people from playing with their friends. There have been some rare cases where an old graphics card was to blame. You just have to roll through those one at a time and fix them. There’re so many weird configurations out there you can’t be totally prepared. We’re not resting until the traffic in the support forum goes down though. We knew it was going to happen and it did!



Runic supported the heck out of Torchlight. I’m curious how long you guys plan to support Torchlight 2 in terms of additional content and patches?
I know that the guys have a bunch of mods they just can’t wait to dump onto people but we don’t have any plans to do any paid DLC. We’re just doing free stuff. We’ll probably sit down after a while and evaluate if we should put a bunch of people together and make a proper expansion pack and not trickle out stuff. We would have to sit down and see if it’s something that’s big enough and adds enough to be considered a proper expansion pack we could sell.

But yeah, that’s something we need to talk about still. At the moment we just want to keep improving what we have and hope that more and more people continue to buy Torchlight 2.



How do you feel about the critical reception of the game?
It’s great! The numbers are wonderful, especially the users scores on things like Metacritic. They’re just fun to read. Obviously not everyone likes everything about the game and those are things that aren’t easy to read, but by and large they’ve been very fair reviews.



Do you think we’ll see the Mac version in 2012?
I would imagine it would be pretty close to 2012 but we’re not committing to anything at this point. It kind of depends on how everything else goes. We’re going to focus on getting the language translations done first, at least the major ones. Then we’ll start into the Mac port and until we’re well into the Mac port we can’t give any kind of release date, but I imagine it would be close to then. Two to four months - we’ll see.



What single feature are you particularly proud of in Torchlight 2?
I think it’s the diversity in the level of content. There are so many cool levels, dungeons, surprises, secrets rooms and just a bunch of little things here and there.  I look back on it and realize how many moving parts had to come together. It’s pretty cool we were able to do this with such a small team in a short amount of time.



There appears to be quite a few Easter eggs in the game. Some reference other video games, movies and even developers. Are there any you can mention that might be your favorite?
There are a couple that are now on YouTube and have been revealed so I’m not talking about anything that isn’t publicly available, but there’s a little Minecraft creeper level called Notch’s Mine. You go in there and fight some creepers which is pretty cool. There’s a robot in there called Claptrap from Borderlands. We’re releasing the same week as them so we might as well have a little shout out. There are some more in there that I cannot talk about but there’s, you know, an homage to The Goonies in one of the quests. There’s a lot sprinkled about in there.



How did that call to Gearbox go when you cleared the Borderlands reference?
Well, we wanted to make sure it was the proper Claptrap [design] and they were very very cool about it, as was Notch regarding the Minecraft stuff. It’s just fun to see that stuff happen.



Is there anything in particular you wish could have made it into the game before launch?
Well you know you’re never really done with a game. You just have to kind of decide it’s time to start selling it. I think we actually picked a good time when we said “Ok this is enough!” I think maybe a tiny more attention to get PvP arenas, but then again that’s kind of off the core mission of the game.

The thing is I think as far as the core mission of the game—we hit it! In an ideal world [a developer] could just polish and polish and polish until it’s exactly perfect—but obviously you’ll never get there—but I think the level of stuff is just right.



Player vs Player is still coming to Torchlight 2 correct?
Yea I’m sure. I don’t know in what form though.



Ok so there is no ETA on PvP?
It’s definitely something we want to get out there, but even if we didn’t someone else would probably mod it in there fairly quickly.



What took up most of the development time from beta to release?
Really what took the most time was going back and making sure each boss fight was unique, using the right combination of skills, summoning the right minions and making sure it all felt right. Also going through each area and making sure a variety of creatures were spawning and everything included as intended. That really took a long time.

There’s a lot of work that goes in there to make sure it looks and plays correctly. That was really the bulk of the time. It isn’t anything mysterious, just a lot of elbow grease. It was a lot of hours and hours and hours of playing.



Regarding the mod tools, how powerful will they be for Torchlight 2? For instance can someone create a whole new class?
Yes. I’m not going to lie. It’s not easy to do but we’re basically releasing the same tools we used to develop the game. We’re not dumbing them down at all, but we’re also not making them consumer friendly at all either—at least not very much. So yes they’re extremely powerful. You’ll be able to make new classes, new skills, change the balance overall or specifically; new scripted events, new layouts, new quests and backgrounds. This time—unlike Torchlight 1— the mod tools have access to the User Interface (UI) and those should be extremely easy to make. I’m actually really excited to see what people do with it regarding that because everyone has a different idea ideal of what a UI should look like. Oh and doing some of the wardrobe things is easier now too if you want different armors or want to work on the item level.

The mod tools touch almost everything. It’s really really powerful!



Will controller support ever come to Torchlight 2?
[Thinks] I don’t know. That’s potentially something someone could mod, but it’s something that took so much work to get it to work with Torchlight 1 (regarding the XBLA release). It really took a lot of time re-imagining and repainting the interface and to go through Torchlight 2 again to do that; it would take months. At this point I’m not sure it’s worth our time versus doing other productive things. So, again I don’t think so but I also wouldn’t rule it out 100%.



How does a console release look for Torchlight 2?
It would take a lot more re-sampling of art work and remaking areas that we didn’t have to do it Torchlight 1, so it would be substantially more work to port [Torchlight 2]. Not to mention the multiplayer stuff. Again I think it would be a really cool thing to do, I mean Torchlight 1 was really fun and cool but we’re not sure there’s a business case there with Xbox Live Arcade. We’re going to let the dust settle after the Mac port is done, make sure our translation are out, kinda see what people want us to do next. Also see what’s going to drive us creatively too. Right now we’re so immersed in the release and sleep deprived we’re not making any rational decisions in regards to long term future stuff [laughs].



I have to say I think a Game of The Year edition of Torchlight 2 with every bit of additional content compiled into one package would make an excellent launch day title for the next Xbox and PlayStation. Does that sound like a possibility?
[Laughs] I’m not going to argue that, that would be pretty cool!

“I think people are panicking because they’re thinking about Diablo 3 and what it might be like if you could cheat—and yeah it would be chaos—but that’s only in the context of having a competitive economy.”

I’ve finally been able to sink my teeth into the multiplayer portion of Torchlight 2, and though I love the game I think there could be some improvements made to the lobby system and browser. For instance, there is no ping indicator for each server and it would be nice to be able to join a game directly from the friends list. Is that stuff already in the works?
Yeah, everything is on the table and fortunately we have a game that can be easily patched and modified everything is always up for discussion. The lobby was something that we first wanted to make sure was stable and worked well and not try to get something out that was too complicated and frustrating. It’s absolutely something we will look at and will add features to as time goes on.



Torchlight 2 has an overworld where as the original did not. What lessons did the team learn from shifting to this new kind of design paradigm?
I think we learned a lot about how to create a space. You know Torchlight 1 was such a rush [in development] that we were just getting used to the tools and the technology. We didn’t really have time to redo places, reiterate a ton or learn from what we were doing. we were basically trying to get things up and running, get some dungeons made, get some weapons made and then fill it full of monsters.

This time I think we learned how to create a more coherent world. Right off the bat we realized when a player start the game and runs up the path towards Estherian Enclave, though it’s a really small area on a path, just  being outside makes the world 100 times bigger! You realize that right off the bat even though you’ve seen very little and been hardly anywhere. I think there are lessons there where you don’t necessarily have to make a ton of stuff to make the world feel bigger. I think we learned a lot about creating a vast, interesting, multiplayer space and we’ll take that forward to whatever we do in the future.



Right now when a player starts a New Game +, the difficulty cannot be changed. Do you think that option could ever change?
Is that right? I know if you start a single-player game it doesn’t ask you, however if you’re in New Game + [mode] couldn’t you join someone else’s New Game + who’s playing a different difficulty level?



You know what? That’s a good question. I don’t know.
That’s initially what came to mind for me, but I don’t know for sure so I’ll look into that. Multiplayer may be the only way you can do it. That’s a good question!



Why the decision to go with open multiplayer as opposed to server-side character storage? Was it mostly for financial reasons?
Well no there are actually quite a few reasons. There are downsides to doing an open-multiplayer service, so we’re not going to say those people who oppose it are always wrong. However what we get out of having an open-multiplayer service is so much more than what we lose by it; so for us it was a fairly easy decision.

There are many reasons why, and yes one of those is financial. We wouldn’t be able to do a $20 game of this size while running servers and trying to maintain a secure economy. It just doesn’t happen, and so that’s why you have $60 boxes for things like that. Plus ongoing fees for things like auction houses, subscriptions or item sells. It changes the whole financial proposition of the game. You have to go either all the way or there’s no point in going down that road at all. For example if you’re going to support character storage it wouldn’t stop people from cheating at all. You actually have to have a fully controlled client/server game where you’re hosting secure server banks and maintaining a secure economy that people are constantly trying to break. That’s an all-encompassing mission. You’re one duplication bug away from your entire economy being screwed. Hosting a secure economy instills this sort of expectation in people who’re putting their time into playing your game that things are a safe, and will have a real work value or whatever; and so when that is violated by an exploit or whatever—it’s a code red disaster! So there’s no point in going down that road.

You either go 100% secure—which means online only—or you may as well go the other way and let people have an open system with the tools and let them take advantage of the system with the modding and some of the things people are going to see coming down the road.

Now I think people are panicking because they’re thinking about Diablo 3 and what it might be like if you could cheat—and yeah it would be chaos—but that’s only in the context of having a competitive economy. If you don’t have that, then you have no incentive to cheat. We have 4 to 6 player games that are meant to be played with friends and there’s just not a whole lot a cheater or griefer can do to ruin your experience. You can block any individual player or account. So I think it’s kind of based on players’ expectations and experiences going into it. I mean, no one complains too much about Borderlands being a peer-to-peer game and we’re pretty much the same model.

So you know, it’s a complex question with pluses and minuses on each side. Since we’re a smaller company with a smaller budget, we want this reputation of making great games at $20 instead of $60. So yeah, it was a pretty easy decision for us.



Do you think perhaps we could get the ability to never connect to someone in a multiplayer game who has made modifications to the game, be it via console of mods?
You can certainly make games that support no mods. In fact you kind of actually have to synchronize your mods with whomever you’re playing with, so some of it will actually work itself out.

Now you point out you can make items spawn from pulling down the console. Sure, and then someone else can pick it up, join another game and then give it to someone else. There’s no way to stop people for joining with overpowered items and making their own items. What I think is going to emerge is people are going to have their own groups of people they play with. People who are known to not cheat. It seems to kind of be emerging that way in the game itself. I honestly haven’t seen a lot of people cheating. It’s just really is unrewarding. There isn’t a whole lot to gain by it. We don’t have ladders or anything like that. It’s when you introduce those things people want to cheat; so I think what we are considering is perhaps down the road is maybe allow people to set up private servers of their own. It still won’t be completely cheat free but you could certainly gate who has access. That’s down the road but we are talking about it. To create a really secure environment where you can be guaranteed no one is going to duplicate an item or spawn the best items in the game is almost impossible for us.



Why are players not given access to fully respecify their talents and skills?
[Laughs] That’s one of those religious arguments! You either like to respec or you don’t.
The reason we did this is basically because it makes the character you’ve played totally yours, instead of being this clay thing that can be molded for any given situation. You actually build a character and it means something. I understand wanting to respec your character to try out new things, but it’s really at the expense of individuality. We’re really not designing our game for that level of min/max, where you have to have things charted out in Excel in order to get to the parts of the game that’re fun. We just wanted to make a game where it’s fun to try out crazy, different builds that sometimes end up contrary. Like, so far from min/max you’re almost forced to come up with a clever build someone else has never thought of before. Just, you know, have fun with replayability that way.

As soon as you allow full respec it kind of kills the fun of making cool new builds because anyone can be any build at any moment.



I know Torchlight 2’s only been out for 4 days but I’m curious if there’s already been feedback from the fans regarding the kind of additional content they would like to see?
Not really. I think people are still digesting the game, and frankly we’re spending most of our time assisting people who’re having connection problems.



Was a proper crafting system ever considered for the game?
Not really. There’s a transmuter in the game—which is a primitive crafting system—but it’s not really robust, and that shows up later in the game.



When we spoke at E3 a few months ago you said “When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft.” Can you go into any detail about the design goals the team had?
Well it was never going to be just World of Warcraft with a Diablo skin. We were always top-down, click on the ground to move and so we stayed with the Diablo control scheme. It was really too early for us to get a whole lot into it. We had levels and would run around killing monsters, but we hadn’t started making of the game proper yet. When we left Blizzard we were still working on the engine and the tech. We never really worked with big design specifications. We kind of had a basic framework of what we wanted and iterated as we went. We kind of were just in the phase of making combat feel good and from there we wanted to make the game world what it wanted to be. We wanted to do an MMO, a shared world. As I recall—and this was a million years ago—we didn’t have a whole lot of instancing in the plans. It was going to be a true, big MMO world but with Diablo sensibilities and controls.

“That’s kind of part of the deal with Torchlight. It was really really fun making Torchlight 2 so I suspect we’ll never get too far from that but we definitely want to put a twist on it for the next thing.”

Do you know if Blizzard’s plan was to also charge a monthly fee for this version of Diablo 3?
This was a different time. Before item sales and the like, and I think people were still in the subscription infatuation at the time. So as I recall, our goal was to do a subscription game.



Were there new classes in the old Diablo 3 or did you incorporate the classes from Diablo 2?
We went all new. We were actually a 2D sprite-based game with Diablo 2, and so with our Diablo 3 we were going with our first 3D engine. Since we had to make everything completely from scratch we decided to go with new stuff all around.



Do you remember any of the new classes?
I don’t remember them, no.



Will Runic make a Torchlight 3?
Yes. However I don’t know if it will expressly be a Torchlight game but with more, in the sense that Torchlight 2 was the same as Torchlight 1 but with more. I would imagine the next iteration in the Torchlight universe would involve a twist, and I don’t know what that would be just yet. Our team have made the Diablos, Mythos, now we’ve worked on the Torchlights and they’ve all been action RPGs. We’re eager to break that mold a little bit.



So a move to a completely different genre?
Nah, I’d just say a related genre. We’re not going to do a puzzle game or anything.



What do you think it is about the isometric ARPG that Runic connects with so well?
I think it might just be our one good idea in the world [laughs]. It’s our sole marketable skill and if we weren’t doing this we would probably working at Home Depot or something. I think it’s just something we had a lot of early success with in Diablo 1 and it just sort of stuck with us. We kind of have a head start on everyone else in making them. Travis [Baldree] our president and lead programmer made Fate. He’s got a lot of experience and has had success with this genre. Starting a new company it seemed like the obvious and most responsible thing for us was to stick to what’s in our wheelhouse make something we know we can do really well. Something that would allow us to build a foundation beneath us before branching out and taking some risks. That’s kind of part of the deal with Torchlight. It was really really fun making Torchlight 2 so I suspect we’ll never get too far from that but we definitely want to put a twist on it for the next thing.



Do you think there’s a chance you could go Sci-Fi at some point?
No idea! Someone has to do a really good action RPG that’s like this control scheme. I know Borderlands is more of a first-person shooter, so I’d like to see something that’s Sci-Fi but also point and click. Whether that’s us or not, I don’t know!



Well maybe you can make that lovely game you were talking about when we spoke at E3. You said “I would want to bring in a little bit of Torchlight, a bit of Minecraft, a little more resource-based play; and then little more cooperative
stuff to bend the genres. Get you to do more than just resources or just loot.” That sounds FANTASTIC!
Still totally want to do that—absolutely.


Thanks for your time Max!
Thanks Mark!

Photo Source
Note: Bethesda Softworks released two Dishonored gameplay video, and I highly recommend you watch them. They can be found here and here.



Harvey Smith smiles and points to a Bethesda employee playing Dishonored in the other room. “Though he’s played this section 17 times today, he still sometimes dies!”  While amusing, it speaks to the AIs unpredictability and the challenge we can expect from this game.

It’s with a mix of enthusiasm and chagrin I admit the game was difficult to play. I died a lot. Boy, did I! However I’m smiling right along with Harvey Smith because the Dishonored experience never left me frustrated. I was consistently having a blast trying to figure it all out. Gameplay has been well-honed to provide a fairly ridged challenge while remaining exciting and fun. I left the interview finding comfort in knowing you simply cannot purchase the game, fire it up and run in with gun’s blazing. It won’t let you do that. You’re going to have to learn to speak Dishonored’s language…or at least learn to sneak around it.

After playing the game I sat down with Rafael Colantonio to talk about many things including: Support for non-lethal gameplay, Analog AI, Viktor Antonov, multiple endings, the benefits of layered systems, limb targeting, Neo-Victorian Steampunk, possessing a fish and of course…sliding under tables.

“…if you’re running away from someone down a corridor and you manage to slide under a table, you’ll disappear in the eyes of the guard. We have a system in place where he might keep going past you, and you can go up behind him and kill him, or run away. It’s pretty fun!”

Mark: Hi Raf! How are you?
Rafael: I’m doing good thanks. How are things?



I’m doing really well now that I’ve finally had a chance to play Dishonored. I’m just going to come out and say this now: Dishonored just might be my favorite game of E3, and there’s still one day left! Though I’m really impressed with what I saw, I do have a lot of questions for you.
Oh wow, thank you! I’m so excited to hear that.



For the unaware, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m the Co-Creative Director with Harvey Smith [Deus Ex, KarmaStar] on Dishonored, and this is a game about being a supernatural assassin in a Steampunk city. That’s the short summary of it.

You’ve got to confirm something for me. Can you really play through the entire game—from beginning to end—without killing someone?
This is true! It started out mostly as a little private joke amongst the team. I mean, you’re playing an assassin right? So we thought hey let’s support non-lethal play. It’s a paradox and kind of funny if you think about it! We noticed some people were interested in this so we went with it. So yes, it is possible—but it’s hard, really hard. There are also some Achievements for it as well and requires some dedication too but it is possible.

When and how did Viktor Antonov [Art Director, Half-Life 2] get involved with the game?
Well we met Viktor back in the days when we were working with the Source engine for Dark Messiah. He helped us a little bit with the visuals since he worked for Valve and the engine was proprietary to them. We continued working with him, and just got to know him. Then he wanted to go back to France. Fortunately he wanted to do some of the same games we did too, so he worked with us on The Crossing (which unfortunately never did ship) but that’s how it all happened.



It seems to me designing the controls for a game like Dishonored would be incredibly difficult. On one hand you want to make the game accessible to those who are new to the genre and interested in the game.  On the other hand you have the core audience who’ve been playing these types of games for a very long time, and you certainly don’t want them to feel like they’re making unnecessary concessions. How on Earth are you guys approaching this?
Oh that’s a very very smart and insightful question, and it lies at the heart of our challenge really. The game has a lot of depth and it’s very hardcore by nature, but at the same time we don’t want it to be inaccessible. So we’re constantly putting a lot of effort into making sure the mechanics [are playable] for anyone, without losing the depth this type of game needs. You know, depth and accessibility are not enemies. It is possible to make games that have depth and are accessible. What you don’t want is complexity. So there’s a lot of effort on our part to make the right tutorial and expose the right options to the player at all times.

So yes, to answer the question, it’s a very difficult challenge and we don’t believe we’re betraying the hardcore while bringing it to the masses.

“It started as almost a private little joke amongst the team. You’re playing an assassin right? So hey, let’s support non-lethal play! It’s a paradox and kind of funny if you think about it.”

Let’s talk about the sound engine in Dishonored. I heard someone mention there’s a dynamic system in place. Can you clarify for us?
Yes there is a dynamic system in place, but there is also a blend of tagged areas with their own ambient sounds too. The dynamic stuff is contextual, and the most obvious example I can give is when you enter combat and the music changes. However we have stuff in there for the AI too. For instance when they’re searching for you, the music will quickly pick up and get more intense.

Also when you’re at a distance and you’ve been detected, we give you a short sort of violin stinger or piano string to give you a little bit of warning. It works really well to build tension too.



Is that particular instrumental sound effect in place to let you know you’re at risk of being detected, or is it there to let you know you’ve already been detected?
Well technically you’ve been detected by the systems either way, but we give the player a few seconds to recover. There’s a threshold, a little bit of a delay there between the perception and the reaction.



Can you elaborate on the 3D Audio Propagation system for us?
Well the first time we heard it was with the first Thief game. As a player I was blown away by it! I had a 4-speaker setup and I was playing in the dark—I think this was back in 1997—and I thought to myself “Wow, every game should do this!” You know what? Even today most games don’t do this, and there’s a reason for it too. It’s requires a lot of work and a lot of tagging by the sound engineer but it adds so much to the feeling of emersion for the player. Just having the ability to locate the [enemies] around you; being able to hear their footsteps behind doors or in other rooms is really awesome. So that’s what we’ve done! The sound travels through the spaces. It’ll get muffled if you’re behind a door, and I think it also helps you become more aware of the environment in general.



Tell us about the “Analog AI” system in Dishonored.
What we mean by analog AI is this: Instead of there being an abrupt switch from one AI behavior to another, we have transitional phases sitting in between the switches. If an AI is not completely sure they can see you then we have this partial failure system in place. What I mean by that is we have this internal gauge—you know, we don’t expose this to the player—that goes “Oh I see a little bit of you! Oh I can see you a little more now!”, then “Oh I can hear you too! Now I’m even more sure you’re over there!” and this gauge continues to rise. This is what we mean by analog as opposed to binary.



In terms of the analog AI system, I’m curious if its behavior affects the cool down of the AI’s search routines. Meaning, will the AI return to their original patrol state and completely forget about you?
Well there is a cool down period. So if the AI has detected you but isn’t completely sure, then they’ll go searching for you. During this investigation the cool down begins, and if they don’t find you then yes they will go out of this investigative mode. However they would remain in a higher alert mode that’s more aware than their original mode.

Now if they’ve seen you for real, have engaged in combat and then lost you, they’ll search for you essentially forever. They will return to patrol and remain in a high alert mode. This means they will no longer be relaxed and will no longer comment on things they see or hear. See when they’re in a relaxed mode they might see a flower and say something about it, but that doesn’t happen in a high alert mode. Also, every time they communicate with another guard they’ll chat about their alert level. Like “Hey, stay on your guard! There’s an assassin somewhere around here!”
So yeah, that’s the way it all works.



From what I gather there are 4 stages of alert for the AI?
Yes essentially it’s: Fully relaxed, suspicious, then they know you’re somewhere in the area, and then high alert (where they’ll never cool down).



I suspect there are some people out there, much like me, who want to be certain we understand the AIs behavior. Let’s say I trigger a guard to the highest alert level and then duck into a sewage pipe. Do I have 30 seconds for him to start patrolling again?
I think it’s about 30 seconds. <Thinks> It’s funny you bring up that number, but yes it’s about 30 seconds.

Oh! Then we have this really fun way you can trick them too. So if you’re running away from someone down a corridor and you manage to slide under a table, you’ll disappear in the eyes of the guard. We have a system in place where he might keep going past you, and you can go up behind him and kill him or run away. It’s pretty fun!



When I played the game I was presented with 3 options when I sneaked  up on someone: Neck snap, choke out, or pickpocket. I’m curious if these particular options are always presented to the player, and do they change later on throughout the game?
Basically if the NPC has something that can be taken then [the] pickpocket option will be present. Otherwise the other two options are always available (choke out and assassinate).



Is the Dark Vision power the only kind of visual modifier available in the game?
There are two levels of that power. The first level visually highlights the AIs and their vision cones and then the next level allows you to see valuable objects in the environment.



Oh so there’s a leveling system in place for every Power?
Each power has two levels. The first is the basic level and then the advanced level lies beyond that. The way to go from one level to the next is to spend Runes.



In Dishonored you gain the power to Possess living things including animals and even the target. It sounds like this could make the protagonist too powerful and possibly curtail the player from creating interesting strategies inherent to being placed within difficult situations. I mean, essentially each level is a gigantic action puzzle right? Are you guys finding it difficult to design around all these powers you’re giving the player?
You know we don’t prevent the player from doing anything really. We just give the player some tools that have their own limitations. If you possess someone—well first off it cost Essence to use the power, so you’re limited there—but you’re limited in time too. If you’re doing something and it feels like an exploit, <shrugs and smiles> better for you!



It seems like there are many different ways you can approach missions in Dishonored. I’m curious how wide or tall the levels can get?
<Thinks> we didn’t have any guidelines for the width, height or size of the levels, however the duration for each mission is kind of consistent. We give the player all these powers and possibilities so they layer on top of each other—it becomes exponentially cool! We’re always finding new strategies too, which is the beauty of having layered systems. I know is going to sound obvious, but the first time we saw someone blink (teleport) and assassinate a character from behind we were like “oh wow!”. We never really thought about that! I mean, you can run, double-jump, rotate around, blink forward and then assassinate some guy—you feel very skillful.



Why go Neo-Victorian Steampunk for Dishonored? Was this a decision you guys made early in development?
Not totally. It’s been a very organic process for us actually. The design started logically. We said “Ok, you play an assassin and you’re going to have some powers—that’s all we knew!” Then we had to think about what historical period we wanted to use, and so we thought “hey it could take place in the future, or it could be the past”.  The year 1666 was an interesting time in London because it could provide for intimate assassination attempts—you know there were mostly knifes, theater and that kind of stuff—but for gameplay reasons we wanted to add gadgetry. So we figured we’d add some kind of alternate timeline revolution—something that didn’t happen for real—so we began to create our own world. Then of course we had the magic layer, and that took the world into something else completely. So a few years into development we were not London 1666 anymore, we were something else. Initially we called it Retro-Future, but then we saw people calling it Steampunk and we were like “well, you know what? Maybe people are right, maybe it is Steampunk.” But it’s not your typical copper and rivet Steampunk, it’s more…our version of Steampunk.



How many different endings are there in Dishonored?
The game has 3.



I imagine they include a good, bad and grey-area sort of endings?
Well without giving too much away, I would say there are various flavors of the endings with some sub-variations.



When I was playing I accidentally shot someone in the leg, and I saw him buckle down as he grabbed his leg, screaming. I’d like to get some clarity on this. Can you specifically target Limbs?
Yes, you can target those limbs. Most of the time if you hit the head there is a damage bonus that is invisible to the player. Hitting the body and the arms is the least effective in terms of damage, and the feet and legs give you an advantage since they’ll fall to the ground. So yes, it will give you an advantage. We support those kinds of things.



Can’t wait for this release Rafael, thanks for taking the time to chat with me!
Thanks you!

I recently sat down with Matt Carofano, the Lead Artist on Skyrim, to talk about many things including; Dawnguard, the next-generation of consoles, what’s after Skyrim for Bethesda Game Studios, loot, a new epic mount, Vampire Lords, future iteration of the Creation engine, The Elder Scrolls MMO, armored Trolls, and why you cannot change your sex or race in Skyrim.

“Yes you will be feared, hated and attacked on sight if you enter a city in the Vampire Lord form. If a huge beast walks into town that’s something the local villagers will not put up with.”

Mark: Hi Matt! Thanks for sitting down with me to talk about Dawnguard.
Matt: My pleasure!



When did production begin on Dawnguard?
After we shipped the game we did this Game Jam video—I don’t know if you’ve seen it—but that’s sort of what started what Dawnguard ended up becoming. A couple guys on the team got together and were really excited for Vampires, so they made a prototype of the Vampire Lord. We were like “Oh that fits in really well!” We want to expand and add to the game to make it better, and Vampires were something that we really hadn’t told a good story with—hadn’t really developed much—so we wanted to focus the DLC [Downloadable Content] on that. We just wanted to do a good job and make it the focus of the DLC.



Creating additional content for a AAA game like Skyrim well after it’s shipped doesn’t appear to be the norm in the industry. Does this speak to the culture at Bethesda Game Studios? Do you think future DLC is going to develop this way too?
When we were looking to do the Dawnguard DLC we were just looking to see how we could make the game even better, how we could add to Skyrim but tell this specific story. It was something we didn’t plan when we were working on Skyrim, it actually happened afterwards. You know, we kicked around a lot of ideas so we could see what would be a good fit. For future DLC maybe we’ll do something like that again.



Did Bethesda Game Studios learn anything from the development of Skyrim proper that was incorporated into the production of Dawnguard?
Well I guess the focus was “Hey let’s tell a new story and sort of react to the game”, so a lot of the additions to Dawnguard are things we thought we should add to Skyrim. We have some new encounters like the addition of the new high level dragons and the Dragon Bone weapons you can forge. We really wanted to expand the high level stuff too. Skyrim just took off way more than we expected and people are still playing it a ton, so we just wanted to give them some additional content.

Plus we’re looking at the Vampire Lord form because that would offer a way to play the game differently. So now you can jump into the story and play as a Vampire Lord or join the Dawnguard hunters. So you can experience the rest of the game as a Vampire or with crossbows.  So yeah we added a lot of new content to the game.



Will Tamriel have a reaction to me if I decide to become a Vampire Lord and venture out? Will the townspeople and guards flip out?
Yes you will be feared, hated and attack on sight if you enter a city in the Vampire Lord form. If a huge beast walks into town that’s something the local villagers will not put up with.

“The Dawnguard stuff has new light and heavy armor, new weapons, you can have a new type of dog companion, [and] an armored troll to come fight with you.”

There seems to be a lot of really great new content in the Dawnguard DLC with the whole new storyline. You can choose between becoming a Vampire Lord or joining the Dawnguard faction, however it also sounds like there are things being added to Skyrim that really have nothing to do with the Dawnguard storyline. For instance you mentioned the additions of new dragons and the ability to craft Bone weapons with Smithing. I’m curious about the other vocations or existing skill trees? Did they get additions as well?
We tried to add a bunch of things to the game to just make it…better. We looked at it that way, but also as “Hey how can we tell this interesting story about Vampires?”, however we added things based on fan feedback too. For instance we added a character to the Thieves Guild who can change your appearance. So let’s say you’re tired of playing your character after all these hours, you can go to him and change all your facial features and hairstyles.



Can you modify your race?
We don’t allow you to change your sex or race because that’s just too important to your characters history. It’s just something fun, something extra we could add to the game for the people who want that.



Was there ever a consideration to add another guild to the game?
Well the story of the Dawnguard is about the size of one of our faction quests, so we sort of view it as “Hey you can join the Vampires or the Dawnguard!” If you decide to help the Vampires you can end the tyranny of the sun—you know block out the sun—so they can come out at night and be more powerful. Or you can join the Dawnguard and become a vampire hunter. You’ll be able to build up the Vampire hunters’ base as you recruit new members, build crossbows and even get an armored troll to come along with you to fight against the vampires. So you get both sides of it that way.



Is there anything else from the 2011 GDC  Game Jam video that’s included in the Dawnguard DLC? I know mounted combat was in the sizzle reel and that just got released right?
Yes mounted combat just went up via a patch just recently. We wanted to add that so the player could use one-handed and ranged weapons while riding a horse. You know it makes it easier while you’re getting around the world.



Is there a small team already working on the second DLC for Skyrim?
Right now we’re completely focused on Dawnguard. Everyone is working on this. Once it’s out we’ll see how it goes and see what could happen in the future.



This is one I was asked to pass on to you from several fans: How much loot, or rather, how much additional stuff is being added to the game?
Well there’s the full set of Dragon Bone weapons. <Thinks> We give you a lot of gear on the Dawnguard side. That helps balance out the Vampire Lord’s abilities.  The Dawnguard stuff has; new light and heavy armor, new weapons, you can have a new type of dog companion, [and] an armored troll to come fight with you. On the Vampire Lord side you have a whole new perk tree and we also added a whole new perk tree for Werewolves too. That’s another feature we added to the game even though it’s not part of the [Dawnguard] story. We wanted to make the Werewolves more interesting, more playable for higher levels, so we expanded on that. There’s a lot of stuff in the game.



Oh ok, so there is no specific perk tree for the Dawnguard hunters?
That’s right. Yeah they’re Vampire hunters and more gear based. They’re focused on gathering followers and building up their base.



Did I see a new mount in the Dawnguard trailer?
Yes! So in the realm of Soul Cairn—the realm of trapped souls—you can get a miscellaneous quest to find the Skull of Arvak. He’s this lost horse who’s been taken over, turned undead in this realm. So if you find his skull you can ride him all around and even back in Tamriel.



I just want to be clear on this: The player will be able to ride Arvak back into Skyrim? The player will also be able to transform into the Vampire Lord form in Skyrim?
Yes you can play through the entire game as the Vampire Lord.



Not too long ago I was watching the Fallout 3 documentary and Todd Howard mentioned Bethesda Game Studios was looking for something to do in between Elder Scrolls games. I’m curious if that is still the game plan for you guys? Are you thinking about Fallout 4 after Skyrim?
Well honestly we’re so focused on this DLC. Then I’m sure we’ll be making some more DLC in the future, and then after that we’ll see what happens.



There’s a new wave of consoles on the horizon and as the Lead Artist at Bethesda Game Studios I’m curious how you think a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game would benefit most from that transition?
<Thinks> In our games we try to throw everything into it at once. We try to make a game so you can play however you want, you can try a bunch of stuff out, have a bunch of quests going, so obviously new hardware would allow us to do even more of that. You know speaking purely from the art side of things, just having more memory! It’s something we always have to fight with. We’re looking at higher resolution characters, models and textures. It is going to look tremendously better because of the jump, but we’re really really happy with the current generation consoles with what we’ve been able to push and get out of them.



As we transition over to a new generation of consoles, I’m curious if Bethesda Game Studios has any plans to build an entirely new engine from the ground up? Update the existing Creation engine, or perhaps utilize the latest IDTECH?
We’re really happy with the creation engine. We remade every aspect of it for Skyrim and it’s a really good base for us to do the types of games we want to do.  So I suspect, going forward, I don’t know what we’re going to end up doing. This engine has been really good for us and [The Elder Scrolls games]. I mean everything is brand new from Fallout 3.



So you guys might build up from the existing Creation engine? Is it modular in design so you guys can just pull out different systems?
Yeah, I mean it’s sort of all up to what kind of things we want to focus on to change, but we have a lot of control over this engine and what we would like add it to. Every system was rewritten when we went from Fallout 3 to Skyrim so we could develop it further if we needed to.



Speaking of technical advancements, does Dawnguard bring any new modifications to the Creation engine?
No there aren’t any new technical changes to it, but we had to have a lot of code support for some of the new spells and power, like the Vampire Lord form. That’s a lot of programming time to get all these new features working for us.



With the development of The Elders Scrolls Online, I’m curious if there were any stipulations made by Bethesda Game Studios to make sure it wasn’t too much like your Elder Scrolls games? Did you sit down at all with Zenimax Online Studios and say “Ok you cannot do X, Y and Z” or “Do not make it a first-person game”? I imagine you folks would like The Elder Scrolls to retain its identity right?
Honestly we gave them complete freedom to develop the game the same we would want to work on our game, so we could make the choices we would like to make. They’re a really talented group of guys and they know MMOs really well. MMOs are a really different type of game than the ones we make, so we’ve given them the freedom to make the kind of game they think is going to be a great game. We’ve kept in contact with them along the way. They’ll ask us about lore or things like. You know “Hey does this fit the art style for this race?” In general we answer a few questions here and there, but we let them make their own decisions. I think it’s going to be a really good game.



So no real guidelines were given?
No, not too much.



Thanks Matt!
Thank you!

Last weeks I got to check off something on my bucketlist—land an interviewed Max Schaefer. For a man who changed the world of video games he sure is quite the humble one. He’s so easygoing going in fact the fellow answered all my questions—even the annoying ones concerning Diablo 3—then shook my hand and handed gave me a copy of the Torchlight 2 soundtrack(!).

What a guy!

We ended up discussing the future of the Torchlight series including the MMO, Diablo 3 and why its release has been very good for Torchlight 2, the now infamous Error 37 and why Max hopes Runic is fortunate enough to experience it, Torchlight 2 on Xbox Live Arcade & Macs, how Minecraft could meet Torchlight, plus his overall inspirations in games design.

Oh and if you’re interested, you can find my impressions of the Torchlight 2 beta here.

“When I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft.”

Mark: Ok Max, I’ve got to get this out of the way—What’s the anticipated release date for Torchlight 2?
Max Schaefer: We don’t have a date, but we’re getting very close to announcing that. We’re still thinking late summer. You played the beta and saw the level of polish, and I would say that’s representative of the polish level we’d like to be at for the rest of the game. We’re making really good progress, it’s actually happening faster than we anticipated. We’re also making a lot of changes based on beta feedback. So there’s some skill system changes happening, little tweaks with targeting and running, but for the most part it’s all about polishing up the last 2 acts. It’s going well!



What did Runic Games take away from the Torchlight 2 beta?
It’s funny because before we ran the beta we thought it would be dangerous! Mainly because we figured we’d get so much feedback, and you know, the guys care so much about that. We figured they would be in the forums poring over everything, and just being way too self-critical. Basically we made so many changes based on feedback from the beta—it’s just crazy. We started into it knowing it could potentially be a problem, so the plan was to shut down the beta once the network stuff was working to our satisfaction so we could get back to finishing the game. I think we got most of the stuff people were asking for. We fixed, tweaked and just got things ready to go. But it’s good we got the beta done because now we can focus on finishing the game. You can’t do that while you’re running the beta because you’re getting so much good feedback and everyone is so intense about doing the things people want.



I’m actually running Windows 7 64-bit on my iMac, and I’ve surprisingly had zero issues with the game. This leads me to my question about the Mac version of Torchlight 2. When is that due for release?
I do the same! I demo’d the game as Gamecon on my Macbook Pro using Bootcamp. About the stability, you know it’s one of our philosophies that the game needs to be running from day one, and throughout the development process so we can be tweaking gameplay and evaluating skill balance. It’s been remarkably bug-free from the beginning, and that’s a credit to our programmers. But that’s also because we have a culture of trying to keep it running stably through development, so we don’t get to the end and have 18 trillion bugs to fix. By fixing those bugs it changes the balance of the game, so then you have to rebalance everything else. We try to keep in a fairly playable state at all times.

As far as Torchlight 2 for the Mac? Right when we finish the PC version we’ll work on the Mac port.



What do you think we’re looking at in terms of time frame then? Perhaps a few weeks once the PC version is release?
It’s tough to say because our very first priority after the PC release will be to put out fires. I’m sure we’ll have our own version of Diablo 3s Error 37. With any luck you know? [laughs] What that Error 37 really means is you have 6 million people pounding on your servers, so we want our Error 37 equivalent. [laughs]



I’m curious if there’s a requirement for everyone to play Torchlight 2 everyday back at the Runic Games office?
Nah, people just do it anyway. We have a really efficient process where the level designers can get the levels into the game and test them without talking to a programmer. People are always testing their work. They’re looking at their animations, looking at their levels, checking out the new skill balances. Just before the beta ended my brother (Erich Schaefer, Runic Games co-founder) and I spent a lot of time just playing Elite Hardcore [mode] just to see if it was playable. We wanted to see how far you could go, but we never did quite finish out the beta. My brother actually made it to level 21, but he got killed by the final boss. It’s really hard!



Was there ever really a decisive push to get Torchlight 2 out before Diablo 3, or was that never really a consideration?
Yeah it was something that we talked about, but the only thing we really didn’t want was to come out right at the same time. You know, like literally within a week or two of it’s release. We didn’t care if it was before or after though. Obviously some of our partners wanted us to launch before, but they also agree with the philosophy that if we rush it out, I mean, what would be the point of that right? Then you’re just going to buy the game and play it until Diablo 3 comes out, and then that’s all people are going to play of it ever again. So we took the path where we’re going to polish the game and actually compete head-to-head for the long term, and it just comes out whenever it comes out.

“We’re doing pre-sales on steam, and the day Diablo 3 released they shot up 40% and have stayed up.”

Does Torchlight 2 face different challenges now that Diablo 3 is already out?
I think we actually benefit from it. It’s a subject of debate within the studio and our partners but I think it actually helps us. We’re a small company—you know sort of indie—so we draw our customers from within the gaming community. People who already buy games, look and buy our stuff. I think when someone like Blizzard comes out with something like Diablo 3—where they’re doing TV commercials on ESPN, real mass market stuff—they’re bringing in millions of new gamers into the gaming community, and that makes our audience bigger. We’re doing pre-sales on steam, and the day Diablo 3 released they shot up 40% and have stayed up. They’re bringing in lots of people into this genre, and people are becoming aware of what we’re doing through them. We’re kind of piggybacking on their marketing.



Did Runic take anything away from the launch of Diablo 3?
Not really, I mean we all played it! [laughs] It’s totally predicable what happened on their launch. It happened to Diablo 2, it happened to World of Warcraft and it happened to Starcraft. You cannot test and prepare for that many millions of people pounding on your stuff on day one. It didn’t surprise us at all. We just figured we’d wait a couple days and it would all blow over. Once they get things running smoothly, no one will ever remember they had a rocky start. We didn’t look at it and say “Hey we gotta make sure we don’t have this happen!” because obviously they were trying to prepare for it, they’re not dumb guys at all. It’s just impossible to prepare for that [much traffic]. We were actually relieved that the game didn’t suck. It’s a good game, and we want our genre to be hot.

Also I worked on all the previous Diablos, so emotionally for me it’s important that it not suck, you know, by association. I think we look at it as a successful launch, obviously, it’s the fastest selling PC game of all time.



Are there any plans to bring Torchlight 2 to Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network?
It’s something we’ve talked about. It’s definitely going to be a more difficult job than the first Torchlight because now we’ve got higher polygon models, multiplayer and it’s just so intense to do a direct port. Plus we’d have to redo the entire interface. So we’re not sure it’s going to be worth our while. We’re going to focus on the Mac version after the PC, and then we’re going to take a look at the world and see how it’s shaking out. Are people clamoring for a console version? We obviously have to take that into account. Do they want an expansion for Torchlight 2 instead? We have to take that in to account. Are we going completely insane with too much Torchlight? Do something else for a little bit? We’re just going to let the dust settle. It’s hard to make a rational decision about what’s right because we’re still in the dark days of development where everyone is exhausted and delirious so we kind of want to reserve for ourselves the ability to make that decision when the time comes. So it’s not out of the question, but it’s not something that’s in our plans.



In terms of the Torchlight series and heading in that direction, do you think additional content will be a priority over a proper sequel?
We don’t really know, I mean we may want to trickle some stuff out for the existing customers, but we also might want to package up a little expansion and do it that way. We really haven’t talked about that too much. It’s sort of like, we understand that this isn’t a fire-and-forget situation, so in some way it’s going to go on, but again that all depends on what people are asking for, and also what our heads are like.



As someone who’s both a fan and owner of the Playstation Vita and the Torchlight series, I do hope that platform will also be a consideration for you guys. I think would be a great fit!
It’s absolutely a consideration, I think it’s a great game for that too. There would have to be a good business case to make, a market and something the crew is excited to do.



Are there still plans for Runic Games to make a Torchlight MMO?
Yes and no. It’s still sort of in the long-range plan for us. The MMO market is changing right now and the traditional MMO is falling out of favor for a business model.

I like to think of MMOs more broadly though. Anything that puts a lot of players into the same world is an MMO. It doesn’t have to conform to these rigid [rules]. It doesn’t have to be exactly like World of Warcraft in every way, except in terms of the art [laughs]. When you say you’re going to do an MMO that’s immediately what a lot of people think. So yea it’s sort of in the plans but sort of…again it falls in this category of ‘When the game ships we’ll see what the world looks like”’, kind of thing. Maybe the Torchlight series will suffice. Maybe people don’t want a different style of multiplayer Torchlight, and this is what they want. If so then we’ll just do more of this.



Ok just to be clear to everyone out there—you’re not even in the beginning stages of developing an MMO?
Oh no, we’re focused on just Torchlight 2.



So a Runic developed MMO is—at the earliest—something like 7 years away?
Not necessarily, I mean, if it’s what we decide to do next then we’d try to do it more efficiently and quickly than everyone else. I would imagine it wouldn’t take anywhere near 4 years to get something like that out, but again it depends on the design and everything.



With the unfortunate collapse of 38 Studios, the decreasing number of subscribers for the Knights of the Old Republic and even World of Warcraft, I’m curious if the state of the market changes Runic’s marketing and design model for a Torchlight MMO?
Oh yeah! You have to look at the trends and project out a few years because of the development time. You don’t want to get into a dying genre, put all that work into it and then have to do a massive redesign at the end. I think it’s definitely going Free-To-Play. All the successful ones are going that way. It’s something we’re fine with too, you just have to design for it. It’s something that’s harder to do than a subscription based model because of the potential of screwing it up with all the weird item sales. You don’t want people to pay to win. You have to design it. You have to think about the additional content you put in, and each new item you put on sale has the potential to anger people and unbalance the game as opposed to a subscription model where your only goal is to make cool stuff every month. It takes a lot more design, but I think it’s the future and we just have to embrace it.

Speaking broadly, I think Free-To-Play is going to be a model for more than just traditional MMOs too.



You pioneered the Point-n-Click ARPG genre back in 1996 with the original Diablo, and I’m curious just how much your design philosophy has changed up to now? Have your overall goals changed?
I think we look at the basics of the genre—the controls and visceral feel of combat—and realize we’re just better at it now than back in the day. You know, the way we put together and make games has changed quite radically. We’re so much more tool driven now. Everything use to go through your lead programmer, and the few tools you had to put stuff together were clunky and not very powerful. We went into this with the specific intent to beat people and be competitive in the industry through being more efficient and faster. To be able to do things with less money than the competition. The way you do that is you get the most out of your people by giving them really good tools. You make the process by which you get content into the game smoothly and as streamlined as possible. Just the day-to-day work of putting the game together and adding content is so different than the old Diablo days. Today we’re able to do more, much more quickly. That’s where the big change has taken place.

Like you said in regards to the unfortunate demise of some studios out there—and with our own demise with Flagship Studios prior to Runic Games—yes that stuff is what keeps us up at night. I mean, this is the reason why Runic first did a single-player game with the original Torchlight. Just to get a game out quickly and get some revenues coming into the company, to get us more stable. It’s worked for us so far, and that’s still our motto—to do things more efficiently and faster than anyone else.



How many people are employed at Runic Games?
Thirty people.



In the past you’ve referred to it as a flat company, correct?
Yeah, we don’t even have any offices. [laughs] There is just one big pit of people, there aren’t even cubicles. It’s just a bunch of desks, and everyone works as just one big team. I think you can only do that with about 30 people or less. Once you go over that then you have to start adding management for organization. Now we just have meetings by turning around in our chairs. Everyone knows everyone and sees everyone everyday, and its small enough that we’re not getting factions and all that sort of stuff. It’s kind of the ideal size where we can do real Triple-A games and still kind of be a small studio. So we want to stay with 30 people, we won’t grow. We joke around and say we want to grow to 25 [laughs].



Let’s say Runic Games began working on 2 games, would you possibly increase the size then?
Nope, we would not grow.



So 30 is the level cap for Runic?
Yes—the level cap for Runic Games is 30! [laughs] It’s conceivable that we could do two games, but they would just be smaller. If we did an expansion pack and than a tablet game, we could do that, but in general we think of it as doing one thing at a time.



How do you feel Blizzard has handled Diablo 3 overall? To be more specific, how do you feel about the release of a sequel to something that required your unique talents to build?
Wow! You know, it’s weird, I’m not going to lie. It’s kind of cool! First of all I’m thrilled it does not suck. They did a good job and it does the franchise justice, so that’s a big relief. I’m kind of glad they did it, and we didn’t have to do it. Mainly because its impossible to beat the expectations of the people who were anticipating a Diablo sequel. I think they really did such a remarkably good job of making a slick game that’s obviously the best selling game so far, so you know, to say from a commercial perspective they did it right.

We were talking about the rocky launch earlier, but no one is going to remember it in a couple weeks after everything has been smoothed out. So yeah I’m really kind of happy that it all worked out. I’m also happy they made some decisions we wouldn’t have.



What do you mean by that in particular?
Oh with no single-player offline, and the auction house and stuff. With Torchlight 2 we already decided we were kinda going the opposite way with that, so when they came out with those announcements it was good for us because we could draw some distinctions between the two games.



In regards to the actual video game, what do you think of Diablo 3? Do you like the new skill system? The story? What classes do you enjoy playing?
All the classes are pretty fun. I like the way they tell the story, it doesn’t feel tacked on like we always did with the original Diablos. It shows they actually thought about it.

I think the art looks great! It looks like Diablo, but they have their own style, which I think they should do. You know, they shouldn’t just try to make Diablo 2 again. They’ve got a totally new crew making the game, and its always best when people are doing their version of what they’re doing, so I’m glad they put their own stamp on the style. I think it looks great and plays great! I had a fun time playing it. I haven’t really had enough time to play it because we’re obviously busy, but of what I have played I did enjoy.



I agree! It’s nice to see the game has been received so well by the critics and community. It’s a pretty amazing feat considering it’s been 10 years.
Right! How do you meet those expectations because it’s been so long and they just continue to go up over time? You kinda assume that its been in development this whole time and they’ve just been honing it and honing it, but that’s just not how it went. They did some major restarts.

You know, when I was working at Blizzard a million years ago we were working on Diablo 3 and it was an MMO. We were going to do the Diablo version of World of Warcraft. Blizzard obviously changed that pretty quickly, so we left to start Flagship Studios and we brought in a lot of the guys, so they rebooted with their own team.



Wait, the Diablo 3 MMO you were working on at Blizzard changed because Blizzard was working on World of Warcraft?
No no, they changed because once they brought it in-house down at Blizzard, they had different design priorities and goals than we did. Again I totally approve of that.



What things have influenced you and the team over the years, or at least from the beginning of Torchlight to now?
I think one of the most obvious things one notices with our game is we have a very unique art style. We first conceived of it—done by our Art Director Jason Beck—because we were looking for a low-tech, easy to produce art style that wouldn’t look cheap. One of our goals was to make a game that would run on virtually any machine. We didn’t really want to make a game with all the bells and whistles because in an ARPG frame rate is everything. So the more simple your art [style] is, the better it will run.

Art styles are weird. Once you start in on one, they kind of take on a life of their own. They develop their own characteristics. It’s become a look that our artists really understand now, even though we really don’t have any written rule-sets for it. It’s kind of weird how it takes on a life of its own and you just follow wherever it leads. It’s weird now to take a look back on the original Torchlight and see the subtle differences in styles.

<Thinks> I think that was true with the Diablo games as well. We set out to create a dark, Gothic, grey-toned, spooky world and then we created some dungeons and it took on its own life. It’s a weirdly organic thing.



Torchlight has such a lighthearted look to it and I’m curious if that specifically was an intentional design goal from the very beginning?
It was sort of intentional, but we didn’t want it to look like we were just making Diablo you know? We wanted to forge our own identity. We also had a smaller crew too.

It’s also just so fun! I think the ARPG genre is inherently comedic in a way. You’re going out and slaying thousands of monsters that are carrying around Chainmail, it’s just kind of absurd!



…and not only that, they’re dropping 87 pounds of it!
Right! Right! It’s kind of fun and liberating to be able take a more lighthearted approach to the game.



With the success of the Torchlight series, the success of Diablo 3, and the popular ARPG KickStarter projects like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, it does seem like there’s a bit of renaissance happening for ARPGs. Do you think the interest has always been there? And do you think the market is at risk of becoming overly saturated?
I don’t think so at all. For a decided simple game, ARPGs are actually very complicated to create. I think that’s why there aren’t a lot of them. I don’t think it’s based on the market at all, because whenever they do come out they sell like hotcakes. Look at Diablo 3. It’s the fastest selling game on all time on the PC. It’s a fertile market and I don’t think one or two titles are going to saturate it.

There are so many FPS [games] out there and no one thinks that genre is dead. Every one that’s good sells like crazy. We’re pretty confident that provided we can keep our quality up, there are more buyers than there are games in this genre.

Also it’s been 10 years since the release of a Diablo game, and I think there’s a new generation of people to introduce to the genre. Again this is where Diablo 3 can help us. They’re bringing in so many new people to the genre, and so many kids are now of gamer age. We have a whole new generation to introduce to ARPGs. No one ever leaves games, once you’ve started playing games they become part of your life and you play forever. We’re just getting more and more gamers as time goes on and since there has been such a huge gap in ARPGs, its a very fertile field to plow right now.



We were talking about games that stay with us, and it’s funny you mention that because when I think of the Diablo series the very first thing I hear is that famous guitar strum. It has stuck with me for 10 years, and I know many many other Diablo fans who reminisce in the same way!
Yes it’s so crystal clear, I can hear it right now. [laughs]



My real question: The incredibly talented Matt Uelman—who composed the Diablo games—works on the Torchlight series and I’m curious if there was ever a point where you approached him to creating something as infectious? Perhaps as a wink to the fans?
No not the exact same strum, but it’s totally Matt’s style. We just wanted him to get weird with it. Every now and then when listening to the Torchlight 2 music I stop and go “is that a 12-string guitar in there?”. [laughs]



If runic wasn’t going to make an ARPG, what would it make?
Wow! Well we have 30 guys on the team so you would get 30 different answers.

You know, we don’t want to do ARPGs for the rest of our lives, so this is something we do talk about. For me personally I would like to do something that’s more of a hybrid. I wouldn’t want to do strictly a Real Time Strategy or First Person Shooter, I would want to bring a little bit of Torchlight, a bit of Minecraft, a little more resource-based play, and then little more cooperative stuff to bend the genres. Get you to do more than just resources or just loot, you know, just infuse them all a little bit.

At the same time I look at what I actually play and it’s just Word With Friends. [laughs] I just like all kinds of games.

The start of the Lost Planet 3 E3 demo follows blue-collar worker, Jim, sloshing through his daily routine. He wakes up melancholy, records a video for his lovely wife & daughter back on Earth wondering what the hell he’s doing, and then bolts out the door to mine for thermal energy. I like Jim. He’s the kind of guy you’d invite over to your place for a few beers just to hear him his talk about all his wacky adventures on an alien planet.

But will the Lost Planet 3 gameplay draw us in too? After all this isn’t going to be an experience like previous games in the series. It’s not being built from the ground up around cooperative play, oh no, that wasn’t even mentioned. This one has a 3rd-person perspective that is slightly tighter to heightening the tension and bringing you closer to the action. You now drive a Vital Suit (VS) completely from a 1st-person perspective, and if not careful, might seize up if you get caught in an Ice Storm.

It also appears Lost Planet 3 is going for more dramatic intensity in it’s narrative and gameplay. There was one segment I played were the atmosphere was obviously well steeped in the Dead Space gravy (more about that in the interview below), and to be honest it worked rather well with the frigid, creepy environments. In fact I enjoyed it more than the outdoor action in the VS. I have hopes LP3 will be good, but they need to work out some of the tedious things like the repetitive QTE.

On with the interview:

Mark: I’m curious if there’s a paranormal aspect to the game? I ask because as I was working my way through one particular part of the game—that consisted of very high contrasted lighting—desk drawers shook and a chair seemingly spun around by themselves. Ghosts? Ghost Akrids!
Andrew: It’s not paranormal but we are Sci-Fi, you know? The planet is not Earth so there are alien creatures, so. it’s not paranormal in the sense there are ghost or spirits or anything like that. It’s very much rooted in, you know, classic Sci-Fi. We’ve got some homages to [the movie] Aliens and things like that. I think a lot of what you saw and heard has to do with the [demo] setting, the sound effects can be hard to hear. If we were in a more controlled audio settings, you’d be able to hear the critters skittering about. (NOTE: we were not given headphones during our time with the game, and all the kiosks were stationed in one big room.)

I play 1st and 3rd person shooters with an inverted Y-axis, and I noticed that, though an option, the setting didn’t carry through some sequences of the game. I’ve got to ask just to be sure, but this isn’t indicative of the final game right?
Oh yes, well, we’ll have full Y-axis support in the final game. It’s a bit broken in this build.

I enjoyed the first Lost Planet quite a bit, however lost interest quickly with the second. It appears Lost Planet 3 is a fairly major departure from these games, especially with the way the menu pops up relative to the protagonist in game world. I couldn’t help but make comparisons to Dead Space. What’s the design theory for LP3? Do you want those same, intense beats every few minutes?
When we came out of captivate there were a lot of people making the Dead Space comparisons and I’ll be the first person to admit we’re big Dead Space fans.

…with what I saw I thought it worked well.
Right, and well, if you’re going to sort of do an homage to somebody it might as well be the best right? The idea of having the UI in the environment we said “Hey, that’s something everyone’s going to be doing moving forward, so let’s do it!”

What I don’t necessarily agree with in regards to the Dead Space comparisons is that…you know, that’s what [Visceral Games] does well! That’s their bread and butter. For us, the idea of having the suspense and those little scares, that really only consist of, maybe, 20% of that stuff.

So when you’re exploring these abandoned structures, yes you’re going to have some of those beats, but for us this game is really about staying true to what Lost Planet really is. Which is, you’re fighting the Akrid with balls-to-the-wall shooting! You have this gigantic robot you use to tear things limb-from-limb. That’s really the meat of the game.

But in terms of what we’re striving for with the campaign? We want a strong narrative experience where you empathize with Jim. You want see him succeed. You want to be him, and you want to experience his journey. We want there to be this amazing mixture where you’ve got your human player, this gigantic robot and these gigantic creatures they’re fighting with. That’s really what makes Lost Planet, Lost Planet!

I’m curious if the game ever open up for the player?
Yes it opens up quite a bit, but it’s not a true open world game in a [Grand Theft Auto] sense where you go anywhere and do anything at any time. What we call it in our lingo is hub-and-spoke, and there are several of these throughout the game. Those will branch off and pass through to other areas, and those will have missions and objectives within them. So, with these hub areas, you will be going back and forth to visit several times, and that’s where our dynamic storm system comes in handy. You saw the storms in the demo right?

Those were procedurally generated?
Yes they were! So if you’re passing through an area you’ve already been to we can change the weather, we can change the lighting, we can have electrical disturbances and we can throw different enemies at you too. So you’re not going to feel like you’re back tracking in that sense.

Another thing we’re doing is—you know, again, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best—is the Metroid style of “I know i can get there, but I can’t get there now, later on after I upgrade to X, Y or Z, then I’m going to be able to access this new area”.

Those provide the spokes. So some areas you’ll be able to access right off the bat, some will be obtained through narrative upgrades, and there will be areas you will have to go and others that are completely optional that are there for people to explore.

Will there be a fast travel mechanic in the game?
Uh…I don’t know if it’s too early for me to tell you this but…screw it, yes, we have fast travel! We literally just put it in too. The idea being, we do have hub areas and we do have a lot of exploration, but we don’t want to artificially pad the game play out by making you go back again and again and again.

So the first time you go to any new area, you have to go there by yourself and then come back to the base by yourself. The next time you access that area you’ll be able to fast travel from the base.

Thanks for your time Andrew!
No problem.

The new Dante doesn’t care what you think about him, his hairstyle or his choice in music—he just want’s to kick some demon ass. Capcom, however, does want you to care. They want you to give the new Dante a chance, and it shows. This was my initial thought after playing the new Devil May Cry and interviewing Associate Producer Gregory Lewickyj last Friday.

Hideaki Itsuno and his team are back, but this time they’re working with the fine folks over at Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West) to retool DMC. Why does Capcom feel the series needs a reboot? We can only guess, but the more important question is: Should you care? The simple answer is a resounding yes.

“There are a lot of challenges involved with [bringing the two teams together]. Obviously the language thing and making sure everyone is speaking in the same terms about the same things. I think there’s been a lot of fun there too. I think there’s been a lot of learning on both sides.” -Gregory Lewickyj

The vertical slice I played—focused mainly on a combat sequence in a burning city—was quite fun! I didn’t get to see everything the game has to offer (menus did not work), but I did notice there’s a dedicated evade button, a soft lock to enemies, a style meter and of course the new Angel/Demon modes. I admit it, I sort of cynically anticipated this game feeling awkward, making a desperate crawl towards Bayonetta’s style and mechanics. I’m happy to report I walked away not feel that way at all. It still feels like Devil May Cry, but better looking and…juicier. This is mainly due to the ability to quickly switch between Angel and Demon mode. Yes it can be done mid-flight, and there is no cooldown. So in a flash I was able to switch between the modes at the press of a trigger.

Let’s get on to the interview!

Mark: Hello!
Gregory: Hi! Right off the bat I should warn you I cannot talk too much about the game, however there are a few highlights we can hit.

Ok, you go first. What would you like to chat about?
Well one of the things we want to talk about is the work Ninja Theory is doing with Hideaki Itsuno and the rest of the Japanese team. He was involved with Devil May Cry 2, 3 and 4. So he’s also heavily involved with this new game and working very closely with those guys on a lot of different aspects of the game.

The other hit is the fluidity of going from Angel to Demon mode, and then back to combat to without. The different attacks and combos that can be done because of that, those are the highlights. We want to show people what’s in there. Were you able to experience that with you time with the game?

Oh yeah! From what I played it felt like you guys really nailed the vertical combat, which has always been the most interesting aspect of the combat for me in the series. It’s super-fast, responsive and engaging. In particular I really enjoyed the push/pull mechanics of the Angel and Demon modes. Real quick I’d like to chat a little bit about the tech, first. How much of it has migrated over from the previous games and how much of it is new? For what it’s worth I thought it looks fantastic.
So there are some behind the scenes things going on, with Hideaki Itsuno involved and some [traditional] Capcom qualities that go into some of the actual combat—those are there. But in terms of ones and zeros, there are some real differences there, but partially this is on the Unreal engine as well.

What about the motion capture technology Ninja Theory is sort of known for using?
We don’t have anything to say about that at this time.

I have to reiterate how  good the vertical combat felt. It was easy enough to thrust an enemy into the air and then juggle him, however the difficulty slightly spiked when I tried to snap to another enemy mid-air to transition that combo. Most of the difficulty had to do with switching between the Angel and Devil modes in mid-air, because it requires holding down either L2 or R2 to stay in either mode. It wasn’t long however before I started pulling these combos off, but I also have experience with the series. I wonder how newcomers will adapt to this mechanic. Will they have the patience or tenacity to experiment? Are you guys at all concerned with that level of complexity for newcomers?
I think we’re actually really hopefully and positive that there’s going to be a lot there for the fans of the series, and also for those that are trying this out for the first time. I think there is a fun experience there for both groups.

Are the complexity of the controls slowly introduced to the player as one progresses through the game, or are the Angel and Devil modes all thrown at the player at once?
We can’t talk about that now.

Is there a leveling system in place?
Also not on the table for discussion.

I think the main thing here is we want to get [the game] into peoples hands for the first time and have them experience the fluidity of the combat, and get a sense of how it really feels. Hopefully people start to take away some positive things.

How smoothly did things go when Hideaki Itsuno and his team were introduced to the folks over at Ninja theory? Were things initially a little tense between the two teams? It sounds like a complicated situation; a new direction for the series, two teams coming together from for the first time with completely different backgrounds and then there’s the language barrier.
I just hope people give [the game] a chance. Come to the game with open eyes and see what’s here.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes to really help make sure the Japanese team is working with the Ninja Theory team on a lot of different notes. I’m hopeful fans of the series will be pleasantly surprised, and hopefully some new people can approach the series for the first time. It’s going to be a lot of fun! Kicking demon ass, I mean what’s more fun than that right?

How much of the old team is involved with the new Devil May Cry?
I don’t think I have a real answer for you with that. I just want to impress upon you and your readers some key figures: Hideaki Itsuno as the director, who was vitally involved with the 3 previous titles, and there are others.

How big is the Ninja theory team?
You know I don’t have details on that, but they’re sizable. It’s a triple-A title.

How was it, getting the Japanese team and Ninja Theory together to learn to work together cohesively?
There are a lot of challenges involved with that. Obviously the language [barrier] and making sure everyone is speaking in the same terms about the same things. I think there’s been a lot of fun there too. I think there’s been a lot of learning on both sides. Both teams have been really excited about it. I know some of the Ninja guys were really on board with having those guys come out and work with them. It’s been really productive. So, yes, there have been some challenges that go into that, and some have taken a little longer to iron out, but once we got there we got to a place where there is a lot of productivity going into those conversations. Both teams are really feeling they’re getting a new perspective on some of the problems being faced in the development process. You know, how one team might look at a certain problem and address it compared to how the other time might do it, and then hashing it out.

When are we going to see the game?
2012.

Thanks Greg, and good luck!
Thank you.

Hope you enjoyed the interview folks. If you have any questions about my time with the new Devil May Cry or the interview, feel free to ask me here on my blog.

It was 4AM and there I was, hopelessly searching for more goodies. As if I needed more loot right? Are you kidding me! My eyes darted back-and-forth sweeping the ground as I pressing my nose through the soft electric-glow of my computer screen. More! MOAR!

I was at a full-sprint gobbling up experience points, sucking up loot and well on my way towards level 21. Then it happened—BAM—I suddenly smashed my teeth into the stone wall known as the level cap. The pit in my stomach made my next move the only sensible one—I started over.

If you’ve haven’t already noticed, after spending 6 hours with most of Act 1 of Torchlight 2, I’m left utterly impressed with the overall experience. Runic has managed to expand, improve and polish just about every system, gameplay element and technology from the original.

“…I screamed through the levels. In fact it all seemed to happen almost too quickly, and frankly it appeared to be unbalanced. However I eventually realized there’s a balance to all the chaos, and it’s meant to be this furious.”

The polish is already at an astoundingly high level. I experienced nary a hitch, hiccup or crash through my time with the game. The only thing I would consider mentioning is the issue I ran into with one of the graphic settings. Every time I fired up the game it defaulted to 1024x768, so I had to reset it to 2560x1440, restart the game and then I was off slaying beasts again.

Graphically speaking the game looks Fantastic! Thanks to a much larger assortment of environments I was treated to a very rich, lush and colorful palate with enough variety to keep things fresh. This is a game that REALLY pops off the screen, and yes Torchlight 2 seems to have reached a point where it’s even more World of Warcraft (aesthetically speaking) than World of Warcraft. Read that as compliment! The Torchlight series eagerly strives for that sort of look, and I love it.

Dungeon layout and design are light years beyond what we experienced in the original Torchlight, where it seemed we were constantly running through the same, mundane dungeons over and over.

One time I ran through a Pirate themed cave that was crawling with eye-patched, bandana wearing skeletons and ended with a boss named One-Eyed Willy, who’s eye could later be placed in a socket of an item. Another had me running through a frostbitten cavern, filled with yeti’s and panthers—frost panthers! My personal favorite though was a bandit warehouse that was being consumed by flames As I ran through. As I set people free it crumble around me, dropping embers and bits of burning scaffolding—it was frantically paced and loads of fun!

I played as an Outlander, and it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. With the deadly combination of dual-wielding pistols, a glaive to bounce off multiple enemies and a pet to distraction them, I screamed through the levels. In fact it all seemed to happen almost too quickly, and frankly it appeared to be unbalanced. However eventually I realized there’s a balance to all the chaos, and it’s meant to be this furious. The player is rewarded with five attribute points and one skill point for each level. There are 4 attributes to drop points into: Focus, Magic, Dexterity and Strength. The skill tree for each character appears to be mostly unique (some skills were not present and marked with a gigantic “?”), and there are three tabs in each tree. I noticed one of my Outlander’s ability went 15 points deep!

I’d probably recommend people who are interested in even the slightest of challenge to play on Veteran difficulty, because I didn’t die once. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t running low on health as I dodged boss attacks, but I do think some additional challenge outside of those circumstances would be recommended for most players.

Speaking of the bosses, their entrances were always made in a spectacularly grand fashion. I’d rather not spoil anything by talking anymore about that. However I will say the fights were always fun, over-the-top and mostly challenging, leaving me with a great sense of accomplishment.

It’s also worth mentioning there is a good variety in the enemies I encountered, and not only in appearance but also in their attack methods. Some shift through walls, some teleport, some spit goop, some charge and some even summon snot…or something. Whatever. The point is I had to vary some of my tactical strategies from time to time and it kept the combat interesting.

The GUI is unobtrusive, clean, responsive, and does exactly what it should—stay out of the way.

I’m interested in seeing if Runic Games will enable Steamworks for Torchlight 2 because it’s a great system, and I think the community would benefit tremendously from it. Also, some native support for voice chat would be nice.

I’ll leave you with this screenshot (yes I took it with my iPhone) of the thing we love most in these games—BIG, FAT CHEST FULL OF LOOT!