Titan Quest - Retrospective @ Eurogamer

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Has it really been four years already? Eurogamer has a retrospective on Titan Quest, penned by John Walker:
Five years ago, a year before Titan Quest was released, I went to Boston to visit developers Iron Lore. The game was still very much in little pieces, scattered around the office, being meticulously stitched together by a fantastic team. Boss Brian Sullivan had created his studio by handpicking developers and designers he found interesting, a combination of old hands and - interestingly - a selection of young former Nintendo game developers.
Amongst the veterans was artist and animator Rich Sullivan (no relation), formerly of Looking Glass, who had a corner of the office unlike any other I've seen, combining technologies covering tens of thousands of years of techniques from state-of-the-art tablets to the crude tools of sculpture. Having spent some time working in animation he told me that he'd been forced to learn the more modern methods, but would always insist on beginning his character design in clay. Extraordinary sculptures surrounded him, from pristine Roman helmets to grotesque, distorted, monstrous faces.
More information.
 
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That was a pretty interesting article. But for all its polish and genuinley good UI... Titan Quest was just plain boring to me.
 
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After play diablo I and II all diablo clones (like Dungeon siege) where plain boring and never finish any of then.
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Titan Quest was one of the better clones, definitely - but it just wasn't that exciting. The character system was great, but the skills themselves lacked a certain flavor - and too many of them were downright dull.

Whatever you do, don't implement dull skills in a game that's all about being cool with your character. You want powers that look, feel, and perform fantastically. You can have a lot of passive skills that don't require too many resources to develop, but you REALLY need a handful of class-defining stuff that totally stands out.

TQ had some of them, but it wasn't enough - and many of them were not activated abilities when they should have been. Also, they went overboard with the "cooldown" concept, which really belongs in a lag-prone environment like in an MMO. In a tight LAN game - you want things happening ALL the time, so players aren't bored.

So many developers fail here, and Torchlight is another example of supremely poor skill design.

The environments were BEAUTIFUL, but they really messed up the rhythm of the game. Way too much walking around sparsely populated areas, with too samey enemies. Particularly the first hour of the game is horribly dull - because your character can't do anything interesting and the areas are too samey and large. They should have made a tighter starting area, and their story presentation was utter crap. Beyond that, you don't want characters to look identical in a multiplayer game - which they did for the first hours upon hours of playing. I wonder how such a mistake could be made, in such an otherwise competent game.
 
The best of the clones, mainly because of all the interesting character development options. However, D2 is still superior. I do rate TQ above the original Diablo though.
 
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The best of the clones, mainly because of all the interesting character development options. However, D2 is still superior. I do rate TQ above the original Diablo though.

Hellgate was better before it died, but after it was reasonably fixed.

I also think Borderlands is better, but it's very different in style.

That's just my opinion, though :)

Looking forward to FireFall.
 
I'd actually rate the original Diablo higher than Diablo 2. Not in multiplayer of course, but I had more fun with the single player.
 
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Really? I found the classes far too boring. That's why I rate TQ so highly - the classes (and combinations) are a lot of fun. I find the actual gameplay in most hack'n slash games fairly boring, so it's all about loot/character development for me.
 
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Really? I found the classes far too boring. That's why I rate TQ so highly - the classes (and combinations) are a lot of fun. I find the actual gameplay in most hack'n slash games fairly boring, so it's all about loot/character development for me.

The thing about the original Diablo was that it was a new experience altogether. It had absolutely superb production values, and certainly to me - no game has re-created quite the same thing.

Diablo 2 is vastly superior as a game, but since its basically retreading the same ground, it's hard for me to muster the same level of enthusiasm.

Diablo also had the gothic atmosphere down to a tee, and the idea of descending ever downwards, was more focused and interesting to me, than the wasteful overland areas of the sequel.

That's why I think Hellgate is better than the other clones, because it created a new experience as well. I've never played a more visceral and adrenaline-pumping action RPG. I really liked some of their innovations, such as context-specific music that became more intense according to what was happening on screen.

Too bad it was such a messy launch, because I honestly believe it had the potential to be the ultimate action RPG, given some months of additional work.
 
I would rate Titan Quest third behind Diablo at this point and with a wait and see after torchlight two is released. TO me these games are all about the multiplayer and cool new shiney things. Titan Quest still has a bunch of people playing it and it compares very well to my second choice which is Sacred 1. I still greatly prefer it over Sacred 2 and have recently bought Sacred gold so it will work on WIn 7
Judging by all the posts on GOG, if they hadn't shut the servers down, people would still be playing it
 
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Titan Quest was great fun when I needed an action-rpg fix, the runes and various classes made for some interesting ways to kill the enemy. FX are really nice, and the mythical monsters were really cool too if you like classic mythology. I have to say that Sacred still drew me in more, I actually finished that 1.5 times and I still havent gotten back to China in TQ ='.'=

Sacred 2 was pretty cool too, but you better have one hell of a rig if you want to run it… i never finished it due to performance destroying my old P4 2gb 8800 at the time!
 
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