Goodbye Torchlight Frontiers, Hello Torchlight 3
Echtra Games has announced a new game, except that it’s not really new. You might remember the studio announcing a free-to-play shared-world spin-off for the Torchlight series called Torchlight Frontiers back in 2018. Well, that game is still pushing through, except now it’s called Torchlight 3 and it’s being overhauled to play more like its ARPG predecessors.
CEO Max Schaefer said that the reason for the switch was that Frontiers didn’t feel like it was meant to be as they originally planned. “During development, you often discover what type of product a game was meant to be and we found Torchlight Frontiers was meant to be a true successor to Torchlight I & II,” Schaefer shared. “Based on this and extensive feedback from our Alpha testers, we decided it was time to take the game back to its roots and model it after the classic Torchlight games that ARPG fans have come to love. We’d like to thank our dedicated player base for supporting us and providing such insightful feedback during early development.”
You can check out the full announcement video below:
Max Schaefer is, of course, one of the creators of the Torchlight series and a veteran of the series’ original studio, Runic Games. Runic closed shop back in 2017, after which Echtra stepped in to continue the series.
It’s hard to say whether fans of the series will be disappointed by this shift. Probably not. Of course, the announcement back in 2018 got fans extremely hyped, but that may be more because a new Torchlight game was in the works rather than the fact that it’s a free-to-play shared-world experience. All things considered, if number 3 ends up even just as good as the first two games, then it’ll be a win for fans.
Torchlight 3 will release sometime this year on Steam. The game won’t be free-to-play anymore but Echtra has yet to announce what its asking price will be.
