It looks like the year of the hack 'n' slash - as foretold in The Prophecy - won't be 2011 after all. First Diablo and his army of the damned tried their damndest to make it our the door at the tail end of 2011, but ultimately failed . And now it seems that Torchlight II has hit a similar snag.
"The first Torchlight was released in record time, but it had plenty of issues that a little more development could have resolved," wrote Runic Games president Travis Baldree in a blog post . "We didn't have the resources at the time to give Torchlight that treatment."
"Right at this moment though, we do have those resources for the sequel, and we feel strongly that we should apply them to make this the best game we can make and hopefully one that you'll enjoy and continue to want to play in the future. We've probably had 18 months of full development time on it so far - not excessively long yet, as far as that goes. The amount of time we need to take it the rest of the way is relatively small."
He noted, however, that Runic hopes to run "a small beta" before launch to work out any fun-crushing kinks. Basically, there's no big stumbling block here - just a bunch of little ones. Unfortunately, those things add up.
So then, that puts the year of the hack 'n' slash on track to collide with the year of, well, the Apocalypse. Sure will be awkward, righ-- Wait. Suddenly, it all makes sense. The world won't end with a bang, but a click-click-click. Imagine it: Billions of people huddled around their PCs, bashing, slashing, and looting like they've got all the time in the world. And while they're distracted, the dolphins will strike.
