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Developer Arc Games revealed that Torchlight Frontiers will be transformed into Torchlight III, becoming a premium title headed to PC in 2020 (via Fextralife).
“Over the past year, we have gathered massive amounts of feedback from our Alpha testers,” said developer Arc Games in the announcement. “After reviewing this feedback, discussing with our internal teams, and receiving guidance from our publisher, we determined that this was the best course for the game. This shift helps bring Torchlight back to its roots and makes it the true sequel to Torchlight I & II that it was always meant to be.” As a result, Torchlight III will be a game with “one-box price,” will be playable online or offline, and will be distributed through Steam.
Those who partook in alpha testing of Torchlight Frontiers will get a Steam key that will give them access to pre-release testing for Torchlight III. Arc Games has detailed the differences in the new game and how these will work:
- “The game now follows the classic Act structure from previous titles. Players start at the Imperial Outpost besieged by goblin hordes. They then follow the trail of nether corruption into lands overtaken by Hyvid and finally reach the [redacted] Peaks and their cavernous underplaces ruled by the electrifying [redacted]
- Horizontal progression has been removed, so all Frontier-specific levels, gear stats, and scaling has been removed as well. We are returning our progression systems to better work in tandem with this.
- Most zones are now private by default to give a better play experience. Players can still meet each other in public town levels and form parties to play together in instanced combat zones.
- When creating your character, you can now select Online or Offline Mode. Characters made in Offline Mode do not require an internet connection to play, but will also not be able to participate in multiplayer games.
- We have removed the in-game real-money store.”
Continued closed alpha and beta testing is in store, and update 10 will touch down in the game today. This will lead to a wipe of character progress, but it will not remove alpha-exclusive collectibles attached to accounts. “This will allow us to streamline our development and testing methodologies. We’ll be able to release updates on a tighter schedule and our players will be able to more easily jump around the content providing us with greater feedback and deeper testing capabilities,” explained Arc Games, adding that there will be another erasure of character progress in an upcoming update.
Torchlight III will be released for PC in 2020, with a console release planned in the future. Watch the announcement trailer below.
