10-08-2012, 06:29 PM
(10-08-2012, 12:16 PM)FoxBat Wrote: I thought David Brevik was the one "talking shit." Schaefer's criticisms that I've seen were phrased pretty mildly.
Brevik was definitely "talking shit". The interviews I've seen from Schaefer seemed to be your normal boilerplate commentary when Diablo 3 originally came out ("They made choices I wouldn't have but we are all playing it and having fun") but as time went on they seemed to become much more underhanded. There was the big blow-up when Jay Wilson said "fuck off loser" on his facebook and I've seen differing statements that the comment was directed towards Brevik or Schaefer.
Either way I'm left with an overall negative impression of the way Runic has presented themselves. This wouldn't be a major issue, but when you are talking crap about the choices other development teams are making when your game has nothing new to offer the genre and is little more than cut and paste I'm left with an even greater sour taste in my mouth. There are development teams out there right now (ala Blizzard with Diablo 3 and Grinding Gear Games with Path of Exile) that are taking serious risks looking for new ways to expand the genre and for the leads on the Runic team to essentially sit on the sidelines and point and laugh reeks of shamefulness. It's low.
Torchlight I came at a time when there was a dearth of options in the action RPG genre and it came in at a budget price point so you could overlook all of it's faults. Torchlight II doesn't have those benefits. There are more than enough options to pick from and the price point is no longer as budget as it once was with Path of Exile pushing free to play.
If it weren't for all the interviews and comments made towards other teams (specifically D3) I probably could have just breezed through Torchlight II and been satisfied with it as a small distraction. As it is I was completely unable to play through the game and ignore all of the items that felt like they were directly cribbed from other games.
Final thoughts on Torchlight II: It wins the prize for total amount of times during play that I said or thought "You douche bags".