Torchlight II To Be Released After Diablo III

Torchlight II was originally intended to see a release on PC last year, but Runic Games’ dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash saw a series of delays that eventually led the developer to slap a “TBA 2012” release date on the highly anticipated sequel.

Runic Games was in attendance at PAX East this past weekend to show off Torchlight II to fans, but the developer still wasn’t ready to talk about a release date for the game. They did, however, shed a little light on why we haven’t heard of a release date yet in a chat with Joystiq.

Max Schaefer, CEO of Runic Games, told the site that the developer is planning to hold off on releasing Torchlight II until after the release of Blizzard’s Diablo III, which was recently announced to be hitting in May.

Schaefer went on to tell Joystiq that Runic isn’t interested in getting out ahead of Diablo III–instead, the developer is focusing on polishing the game up as much as possible. Runic doesn’t want Torchlight II to be considered the “cheap” version of Diablo III, Joystiq reports. Instead, the developer wants hack-and-slash fans to view Torchlight II as the less-expensive option. Yes, there is a difference.

If you’re disappointed that Torchlight II is still without a release date, Schaefer offered up some words to cheer you up. He said:

“Be patient. Our total development time on this game is going to be about two years, which is not unreasonably long for this type of game. We’re going as fast as we can. It’ll be worth the wait, it’ll totally be worth the wait. In the long run, people will be happy we took this extra time.”

Source: Joystiq