Torchlight Xbox 360 Interview

Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer fields more questions about their upcoming XBLA port of Torchlight in this article-style interview that appeared on Gamaustra this morning.

“It’s a challenge getting this kind of game… over to the consoles,” Schaefer admits. The team wasn’t entirely without examples — they took inspiration from Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, for one — but “[sources are] few and far-between. That was the biggest challenge for us; technically it wasn’t that hard to get it to run.”

But a console version of Torchlight was something the Runic team wanted to do for a long time, Schaefer says. “A lot of us have always wished we had the opportunity to put the time into making a good console version,” he says. “We’ve wanted forever… to be able to play Torchlight or Diablo kinds of games on the couch.”

“Everyone has pretty well thought-out theories of how you would do it, but until you dig in, you don’t really know,” says Schaefer. But it helps to look at it like any other challenge: “A lot of iteration,” he explains. “Try something out; if it works, use that theory for other things, and then keep redoing it until it feels right.”

Schaefer says he feels confident that the Runic team has got it right: “We can’t wait to see what people think — but at the same time, we’re a little nervous. But it feels right when we play it. There are guys in the office that prefer to play it on Xbox now, and that’s what makes me think we’re onto something.”