Last summer's Titan Quest from Iron Lore proved to be a pleasant surprise. While many action RPGs strive to be something different than a Diablo clone, Titan Quest was comfortable admitting that it was very similar to Blizzard's still-popular game, but that it had made improvements in areas players had been shouting about for years. Beautiful environment detail; a wide selection of unique class types through the game's Mastery system; and more loot than you could shake a soulstone at were just some of the game's finer selling points.
Next week, Iron Lore will launch Immortal Throne, the official expansion pack to their mythology-themed dungeon crawler. What will the expansion set improve upon from the original? What will it add? I spoke with Mike Verrette, the game's producer, to find out.
Shack: Without giving away the ending to the original game, what is the story line for the Immortal Throne expansion?
Mike Verrette: The story in Immortal Throne will pick up almost immediately where the original Titan Quest left off. Just when you thought you have saved the world from infinite peril, infinite peril arrives again. In Immortal Throne, players will be tasked with seeking entrance to the underworld and discovering the source of a demonic army that is threatening the land of the living. As the player journeys through Hades he will be advancing through wave after wave of the new horde in an attempt to find the source of the advancing army.
Shack: Tell us about the new environments we'll be exploring in Immortal Throne.
Mike Verrette: Immortal Throne starts off in the Mediterranean where the player will visit places like the war torn city of Rhodes and travel to the grove of the great sorceress Medea in search of the entrance to Hades itself. Those lucky players that manage to gain access to the underworld will need to find passage across the river of Styx, navigate the plains of Judgment where they will eventually be tested to see if they are worthy to gain entrance to the fields of Elysium. Once there, players will ally themselves with some of the greatest heroes Greece has ever known in an attempt to gain access to Hades Palace and determine the source of the demonic army.
The team spent a long time developing the look and feel of Hades. We wanted something that didn't fit into the stereotypical fire and brimstone imagery that people commonly associate with the underworld. Instead we wanted to create an alternate reality where the undead thrived and lived out their eternal days. We wanted a world that had its own architecture, foliage, geology, etc. From the gameplay side we tried to approach the level design from a different perspective -- where we focused more on using elevated gameplay spaces and took full advantage of the three dimensional qualities of the editor and the engine.
Shack: What new Masteries have been added?
Mike Verrette: The Dream Mastery was added in Immortal Throne which will give players access to nine new character class combinations. This mastery is unique in that it contains skills that alter time and the space around the character. With its combination of direct damage skills, crowd control skills, trances and the Nightmare pet, it holds its own as a great primary skill mastery and contains a wide variety of support skills that make it a viable second mastery for both caster and melee style characters.
Shack: As with any loot-based game, storage space was an issue for many players in Titan Quest. What will Immortal Throne introduce in the way of allowing players to carry/store more awesome loot?
Mike Verrette: Immortal Throne will introduce caravans to the ancient world. Caravans are NPCs that serve two main functions. The first is to provide players with an inventory stash. Additional storage space can be purchased, but it is not unlimited.
The second function of the caravan is to allow players to transfer items to their other characters. By using the transfer tab in the caravan window it will be possible to start the game with one character, deposit a piece of equipment with the caravan, exit the game and then reenter with a different character, and then retrieve that item. Caravans were added to all the major cities so players restarting the campaign from the beginning to try out the dream mastery will have access to the caravans. They are not exclusive to the Immortal Throne levels.
Shack: What is an Enchanter? What can they do for the player?
Mike Verrette: An enchanter is a new type of NPC that has several functions. The first is that they will be able to separate relics from items and the player will have to choose which they wish to keep because the other will be destroyed.
The other important function enchanters have is that they will allow players to create powerful pieces of equipment called artifacts which I will explain. In Immortal Throne, players will be able to acquire arcane formulae which serve as a type of recipe to create an artifact. For a nominal fee, enchanters will take the recipe and the required ingredients (provided the player has acquired them) and create the artifact for you. Once equipped, artifacts will provide players with additional bonuses and skills that are unique to that artifact.
Shack: Approximately how many new items will be added to the game's already massive item database? Can you tell us about a few of them?
Mike Verrette: We have added over four hundred new pieces of unique and common equipment to the game. This is in addition to more relics, more charms, and many more affixes for randomized items. We have added a whole new class of item types that grant and increase pet bonuses and those items were added throughout the entire world, not just in the expansion levels. We've also added more animations and particle effects to the high end unique items which players will be drooling to get their hands on.
Shack: How about new monsters? Bosses?
Mike Verrette: Immortal Throne will feature over 20 new monster types throughout the new levels. These monsters range from the Anouran and dreaded Anteok in the Mediterranean levels to the Empusa, Epiales and Machae in the Hades underworld. We were able to take a fair amount of liberty in the creature design in Immortal Throne whereas in Titan Quest we tried to stick with the more commonly recognizable creatures from mythology.
Some of my favorite monsters from the expansion are the bosses -- hands down. The boss battles in Immortal Throne are more closely tied to their environment and I find them to be tactically more challenging than many of the bosses in the original Titan Quest. I don't want to give too much away here -- but the first time I got into it with Charon, I was totally blown away.
Shack: I seemed to hoard gold more than spend it in Titan Quest. Has the economy been improved in Immortal Throne?
Mike Verrette: Many players wound up hoarding a lot of gold in the original game so rebalancing the economy and providing more options for players to spend their gold on was a large focus for the expansion. Between the caravans, the enchanters, and the new scroll items we think players will find themselves with far less extra cash in their pockets at the end of the day.
Shack: How important was player feedback in the development of Immortal Throne?
Mike Verrette: Player feedback was invaluable to us throughout the development of Immortal Throne. Many of us at Iron Lore spend a great deal of time on the forums listening to what the players are saying and bouncing ideas off of them as well. We try and take a lot of the suggestions very seriously and we have tried to incorporate as much player feedback as possible into the design of the expansion.
Shack: Anything else you feel we should know about?
Mike Verrette: In closing I would just like to say that all of us at Iron Lore are really happy with the way Immortal Throne turned out. Visually it is more stunning than the original game and the new Dream Mastery is probably my favorite skill tree in the entire game. I think we want players to understand that Immortal Throne is not just more of the same. With the new scrolls, equipment, artifacts, and content it is a whole new gameplay experience. In less than a week the gates to Hades will open... are you ready?
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne will be available for the PC on March 5. You can visit the game's official site to check out more screenshots and trailers.
