Titan Quest II - Greek mythology action-RPG sequel by SpellForce 3 devs

[Lacrymas]

If someone is interested in gameplay.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1154030/view/4702410905632410587

Putting the “Quest” in Titan Quest II
By now, some of you have already had the chance to play a demo version of Titan Quest II at Gamescom. But even if you haven’t, we want to use this month’s update to give you a look at the content included in the demo and what it means for our approach to quests, narrative, and exploration.


Introducing the Story
In Medias Res
The Gamescom demo starts in the middle of the action. In the full game, you will play a short prologue chapter before washing ashore at the point where the Gamescom demo begins. This is a more narrative-driven section of the game, as it introduces the player to two major characters, their main quest goal for a new chapter, and the overall chapter conflict.
The player character wakes up on a strange shore, crawling with monsters, having just narrowly escaped Nemesis’s wrath. They have a mission to seek the Moirai, the goddesses of Fate, to learn how to defeat Nemesis, but with little idea where they are or how to find the Moirai, they first have to explore their surroundings.
It soon becomes clear that all is not well here. Evidence of recent destruction litters the beach, and there are ichthian battle parties on the prowl.


An Ally
Fortunately, the player discovers that they are not entirely alone. This section of the game introduces the player character to the divine horse Areion for the first time. Areion is the son of Poseidon and Demeter, and he once belonged to the mighty Herakles. But currently, he is trapped in a small charm.
Areion acts as the player character’s guide to the world of Titan Quest II, seeking to advise and protect the player on their quest to defeat Nemesis. He features heavily in this section, where he is first introduced, but takes on more of a supporting role as the game goes on.


A Missing God
With Areion’s help, the player learns that they need a god’s assistance to open the gates to the Moirai temple. Fortunately, Areion has an old friend in the area: Glaukos, god of seafarers. Unfortunately, it seems Glaukos has gone missing. The demo ends before the player can find out what happened to Glaukos, but the search for the god is a major element of the main questline of this chapter of Titan Quest II.



The Ichthian Threat
In addition to the player character’s personal goal to find Glaukos and reach the Moirai, this section of the game also introduces the central conflict of this region. The ichthians, monstrous fish-men, have managed to sabotage a dam and flood the farmlands below. Pyrgos village, the main settlement in the region, sits high atop the cliffs, but still needs protection from ichthians coming up from the beaches. The player character is pulled into helping with Pyrgos’s defenses by an eccentric old man named Philon.



Quests, Events, and Exploration
The Gamescom demo shows off many of the different content types featured in Titan Quest II.

Fated Quests
We call our main questline “Fated Quests,” because they are destined to be completed, and they tell the story of the player character’s battle with Nemesis.
These quests tend to feature the bigger narrative moments of the game, but also some of our most exciting gameplay. Big boss fights, dramatic escapes, tricky encounters, and one-of-a-kind events serve to make these quests memorable and fun to play.
In the Gamescom demo, the quest “A Strange Shore,” in which the player is introduced to Areion and Philon, is a Fated Quest, and it acts as the backbone of the demo. But there’s much more in store for players who wander off the beaten path.

World Quests
The Fates do not dictate everything. The world of Titan Quest II is full of opportunities for heroism, glory, or personal enrichment. World quests are discovered both through exploration and talking to NPCs you encounter on the way.
Players who reached the end of the Gamescom demo were able to find the world quest “Cages in the Dark” and free some of the very important citizens of Pyrgos from the ichthians.
World Quests can take a lot of different forms. They can focus on a mechanic, a mini-boss, a character, a twist, piece of mythology, or the central conflict of the chapter. You might find yourself tangling with a treacherous naiad, fighting the ghost of an ancient war hero, or saving someone’s life from a Gorgon snakebite.
Our World Quests are designed to be exploration-friendly. For example, if the player finds the cave full of prisoners in the Gamescom demo before they find the official questgiver, they can free the prisoners right away; no need to wait for a questgiver to ask them to.

Exploration Events
One of our big goals for Titan Quest II is to encourage and reward exploration. So besides our Fated and World Quests, we’ve included Exploration Events throughout the world. These are small encounters--a talking jar, a statue of Herakles surrounded by mysterious offering bowls, an encounter with a battle-hardened ichthian commander--which do not get tracked in your quest log and which are designed to be found and completed while exploring. Paying attention to your surroundings pays off, as each of these events has a unique flavor and rewards you for completing it.

The Gamescom demo features four of these Exploration Encounters. Which ones did you find?

We hope you liked this look behind the curtain of the content featured in our Gamescom demo. See you next month!

 

[Lacrymas]

Didn't we kill the Moirai in the first game, though.

 

[Asymptotics]

Didn't we kill the Moirai in the first game, though.

When? Pretty sure we didn't.

 

[Fedora Master]

Didn't we kill the Moirai in the first game, though.

With those late expansions that nobody really played, who even knows.

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, wait, we killed the Grey Sisters. My bad.

 

[Cryomancer]

Ice Shards(my fav tq1 spell) is much better in TQ2. And the new skill tree with modifiers in each skill is a

Any chance that they will also include Slavic mythology in the game? Or a expansion?

 

[Zlaja]

And the new skill tree with modifiers in each skill is a

The only good aspect of D3. D4 had some of this too, but not as impactful.

Overall, I like the LOOK of the game. The artstyle and atmosphere seem to be faithful to the original, which is what the fans want and is the best aspect of the first game (along side the mastery system). I'm not fully convinced about the overall game, though. It seems like they initialy meant to innovate a bit and make a game that was a mix of a traditional hack & slash and an action-adventure type of game, but ended up switching focus during development. Just resorting to playing it safe and delivering a very by-the-numbers type of sequel. And I feel this approach would have worked better in 2008-2012, than in 2024.

 

[Zariusz]

Ice Shards(my fav tq1 spell) is much better in TQ2. And the new skill tree with modifiers in each skill is a

Any chance that they will also include Slavic mythology in the game? Or a expansion?

I got a feeling this will be much more Greece focused rather than being ancient globetrotting adventure like in original TQ, i often found opinions about not focusing entirely on greece being a bad thing.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hmm, thoughts after watching that demo footage:

Skill customization seems really scant, considering it's going to be a no brainer to max out a skill and the 10 slots that gives you will let you use almost all of the special modifiers. They could fix that with balance... but it's highly unlikely they'll nerf the skills after launch by limiting you to 2 modifiers at max level instead of 4. Not promising.

Skills displayed were fairly meh. Ice shotgun is better than a single ice pellet, but still falls way short of anything really creative. If your skill is obeying the laws of physics, I'm not getting out of bed for it. Give me freaky time warping powers that send enemies into the past or future, bullets that spawn at the edge of the screen and fire towards you in a fan pattern, something that shoots out and traces your steps for the last 15 seconds so you want to walk in some weird pattern and lure enemies into it. Something that makes me use my brain instead of 'get near enemy and point attack towards enemy.'

Loot requiring stats only had my excited for a bit, then I noticed one that had a level requirement instead. Level requirements on gear are cancer and make it way less interesting to find loot because you can't do anything specific to work towards equipping something you currently can't.

Potion mechanics are the new industry standard cancer that is basically deferred lifeleech you can claim on demand. Urgh. I don't really expect that to change and nobody else is doing it any better, but still makes me sad.

Game looks pretty enough, and seemed decently paced instead of everything dying in one hit. Didn't look remotely challenging either. Again, industry standard sleepwalk through the campaign is to be expected.

 

[kaboom]

I really can't wait for this game. The graphics look beautiful from the screenshots, and I hope they don't mess up the gameplay.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I really can't wait for this game. The graphics look beautiful from the screenshots, and I hope they don't mess up the gameplay.

If it has good gameplay, can it really be considered to be a sequel to Titan Quest?

 

[Lacrymas]

Titan Quest 1 has good gameplay. As for 2's gameplay, there's only a couple of things they can do to mess it up. Have incredibly boring and unsatisfying skills (and boring build craft by proxy) and/or have zoom zoom gameplay from lvl 1 like Last Epoch.

 

[Axioms]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

 

[Zariusz]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

 

[ArchAngel]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Why play Grim Dawn over Diablo 1? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

 

[Zariusz]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

 

[ADL]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

That's downplaying Grim Dawn's aesthetics. It looks like puke (various shades of green, brown and orange) and lacks visual clarity. I like the game but I greatly prefer Titan Quest's graphics.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

Old GoWs were considered "hack n slash" games. Literally everybody called them that. I think that label is more appropriate for GoW than it is for games like Titan Quest.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

Old GoWs were considered "hack n slash" games. Literally everybody called them that. I think that label is more appropriate for GoW than it is for games like Titan Quest.

Hack'n'slashers, but not ARPGs. GoWs aren't RPGs by any stripe. Suggesting they are is even worse than those morons who call LoZ RPGs.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

Old GoWs were considered "hack n slash" games. Literally everybody called them that. I think that label is more appropriate for GoW than it is for games like Titan Quest.

Hack'n'slashers, but not ARPGs. GoWs aren't RPGs by any stripe. Suggesting they are is even worse than those morons who call LoZ RPGs.

I didn't call it an rpg bitch. He said hack n slash greek set games so i brought up God of War. Step off fo I introduce you to my pimp hand.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

Old GoWs were considered "hack n slash" games. Literally everybody called them that. I think that label is more appropriate for GoW than it is for games like Titan Quest.

Hack'n'slashers, but not ARPGs. GoWs aren't RPGs by any stripe. Suggesting they are is even worse than those morons who call LoZ RPGs.

I didn't call it an rpg bitch. He said hack n slash greek set games so i brought up God of War. Step off fo I introduce you to my pimp hand.

Reread what you were replying to, you complete tool.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Why play this over Grim Dawn? Just cause the graphics are more colorful?

Setting, like how many hack n slash arpgs are set in ancient Greece besides TQ and its sequel?

God of War duh.

I doubt that we can qualify nuGoWs as set in Greece and i doubt that we can classify old GoWs as arpg's.

Old GoWs were considered "hack n slash" games. Literally everybody called them that. I think that label is more appropriate for GoW than it is for games like Titan Quest.

Hack'n'slashers, but not ARPGs. GoWs aren't RPGs by any stripe. Suggesting they are is even worse than those morons who call LoZ RPGs.

I didn't call it an rpg bitch. He said hack n slash greek set games so i brought up God of War. Step off fo I introduce you to my pimp hand.

Reread what you were replying to, you complete tool.

Why? I'll just get dumber LOL

 

[Lacrymas]

GoW is an action game, Diablo and its various offspring are hack and slashers. As for why play this above From Dawn - yes, setting for one. Novelty too. It might not be as fast paced and graphics are a bonus. But we'll see, though, it might turn out unplayable. Grimlore didn't do a stellar job with SpellForce 3's gameplay, soooo yeah.