How the hell have I not heard of Fate (the PC game) before now?

[kane_magus]

I started playing Fate and was like "Wow, this is such a Torchlight ripoff," except that Fate apparently came *first* by four years. WTF.
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

How did I not ever hear of Fate at all until now, but the Internet practically shoved Torchlight's dick down my throat when it 1st came out?
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

Was it really just timing, in that Torchlight was doing what Diablo wasn't at the time that it got so much press and Fate apparently didn't?
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

I'm guessing when Fate came out, 4 years before Torchlight, it was just dismissed as a "Diablo clone," whereas Torchlight wasn't?
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

Seriously, though, Fate/Torchlight seems almost exactly like Torchlight/Fate to me. Pet that can sell shit, fishing, cartoony graphics, etc.
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

There are a few differences, sure, but still... o_O
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015
(EDIT)
Ah, so Fate and Torchlight were designed by the same guy, apparently. Well, that explains that, I suppose.
- Kane Magus (@KaneMagus) June 24, 2015

(/EDIT)

(EDIT)

Fate and Torchlight. One thing Torchlight has over Fate, at least, is that the guy who did the music for Diablo I & II did the music for Torchlight as well.

(EDIT 2)

To be clear, when I said I thought that Fate was a ripoff of Torchlight (even though Fate came first), I didn't mean it like "Oh man, Torchlight is such a Diablo ripoff," as some people have tried to claim. No, Torchlight is a game in the same genre as Diablo, same as games like Sacred or Divine Divinity or Titan Quest or whatever. There is a difference between "being in the same genre as" and "being a ripoff of" and I wish more people could make that distinction. Granted, Torchlight is more like (the original) Diablo, in that there's just the one town, which is situated over the huge vertical dungeon of many levels, but still.

When I started playing Fate, however, it was like, "Holy shit, this is almost literally the exact same game as Torchlight." There are no character classes, unlike Torchlight/Diablo, and there's practically no actual story, again unlike Torchlight/Diablo, but yeah, Torchlight/Fate is more a "ripoff" of Fate/Torchlight than Torchlight ever was of Diablo. But then, as my edited in tweet above points out, both Fate and Torchlight were designed by the same guy (along with, for Torchlight, some guys from Blizzard who worked on the first two Diablo games), so it makes sense that they would be so very similar. Is it even possible for one to ripoff oneself in that sense?

(/EDIT 2)

See also, this (including the text in the description of the video):

Click to view

I still don't get why Torchlight got so much press at the time of its release, though, as if it were some amazing alternative to the Diablo games, when it was only a slightly different iteration of Fate, whereas I'm only just now even learning of the existence of Fate and its several sequels, and had no idea until I started playing Fate that the two games were so incredibly similar. Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 3) So, uh, about the game itself... it's pretty cool. If you've played and liked the original Diablo and/or the original Torchlight at all, then you'll probably like this as well. I've played up to level 8 (both in character levels and levels of dungeon), but I think I'm going to restart and pour just about everything into magic and charm so that I can become an uber-summoner. (/EDIT 3)