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Torchlight II's announcement has been a cause for celebration among those who wished for an effortless and somewhat predictable excursion into a well-worn territory.

But how did the Torchlight franchise start...

What most people don't know is that Torchlight II is a complete clone of "Fate", a game released back in 2005. Travis Baldree, was a member of WildTangent who led the development of "Fate".

The game succeeded to some extent. However, the critical reception was tough, since "Fate" suffered from overly cute characters and monster designs; there was nothing threatening about its adoption of a casual game’s aesthetic. It was also limited to one town and auto-generated dungeons. And because it was poorly advertised, it didn't receive much attention and thus tremendously failed.

Travis and the development team continued to release sequels however, "Fate: Undiscovered Realms", "Fate: The Traitor Soul" and "Fate: The Cursed King" were released in 2008, 2009 and 2011 respectively. Though nothing much was added except for Facebook integration, Fate received a rather mediocre rating this time. Which was an improvement over the first one receiving almost no constructive criticism at all.

In August 2008, Travis founded Runic Games and along with veterans from Blizzard North and Flagship Studios expatriates Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer and Peter Hu, the Runic Team started developing what they claimed to be a way to finish what 'they' have started.

In October 2009, Torchlight was released, a light-hearted and fun RPG game that quickly became popular for it's phenomenal music and combat system.

It seems that Baldree succeeded in setting things right after "Fate", but will he keep his success after Torchlight II is released?