At E3 this Summer, we hinted around at our 3rd class. “She’s female,” is all we could confirm. Then little leaks came out – She’ll be a mixed-range class. Guns and bows. Badass babe stuff. You’ve been waiting … and we’ve been waiting to show you.

Girls of Gaming was her official debut, and what better way for a fine and classy young avatar to meet her public than with a smoking gun and a smirk on page 4. We also revealed that the third class –who you now know as The Vanquisher—had a backstory rooted in the overall world, even beyond the boomtown of Torchlight. She travels to Torchlight in disguise as a fellow treasure and adventure seeker. Secretly, however, she is a member of the elite and deadly guards of the world’s capital city, sent to investigate the mysterious and violent disturbances surrounding the boomtown’s Ember mines.

She has a nasty road of corrupted Ember and death ahead of her, but our girl is up to the task. Please meet the long-awaited Vanquisher.

Hi! My name is Jeremy Huxley, I have been in the industry for 6 years now and it has taken me all over the world. I am an environment artist here at Runic and I have been here since the beginning of May. I have greatly enjoyed my time here. Everyone is really busy, but we have accomplished so much in a short amount of time. We are on the final push to release the single player in less than a year of production, that’s amazing!

During my time in the games industry, I have worked for a lot of different studios, including Flagship Studios in San Francisco, so a lot of these guys are friends. It is great to work directly with these guys for the first time, other than Max and Erich who were also down south, and Adam whom I grew up with in a tiny town –this is what we always dreamed of doing.

Bottle-necks in production are very common in this industry, where some of the people will work very hard on something and then once its passed on it can stagnate or disappear completely, there are millions of factors that lead to this, even when people all have good intentions. Personally, I have never worked at a studio where everyone works as diligently and cares so much about the project as they do here at Runic, and Travis and the programmers put us all to shame. In parting I would like to say that we hope you really enjoy the game, I feel it truly has heart and I hope you are all planning up your Mods and TC’s for the game, I know I am!

Hey all, I’m Jeff Mianowski, one of the two character artists here at Runic currently working on Torchlight. I’ve been with Runic for about…2.5ish months now (give or take) and it’s been a lot of fun jumping into the art style, checking out the game, and working with a small group of really cool, motivated people. It’s definitely been a different experience from the last studio I worked at, which at one point was up to 250+ people O.o! Let’s just say it’s been a great change of pace.

We’re in the final stretch here and that means there are all kinds of odds and ends to tie up, which is a lot of fun for me at least, to see things getting checked off that list. I’ve recently been busy creating some the last remaining NPCs and character armor sets for the game. Personally, I kind of like having multiple tasks on my plate. It gives me the chance to take a break from what I’ve been doing, work on something else, then come back fresh to finish up and plow through the next task. Each of my assignment include, modeling, texturing, rigging and export of the characters so there’s always some aspect I can take a break from if I’m getting a little sluggish.

I’m looking forward to PAX, it should be a lot of fun to see people’s reactions, there’s soooo much more to see than the last time people played at E3. Come out and see us if you can!