Is Epic Mickey like Deus Ex. Warren Spector claims that it is, somewhat. Oh, not in terms of look, obviously, nor in terms of violent content. But the deeper design philosophies, the way the plot and world are architected…Spector claims that there’s some overlap with Deus Ex.

Deus Ex wasn’t a musical, though.

The team at Overhaul Games that is currently working on Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread at Reddit last week, in which Trent Oster delivered a well-worth-reading rant against how the gaming industry has, in his view, dumbed down RPGs “Chimp Factor Five”-style. It’s…best read in context, I think.

The release date for Torchlight 2 was announced as being September 20th…yes, of this year. A launch trailer for the game was released, and while it’s a bit premature in being labeled as such, it’s definitely worth a watch…and definitely leaves me (at least) wanting to give Runic’s upcoming ARPG a try.

This little featurette looking at some of the people working at Runic is also worth checking out. So are these soundtrack highlights.

A few interviews and Torchlight 2 previews were published this week. The game’s combat has garnered a lot of praise…and while that’s always a good thing for an action RPG, it’s an especially significant point in Torchlight 2’s favour because of how darn good the combat in the original Torchlight already was.

And once the game has been released? Can you say: has some coverage of the Legend of Grimrock dungeon editor, which is set to release soon. Evidently, it’s versatile enough to let you transform a dungeon into a giant drum machine, as it were…which…yeah. I don’t know what to make of that.

Oh, and Ubisoft have come out and admitted that their “always on” DRM policy was a mistake; they’ll be discontinuing it in their games. Well, no, that’s not true: they didn’t exactly admit their mistake. They “listened to player feedback” and made some adjustments based thereupon. The fact that the tone and tenor of much of that feedback was probably of the “how on God’s green earth did you stinking rat bastards managed to screw it all up this badly?” goes unmentioned, of course.

Also, this character creation video from upcoming…Korean (I think) MMORPG ArcheAge is worth checking out. As is the game itself; I think I’ll add it to the list of things covered by this Wednesday round-up.