FATE: Reawakened brings the classic dungeon-crawling quadrilogy to life with complete graphical overhauls and expanded language support
If you were to ask someone now what the best alternative to Diablo is, there’s a high chance they’ll say Path of Exile or Grim Dawn. Turn time back 10 years, and Titan Quest and Torchlight 2 would be everyone’s pick. But, there’s also an underappreciated ARPG series that seems to have slipped into obscurity. Developer WildTangent’s FATE, was never a particularly well-known ARPG series to begin with. But, if you were to ask someone who bought their PCs pre-built during 2005-2008, there’s a high chance that they’ll speak at length on how FATE was such a big part of their childhood. 14 years after its last installment, publisher Gamigo has brought back all four FATE games in one neat package through FATE: Reawakened. Somewhere in the world, two thirty-year-olds must be shedding tears.
The FATE games can be best summarized as precursors to Torchlight. FATE and Torchlight were both designed by Travis Baldree and the two games share a lot in common. From the whimsical art design and tone to the gameplay mechanics, both game series present the classic ARPG experience, simplified to perfection. In FATE, the players assume the role of ambitious adventurers visiting the town of Grove. The players are assigned a random main quest that leads them on a wild ride through a randomly generated mega-dungeon. On the way, they can pick up randomly generated side quests in Grove and level up their characters. If you haven’t guessed by now, random generation is the name of the game.
If you’re itching for another playthrough, then FATE and its three sequels are available on Steam. So, if the original games are still being sold, then what’s FATE: Reawakened all about? Hovering over the store page, one can see that FATE games are not the prettiest games on the market. The mid-2000s 3D visuals haven’t aged all that well, and the games have plenty of compatibility issues. This is where the remaster comes in. FATE: Reawakened bundles FATE, FATE: Undiscovered Realms, FATE: The Traitor Soul and FATE: The Cursed King into one package and features plenty of modern bells and whistles.
FATE: Reawakened smoots out the crude visuals of the originals with support for higher resolutions, higher poly counts, real-time directional lighting, and ambient occlusion, while staying true to the visual style of the original. Moreover, all four FATE games will be playable in German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese and feature fully localized VO. Plus, for PC players, the remaster features new Steam badges, new Steam emoticons, new achievements, and new profile backgrounds. Perhaps the biggest plus of FATE: Reawakened is that console players will be finally able to enjoy this classic ARPG goodness.
However, the remaster is not perfect. For some reason, the option to open the inventory without pausing the game has been omitted. The number of slots in the hotbar has been reduced from 6 items and 12 spell slots to 4 items and 6 slots. Furthermore, there are plenty of culling/z-fighting issues, geometry glitches, as well as various bugs affecting stats, abilities, and scaling. That being said, the developers are actively taking feedback to eliminate these glowing issues.
Whether you’ll be playing the originals or the remaster, FATE games are fun either way. The simple yet addictive gameplay loop of slaying and looting, fishing, feeding your pet various fish to change their stats, exploring endless dungeons, and getting ridiculously overpowered to the point of crashing the game will always live rent-free in my head. If you ask me, The Traitor Soul is where the series peaked, and you should definitely check it out first. It looks like we were fated to revisit FATE in 2025.