Titan Quest is a Diablo clone for Windows set in the ancient Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and China and loosely based on Greek mythology. It is notable for its pseudo-historical setting, and generally is fairly faithful to the eras it attempts to portray, though there are some anomalies.Mysterious monsters known as "Telkines" have appeared along with hordes of monsters, undead and demons. Playing as a young traveler you have to choose your path and stop the Telkine's plans of destruction and death.
Titan Quest provides examples of the following tropes:
A Load of Bull — Minotaurs. Also, a demonic bull boss in Act 3.
Always Chaotic Evil — All the monsters and enemies in the game, with the only exception of a single centaur hero and a satyr merchant found in Greece, who are friendly. It's explained during the story that the creatures used to be mostly timid or neutral, although it's hard to imagine how this could work for a few (such as the crocodile men).
Artificial Stupidity — Justified. Most enemies are dumb and susceptible to arrow volleys while a summoned scarecrow distracts them, but some intelligent species exist (mostly humanoids) that will actually kite you, flee when attacked or summon distractions.
Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever — Cyclops and most of the larger, more powerful enemies. That include a gargantuan Yeti on your way to China.
Badass Normal — The guy in the opening movie who manage to kill a gorgon by having a stuatue fall on her. Later, when Megalesios himself appears to taunt him, he just charge at him screaming.
Battle Aura — The player can learn to grow them and can level them up.
Big Bad — Typhon in the original game and Hades in the expansion.
Big Boo's Haunt — Several of them. The undead can be killed in any way, but they're extremely resistant to some forms of damage (such as pierce and poison) and completely immune to others (life leech). Since some types of characters rely on these damage types, killing undead enemies may be extremely tricky.
Big Creepy Crawlies — Several giant insects, usually in Egypt. Includig spiders, scarabs, antlion and mantises.
Boss in Mook Clothing — Dactyls. Huge melee damage, huge attack speed, fairly high health. Their most lethal attack is a ground wave that they spam continuously that will surely stunlock you, while dealing insane amounts of damage. And in Legendary mode, they have 99% chance to avoid projectiles. Fun!
Cyclops near the end of the game.
Breath Weapon — Some enemies have these, but the most notable case is the Hydra. Fire breath, poison breath and ice breath. All three deal massive damage over a very short time (generally more than potions can heal) and the ice breath also you down.
Broken Bridge — You can hear from a nearby NPC that it was a cyclops who smashed the bridge to pieces. Soon enough, you have to kill that cyclops.
A bit less noticeable than some examples because you are already on the opposite side of the bridge before you are told you to go to the city that would have required crossing it in the first place.
Copy And Paste Environments — Played straight in Egypt, where pretty much all you'll see is sand and tombs. Averted hard in Act 3, where you'll run all over Asia and visit lush meadows, bamboo forests, snowy mountain peaks, icy caves and even a volcano.
Dark Is Not Evil — The necromancer-like Theurgist can kill monsters by sucking their souls, summon a Lich King to aid him and even control the minds of weaker enemies, all while protecting himself with blood pacts and other abilities with frightening names. However, he's identical to any other hero story-wise. The Rogue class, dealing with poison and sneaky attacks, also applies.
Dem Bones - The game loves this trope. Hordes of skeletons of all colors lurk in the shadows (sometimes sunlight), including the normal looking ones in Greece, the black ones in Egypt and the Golden ones in China - all with prefixes that explain their coloration.
Disc One Nuke — A certain damaging aura skill available in the expansion pack does enough damage when maxed out to kill almost any normal enemy before they reach you, and kill bosses quite easily as well. All without you having to push a button or even use mana - just walk from one boss to the next leaving a trail of corpses. This skill is mitigated by the fact that you'll still have to take damage to activate it.
The game was balanced during development around players distributing stats as broadly as possible, whether within the same Mastery or over several Masteries. Sinking as many points as possible into a few different key skills can let you destroy anything easily early on.
Door To Before — Or at least to areas which the player could have reached easily, like the Hathor Basin.
Dual Wielding — Warrior classes can do this with swords, maces and axes. The Warfare mastery has a skill tree that boosts your offensive power when dual-wielding.
Elaborate Equals Effective — Most of the weapons and armors follow this suit, although (owing to the game's top-down perspective) "elaborate" here doesn't mean that much.
Eldritch Abomination — The Telkines. Megalesios isn't that obvious—you can only see his upper face—but Aktaios is letting his shoulder tendrils poke out, and there is no mistaking Ormenos for anything else. Also Typhon and Hades's second form.
The Theurgist can summon one to help him in battle.
Elemental Powers — The main elements are Fire (Pyromancer), Ice/Lightning (Stormcaller) and Poison (Rogue). Also Dark (Theurgist) and Nature (Wanderer).
Executive Meddling — According to a former Iron Lore Entertainment employee, THQ wanted the game to be as family friendly as possible: no blood, no gore, no human corpses, no demons and so forth. The spirit mastery was subject to many changes because it was judge too "evil". All monsters were forbidden to speak human language and display any form of intelligence (which is Fridge Logic, since many of them are spellcasters, although there is evidence that they're actually Brainwashed and Crazy, courtesy the Telkines). Iron Lore Entertainment was given a bit more slack in the expansion since the game took place in Hades.
Fire, Ice, Lightning — Done with the various magical staves, which can be fire-enchanted, frost-enchanted or thunder-enchanted. Fire, ice and lightning are also present as elements along with other lesser ones like poison and vitality.
Fridge Logic — Most of the storyline revolves around chasing a Telkine (and later two more) everywhere. The Telkines' real objective is discovered late in the game, when you're told that they were looking for the sickle of Chronos, which they would use to free Typhon from his prison in Wusao mountain. Of course, you are the only one that can stop them. The Telkines could have easily found and killed you early on, while your character was weak, and then simply gone on to fulfill their objective.
Of course, when your character was weak, your character was really, really weak. Armed-with-a-knife weak. Has-trouble-with-shamans weak. Would you bother taking that puny human out, even if you did feel they were worth bothering with?
Full Boar Action — Feral boars are among the early enemies. Later you can see the Dusk Boars, some of which are the size of a bull. There are also some powerful boar men in Greece.
Giant Spider — Many of them are usually found underground or in forests. Unlike other examples, there are several species of them. You can also meet some spider-human hybrids called Arachnos in both Greece and China.
Glass Cannon — Some mastery combinations make excellent glass cannons (pure mages being particularly good examples). Some enemies, mostly found in the late game, also qualify. Sometimes with devastating effects.
Golem — The bronze and iron Automata in Crete and the Olympus, the granite, clumsy living statues in Egyptian's tombs and the Terracotta Army in China.
Götterdämmerung — Avoided, strangely enough. Though a player might expect Typhon to have cleaned out Olympus by the time the PC gets there, Zeus is apparently fine. He does decide to leave humans to their own devices, though the deities will presumably keep all the magic infrastructure working.
Humans Are Special — Naturally only a human can save the day. However, following gameplay conventions the other humans you meet are almost as helpless as the gods are implied to be. One human is special.
Hijacked By Jesus — At first, it seems like a Greek cosmology variation. While there are items referencing the Babylonian and Chinese pantheons as well, most of the important sages are revealed to be Order of Prometheus members, even the Yellow Emperor himself is only concerned with the welfare of the Olympian gods and the world-threatening antagonist is a Titan. However, an Egyptian NPC mentions that their god Set is called Typhon by the Greek, meaning the different pantheons refer to the same deities with different names. This, in turn, makes it a version of All Myths Are True.
Impossible Item Drop: Averted: every piece of equipment dropped by monsters is something that the monster was using, sometimes including unique and powerful weapons and armor. Gold, quest items and healing items are the few exceptions.
Improbable Use of a Weapon: Some spear-like weapons have a curved cutting edge like a glaive. You still use them to stab your enemies.
Informed Equipment: Averted hard, you'll even see the equipment of the Mooks. If you notice an enemy carrying exotic-looking equipment, there's a good chance they're unique items, with powerful stats that the enemy will also get.
Katanas Are Just Better — Played straight in the first game (no expansion), where the "Sabertooth" sword really looks like a katana and is easly the best sword in the game.
Large and in Charge — Usually the "champions" and commander monsters will be far bigger than their underlings.
Lethal Lava Land — The Obsidian Chambers in Wusao Mountain where the titan Typhon is locked up.
Light is Not Good: Not when Aktaios is trying to use it to fry you...
Living Statue — In Egypt. Megalesios also summon some to delay you.
Made of Explodium: The various crows you fight near the beginning of the game, which pop into a pile of feathers when they die.
Magic Knight — Made possible by mixing melee and magic masteries. Combinations include the Thane (Warrior + Stormcaller), Juggernaut (Defender + Pyromancer) and the Avenger (Pyromancer + Hunter). On the downside, they tend to be left out of high level equipment for pure warriors or mages.
Magic Wand — Staves. They come in three flavours: Fire type (always deals the same amount of damage), Ice type (weakest but slow down people) and Thunder (damage swinging from very high to very low). They're the most suitable ranged weapon for magic users.
Man-Eating Plant — They show up in Act 3 and 4 in a few different variations.
Mighty Glacier — The Defense mastery and most (if not all) mastery combinations involving it. Also applies for some kinds of monsters.
Nipple and Dimed — Bronze statues of naked people are found everywhere in the game. The female statues have no nipples on their breasts. In fact, no reproductive organs are present either, women or men. While missing nipples are an explained occurence in real life, it doesn't make sense in the game's universe.
One-Man Army — Eventually your hero: in more than one chance you'll have to make your way throught armies of monsters of all kinds in order to reach (or escape) a besieged city/village/temple. Reaches Beyond the Impossible levels in Act 3 where you have to walk the ''whole way from Babilon to China''.
Orcus on His Throne: Unlike the Telkines, who actively run around to complete their goal, Hades will be satisfied with staying inside his humongous palace waiting for you to come.
Our Demons Are Different: — Of varios degrees, including corpse eaters, life suckers, sand beings and elemental creatures. Certain weapons (and some of the Seer's skills) deals more damage to demons.
Plaguemaster — Unlike the usual conceits, it's not the necromantic Theurgist who does this, but the Wanderer—the user of the Nature Mastery. The plague in question quickly conducts between enemies close to each other. In its base form, it just depletes a percentage range of health, but upgrades let it cut enemy movement, attack speed, and defenses.
Poisoned Weapons — The Rogue mastery can do this at will, and it's really useful if paired with a bow weapon or throwing knives... both of which go nicely with this mastery.
Punch Out A God — By the end of the game, you'll have sucker-punched several eldritch entities, killed a titan twice, broke into hell and killed Hades.
Ragdoll Physics: Most enemies. With enough physical damage you can punt corpses all over the ancient world.
Real Is Brown — Averted. You're going to travel through vivid green jungles, shiny ice caverns, vibrant surreal landscapes in the Underworld and other exotic locales. Even in the second Act, which is set in Egypt and its sand desrts, you'll find plenty of colorful areas, mostly around the shores of the Nile.
Scenery Porn — The graphics are astounding for their time (2006), especially for a game that is best played with the camera as far overhead a possible. The lighting and texture work, coupled with some impressive views scattered around the game, create some extremely nice pictures that are very rare in the genre.
Shaggy Dog Story: The first part of Act II revolves around helping Imhotep perform an invocation ceremony as a substitute for the lost scrying pool. After two or three quests' worth of beating up Telkine thralls and recovering the needed artifacts...the ceremony completely fails.
Shown Their Work — Most of the time, concerning locations and weapons, with some exceptions. (i.e. the Shamshir being a cleaver-like falchion while in Real Life is a long, curved scimitar). Some artistic liberties were also taken, especially regarding monsters.
Summon Magic — Almost all the magic-related class can summon creatures to help them, ranging from melee creatures (Wolves and Depth Dwellers) to range creatures with magical skills (Nymphs and Liche Kings). Some enemies will summon other creatures to help them out. Last but least scrolls in the Expansion will allow you to summon uselful aids.
Swamps Are Evil — Usually infested by Ichtians and other unpleasant monsters. This is taken Up to Eleven in the Stygian Marshes in Hell.
Take That, Us — The various monsters you meet in the Secret Passage are all named after the creators and developers of the game.
Take Your Time — There're no timed missions of any kind in the game. Even the sidequests that revolve around saving a NPC in danger aren't timed. At only one point in the game you're required to do something quickly, but if you fail to do so, you simply have to deal with a few additional enemies during a boss fight.
The Unchosen One — The player character is a random fellow (not even a Helot as he shows up in Helos apparently looking for something that is never mentioned again) who just happens to be amazingly skilled in combat and capable of casting powerful magic.
Took a Level in Badass — Look at your hero at the beginning of act I, then look again at him at the end of said act. The same goes with certain types of mooks. For examples you first meet ratmen as a race of pathetically weak scumbags in Greece, but later you'll fight with their stronger cousings in Babylon.
Underground Monkey — Happens with certain types of mooks. You start with Satyrs, the Dark Satyrs, then Mountain Satyrs. And so on.
Viewers Are Morons: One quest would have the PC climb on top of a snowy mountain in Act 1. This got axed because THQ argued that players would be confused as to why there was snow in Greece. THQ wanted all ruins to be removed from Greece because someone was afraid that players might not understand why, if the game took place in ancient times, that there would still be ruins.
We ARE Struggling Together: As a scholar in Athens muses, the Telkeins' armies have caused a strong camaraderie between the Greek cities that would normally be at eachother's throats.
What Could Have Been: There was originally plans to make the skills masteries reflect the Olympian Gods's powers and attributes. This is vaguely similar to Loki's faith system, another action RPG. For religious concerns, THQ forced Iron Lore Entertainment to change this so it would not offend Moral Guardians.
Whatever Mancy: Necromancy, geomancy and venomancy just to name a few.
Wolfpack Boss: The gorgon queens in mid-late Act I. Also the Grays during act IV.
You Can't Thwart Stage One: No matter what, you can't stop Megalesios from destroying the scrying pool connecting the mortal and divine realms.
Zerg Rush — The main strategy of large enemy groups. And they can be deadly.
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