ADVERTISEMENT
Pre Launch:NPCs
From Hellgatewiki.com
This page discusses general aspects of the NPCs (Non-Player Characters) you'll encounter in Hellgate: London. Click to the specific pages for more information about each of them. Once the game is released this section will be cleaned up and the characters will be sorted by town.
Contents |
NPCs Listing
Full listing sorted by town coming soon.
There are a few NPCs we know only from a very brief mention in the WetaNZ FAQ.
- Lord Arphaun -- Contemplative and esteemed general.
- Lucious -- insane Cabalist.
- High Lord Maxin Sumerisle.
- Seraphim Jessica Sumerisle.
- First Sword Aeron Altair
- First Seer Ser Sing.
- Emmera Ephram.
- Lucious Aldin.
- Rorke.
Also see the NPCs Category page for direct links to NPCs we know more about.
NPCs in Hellgate: London
The NPCs in Hellgate: London act much like the NPCs in every role playing game. Some of them just stand around in town to add to the ambience, while others are interactive, and give you quests, information, or act as merchants, using their inexhaustible gold supply to buy all the crap you drag back from your adventuring, while offering you tons and tons of junk you don't want, along with the occasional decent item you'd purchase if you could afford it.
Interacting with characters is as simple as walking up to them and clicking on them; our first mission was given to us by a Commander Brandon, who ordered us to go topside and destroy a "hellrift," through which demons were still emerging.
--Gamespot preview
Another NPC you'll meet in Covent Garden Station is L'il Joey, a peg-legged boy who might ring a few memory bells for Diablo and Diablo II players.
We literally trip over a micro-sized templar put in current builds of the game as a joke. They call him "Li'l Joey." For the moment, it's fun taking a mission from a fully armored man who's only knee-high. Presumably to be replaced by a little kid, Joey is missing his prosthetic leg and needs it back. Of course, we're obliged to help the runt.
--CGW Preview, May 2006
Merchants and Economy
Speaking of NPC merchants, an interesting aspect of Hellgate: London's economy comes from daily specials and market fluctuations, ALA Animal Crossing.
Hellgate: London uses a real-time clock for some of its quests, similar to games like Animal Crossing (who would've thought the two could be compared?). You might talk to a shopkeeper and he'll tell you he's having a daily special on a certain type of weapon. Or, he'll tell you that for the rest of the week he's paying extra for a certain type of battery he needs. This gives players a reason to jump into the game every day, as new quests and special bonuses will roll in and out of the game periodically.
--Gamespy preview, May 13, 2005
The Blizzard North guys have been waiting to work in this aspect of real time market fluctuations for years. I remember some of the guys talking about Animal Crossing (which I'd never heard of at the time, not being a console player) way back in 2003 when I visited Blizzard North to play test the v1.10 patch, and while the Diablo II game engine didn't support real time market tweaking, they must have planned it into Hellgate: London from the start.
Mercenaries and Hierlings
Something that's probably not going to enter Hellgate: London, at least not in as major a way as it did in Diablo II, are NPC mercenaries. Hiring one and keeping him/her around to help you was an essential part of gameplay in D2, but that's not going to be the case in Hellgate: London.
There will certainly be ways to get NPC help, although we don't have plans to recycle the Mercenary game play of Diablo II. We are focusing on these being rewards the player earns, available for a short amount of time as opposed to a core component. We do intend for there to be more persistent companions for characters, however, since they provide a great strategic element and are just pain fun to have.
--Bill Roper, January 2006
So if you can't hire them, how would you get an NPC helping you? Random quest elements! Besides the NPCs you meet in the towns of Hellgate: London, you will also occasionally encounter free range NPCs. The only ones we know about yet are the quest-related roaming Templars, as described in a couple of Hellgate: London previews.
"While roaming the streets... we met Jean-Marie, a fellow Templar who asked for our assistance. If he falls in battle Jean-Marie will be gone forever, but if he survives, your comrade may be called upon to return the favor sometime later in the game."
--PC Gamer magazine preview
(While adventuring) you might run across a fellow Templar who's in a jam, and if you save him he'll give you his PDA address. Later, you can pull out your PDA and call him in to help you with an adventure. Mini-quests like these will be randomly seeded into the dungeons so that you'll never know what you'll run into.
--Gamespy preview, May 13, 2005
Another supporting actor we met was Lemmy. A fellow Templar, he's having a spot of difficulty when you first run into him and, in return for aid, will punch his contact details into your PDA with a promise of reciprocal assistance if you're ever in need.
--PC Gamer magazine preview
Though the name is different, we suspect this is the same NPC in all three articles, and that his name simply changed between at some point in the development cycle. (And what was a Templar named "Jean-Marie" doing in Hellgate: London anyway? Hellgate: Paris, perhaps.)
Plot and Conversation
NPCs will talk when you click on them, and they've got all the greetings, gossips, and quest information you'd expect. They also have voices, in some cases. There's less verbal conversation that in some games, since Hellgate: London is being translated into so many foreign languages. Text is hard enough to translate, but dialogue, with inflection and slang and humor, is much harder. As some of the Hellgate Team said during community day conversations, bad voice acting can and has ruined computer games. So most of the conversation is read, rather than heard, but it's good conversation, with a lot of variety of humor and other elements you don't see or hear in most computer games.
There is dialogue, of course. Most of the main quest info is spoken by the key NPCs, and there's a lot of spoken dialogue in the opening tutorial. Other bits of dialogue are found here and there, usually in the greetings and wacky catch phrases used by the NPCs. They have a variety of weird and usually comical sayings, and these spice up the proceedings. Saving the world from a demon apocalypse doesn't have to be entirely grim and humorless, after all.
The train-repairing tech smith you meet early in Covent Garden Station was the funniest and weirdest NPC I found in the game. He makes all sorts of brainless and worshipful comments to your character, and does them in a funny voice for bonus effect. Several times I clicked on him while running past, just to see if there was any update on the quest he had me on. There wasn't, and as I ran away he'd shout after me (his voice fading as I moved thanks to the headphones and 3d sound), "Ahhwhooo! That was the best conversation I've ever had in my life!"
--Flux, Mega Community Day Report, May 2007
Ivan Sulic, the author of most of the dialogue in the game, described it in more formal terms.
Right now voices in Hellgate are used as character introductions. Voice is also interjected throughout conversations as an exclamatory. Our voice implementation seems to be inline with most Americanized action RPGs. That being said, there is not an overabundance of text in Hellgate, either. The game does not beat your face with tens of thousands of words about ye holy bracelet. It's very much like Diablo in this sense and very much unlike Neverwinter Nights or other far more text heavy RPGs.
--Ivan Sulic
Speaking to different NPCs will give you quests and plot info, but don't expect your interactions to drastically change the game. Hellgate: London is all about random levels and item finding and fast gameplay; it's not one of those talky RPGs with a huge storyline and multiple branching plots.
[Talking to NPCs changes things...] so long as you're definitely not thinking 'epic.' From what I've read in the docs and spoken to Bill about, it's more like you opt to talk to certain characters and then opt to undertake certain missions from these characters. This opens up the equivalent of a new path for yourself. That path elaborates more on the storyline.
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
How about an example, Ivan?
I just think it should be clear that though "Dr. Smith" may be your objective, Dr. Smith won't be a terribly deep character with his own fully developed history and personality disorder. He's just some dude you pick up, talk to, and learn something new from so that you can merrily continue on your way.
It's pretty much like, "Aye, lad! I be the one who be sellin' ye goods. Not there be demons over there. Stab them, won't ya please?" There's still story shooting out of these guys, but they're mainly for establishing motivation and setting. That's not to say our storyline does not prominently feature some of these characters, of course. It's just that you shouldn't expect them to be incredibly complex beings with many emotional layers.
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
NPC Transcripts
In a September 2006 [forum thread discussing the reports Flux and Lanth wrote after visting Flagship's offices, Ivan Sulic added some interesting NPC information. In addition to his Community Manager duties, Ivan is writing most of the NPC dialogue in Hellgate: London, so he had a reason to ask pointed questions about Lanth's boyfriend's reaction to the NPC dialogue. See the original thread for the full discussion. Here are a few highlights on conceptional matters. Everyone's name is in bold; Ivan's replies are in bold, for ease of reading.
[Flux's report mentions that he skipped most of the dialogue since there was limited time to play while at Flagship's studios.]
Ivan: No one reads the dialog. It saddens me.
Lanth: Actually my boyfriend sat there and read all the dialog for the quests.
Mind you, he did complain about the slow scrolling speed, and all the useless crap they blabbered on about before they finally told you what you actually had to do for the quest.
Does that make you feel better, now? :)
Ivan: No. Grief, that was a little harsh, eh?
But now I am curious about what build you played. Since the text doesn't scroll at all (it's digestible JRPG style) and every interaction is capped at 175 words. Also, all first run quest interactions get right to the point. The formula is: Greet / Debrief -> Brief -> Conclude.
Lanth: We played TGS, which still had the slow scrolling text. Peter mentioned the JPG style was in the new dev build, but not in the one we were playing.
I am pretty sure that most of the talky-talk things were more than 175 words (I clicked out of them all pretty quick, though).
As for getting to the point or not, all I destinctly remember is him complaining about the crap he had to sit through before they finally got to the point; so I don't know whether you've made a big change to that or not (one would hope so).
Ivan: All first run quests are capped at 175 words. As I said, they're built around a formula and there is precious little variation. Here is the very first quest interaction as told by three possible NPCs (the player confidant and two class representatives). You can see that it goes: Greet / Debrief -> Brief -> Conclude.
Murmur, 85 Words: I'm not the one you should be reporting to, friend. I know you've only just arrived in this new and wondrous place and would like very much to absorb each putrid smell and slimy detail, but I compel you to report to [PLAYER CLASS NPC] prior to dallying in the grace of my company.
[PAGEBREAK]
Surely the information you hold is of some importance. Surely it must be told to someone of equal importance. And that, friend, would not be me. Try [PLAYER CLASS NPC] instead.
Brandon Lann, 156 Words:
You speak plain enough. I would have cut you down otherwise, but this tale still galls. Am I to believe a belligerent bearer of boxes has succeeded where great Seraphim have failed? You carry the Fawkes Communiqué? Oh, that's priceless.
[PAGEBREAK]
"Save me," Fawkes says. "I must speak with Arphaun. I have what we need." Some communiqué... If only the fool left coordinates.
[PAGEBREAK]
Regardless, Arphaun deems Fawkes a man of significance and I am obliged to obey the Lord. Thus, I will assign the necessary Knights to seek out this man. You will not be among them. But worry not. You have earned a place in the Templar. The retrieval of this communiqué guarantees your naming to any Fist.
[PAGEBREAK]
While my Knights seek out Fawkes, you will reach Leicester Square Station and recover goods our Techsmiths require. I'm told you're keen on crates. At least, that's what Murmur says. Take it up with him if you disapprove.
Alay Penn, 160 Words:
You come to me now bearing Fawkes' Communiqué but not those who perished securing it. How unfortunate.
[PAGEBREAK]
Fear not. I will dismiss this one oversight. Note that such leniency will not be recurrent, for there is knowledge to be found in all things, Servant. And knowledge of any kind is not to be squandered by negligence.
[PAGEBREAK]
A part of the Cabal as you now are, it's a lesson you must soon learn. As for Fawkes... "Save me," he pleads. "I must speak with Arphaun. I have what we need."
[PAGEBREAK]
Many men seek Lord Arphaun's wisdom, but if Arphaun seeks a man, his value must indeed be great. The First Seer will be glad to own such a prize.
[PAGEBREAK]
However, I'm afraid I cannot trust Fawkes' retrieval to you, Servant. It is a matter best left to your betters. You'll instead journey to Leicester Square Station. I require items stored there. Secure them.
Lanth: You could just check the build?
Ivan: ...all text in the TGS build you experienced is identical to that of the latest, only it lacked all the pagebreaks.
Thus, I am trying to figure out where your boyfriend's complaints originate from so I can take another look at the text and fix the problem. But right now I fail to see, "all the useless crap they blabbered on about before they finally told you what you actually had to do..." So I'm having a hard time figuring out what needs to be fixed, if anything.
Lanth: Ok, I've actaully talked to the BF now and he's given me some specifics.
The one in particular that he was complaining about was after you get to Covent Garden Station on the Murmer quest and you get the box, and then take it back to Murmer. Murmer goes on about the contents of the box, letting you keep the PDA with the map locations and taking the rest of the stuff for himself.
Specifically what he didn't like, is more the fact of the slowly-scrolling text box, is that once it got to the bottom of a page (so some of the text at the bottom had scrolled up), it quickly flipped over to a new page of text and he couldn't read that last little bit before it flipped over. He said he had to sit there and get that quest speak a couple of times in order to be able to read all of it. He said this was a problem with some other parts too, but this was the worst one.
You'll note that this problem would now be solved by the JRPG style quest dialog that you have. It was probably also exacerbated by the fact that it is more fun to kill monsters in the dungeons than it is to sit around town with boxes of text slowly scrolling past you, and we only had about 4 hours worth of play time so we were trying to cram as much of the fun stuff in as we could.
Ivan: Ah. Okay, that one makes a little more sense. The text he's talking about is below. I can see how it goes on for a little bit, but it does still follow the Greet / Debrief -> Brief -> Conclude formula and it's still also capped at 175 words.
Murmur, 171 Words
Ooh! Let's see what kind of fabulousness our sponsors have decided is in dire need of escort.
\n\n
Batteries. Fuel Mods. Bullets. Surprisingly well-preserved Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. Miscellaneous Demon parts...
\n\n
Well, a fine lot of lame this is.
[PAGEBREAK]
Wait... What's this? A relic? An artifact? An unknown piece of technology!?! And look, it comes with a USB 6.0 cable! How fortuitous!
\n\n
Let's practice science and see what happens when I jam it into your PDA!
[PAGEBREAK]
It would appear X marks the spot for you, friend. If only you weren't previously obligated to ferry rubbish back to Covent Garden Station...
[PAGEBREAK]
Truly, the garbage man gig is for suckers. If [PLAYER CLASS NPC] is ever to recognize your accomplishments, you'll need to develop skills not related to holding crates. So off to the big shiny X with you! Find out where this random USB 6.0 enabled machine has pointed us.
[PAGEBREAK]
I'll take your box of sandwiches and assorted trash to Covent Garden Station if it'll make you happy. Then we can meet there later.
But yeah, I can see how the scrolling text was super frustrating, especially since for TGS it was designed to scroll Japanese, not English. So there were certainly cutoffs.
Mythor: Could it also be the preceding flavour text?
Ivan: Certainly. I try and keep directness in mind for all story critical quests, but I also try and balance that with personality. Anyway, as I continue writing quests and especially when edit passes come into play I'll look at this more thoroughly.
Mythor: Can the text in game be skipped? If so, I don't think there's anything that needs "fixing", other than maybe making sure the quest log has a line which simply states your objective in plain English for those who just want to get cracking. Then the people not interested in the flavour text can go play the game and everyone else can still enjoy the storylines in full.
Ivan Sulic: Absolutely! Text can totally be skipped. I hate **** that can't be skipped in games. I HATE IT. Thankfully, everyone here seems to be of the same opinion.
In terms of logs, we have both full and mini logs in the game. Here're the logs that correspond with the last bit of dialog I posted:
MiniLogHellYardTravel (HellYard, LSS):
Travel to Covent Garden Market
FullLogHellYardTravel (HellYard, LSS):
While the sudden activation and legitimacy of a device that miraculously attaches to your own Automap via some insane USB 6.0 cable seems highly dubious, especially since it's marking a location with an absurdly lit X, your present crate fetching circumstances leave you with few viable options.
\n\n
Follow the indicator on your map to Covent Garden Market.
Lanthanide: I don't know exactly what Ivan means by 'All first run quests', but I'm sure that there were points where there was a lot more text than just 175 words on the screen, like when you return to an NPC after you've done whatever they wanted you to do or whatever.
I really do want to emphasize, though, that there may not be anything at all wrong with the text in it's current state. We simply had 4 hours to play as much as we could; slowly scrolling text is not exciting after you've sat through at least 2 seconds of it. I only brought all of this up because Ivan said "no one reads the dialog" - my boyfriend actually sat and read -all- of it, but he got annoyed by it, although I think it was more the interface than the actual text. So I thought I'd pass that on.
Ivan Sulic: "First run quests" are the dialog blocks that appear the first time a player clicks on a quest NPC. So if I'm looking for a quest and I click on Quest Giving Guy, he provides me with the first run quest dialog. If I click on him again after receiving his quest, I get the second run quest dialog, which is different but basically says the same thing. Then it's the third run quest dialog. Every quest giving character has three quest dialog runs for every quest they offer.
1) Hey, this is what you need to do. 2) Hey, I told you to do this. *shorter* 3) Seriously, dude. Do the thing you've been told. *shortest*
Something like that. I don't have a formula that governs second and third runs, exactly. I just wing them based on personality.
I'm also trying to provide each major NPC character in the same town as a currently activated story critical quest with three unique gossip blocks. So there will always be new, unique gossip to read during the story. Additionally, secondary characters the world over will all have access to many gossip blocks taken from individual and group pools.
Finally, feedback is always welcome. I'm just trying to make my end of the game as good as I can given what I have to work with, so hearing what you and the beau think is nothing but helpful whether I agree with it or not.
Great info there about behind the scenes game design type stuff.
Other NPC Issues
"Ugh! That's a horrible, old screenshot. If one of our artists like Lee Dotson saw that they'd probably spontaneously combust.
Anyway, that's supposed to be an injured Templar knight. He's currently the first character the player meets in the game as part of the tutorial. He's hurt, so he's slacking off on the job.
Just to clarify, he's an NPC that's scripted to sit like that. He's not chilling as part of some rejuvenation routine."
--Ivan Sulic
