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Quests
From Hellgatewiki.com
There will be 200 side quests plus the main storyline quest. Needless to say, there will be plenty for you to do. Some of these side quests will be special "Chance Quests" which are very rare and will feature equally rare loot. Roper says, "You may run down a street and see a manhole that's randomly generated and it will take you to a new quest." These special quests won't appear often and you'll have to keep your eyes peeled for them. Completing one will definitely be worth your time.
--Gamespy Preview, May 2007
For now, this page holds general information about quests. Once the alpha NDA ends and the beta begins we'll add specific details on every quest in the game.
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Quests, Tasks, and Missions
Quests are a big part of every RPG, and they'll matter in Hellgate: London as well, of course. That being said, Hellgate:London is an action RPG, and isn't totally quest-dominated. You can just go out and kill monsters if you want to, and thanks to the random level layouts, you'll have fun doing so in different ways. Lots of RPGs are fun when you first start, but boring to replay since everything unfolds exactly as it did the first time. That shouldn't be a problem with Hellgate: London, since as was true with Diablo and Diablo II, replayability is one of the major priorities of the design team. They want you to play through their game over and over again, and while you may enjoy doing the quests, you may not want to bother. They're doing all they can to tempt you, though, with a huge variety of quests.
They're not all quests either. In addition to the larger, plot-advancing quests, there are tons of random and semi-random missions and tasks of varying complexity. Lots of these are random, and some are very rare, only occurring every dozen or hundred games. First, an explanation of the various types of missions.
Tasks/Missions
"These are things that NPCs may need and will certainly make worth your while if you help them out. For example, Bodger, the local tinkerer and main weapon smith, has received a large order for fuel cells to modify some weapons for the Templar. He lets you know he's paying five times the usual price for these mods, so if you find any, be sure to bring them by his workshop. This information is stored in your PDA so you can remember who is interested in what, as many of the NPCs will have their own interests. Also, these interests can change over time, so whenever you adventure in a specific area, it is a good idea to check in with the locals to see what tasks or missions they might have for you, and what the rewards are.
Events
"Events are randomly placed occurrences in the world that you may or may not find. They take place in any adventuring area, either topside in the ruins of London, or beneath the city in the Underground areas. Just like the environments themselves, they are randomly generated so you'll never know what you're going to find. For example, one time when you're running a patrol topside, you may find an abandoned truck that shakes when you get close. As you move to the rear of the vehicle, the back doors burst open and a horde of Flesh Eaters ramble from the enclosed bed, honing in on you! During a different adventure in the same region, you run across a Templar who is surrounded by vicious Ravagers. Save his life and he gives you his PDA Link so he can return the favour by acting as an adventuring partner later in the game. Of course, there is no guarantee as to what event you'll run across!
Quests
"Quests are part of the overall storyline of the game, and are treated differently than anything else in the game. You will always know when you are on a quest path because the game moves into "movie mode", showing the interaction between you and an NPC or otherwise setting the stage for something that has a direct relationship to a quest. Quests help tell the story of the world, can change the path of your character, alter the landscape and even affect NPCs based on your choices. We want to make quests memorable experiences and have them be much more than, "go here and get this many of that item."
--Bill Roper, Total Video Games Preview, July 6, 2005
As is always the case during game development, things changed, and by November 2005 Bill Roper answered the same question with differently.
"Currently our quests break down into three categories: Storyline, Class-Specific and Tasks.
Storyline
"Unlike most MMORPGs, we have a definite storyline that we want players to experience. This means that every character in the game will share key events, but with our dynamic generation system, the journey between these points is unique for every player. We are creating a rich world and we want to tell a story with our game, so having a series of Quests that drive this is essential.
Class-Specific "These are quests that are designed especially for each character class. For example, there is a Templar NPC that has a chain of quests that not only reveal more about that NPC, but also about the Templar Order. Players need a certain amount of Faction (points) within their character's class/organization to do these quests, and there will be ways for players to gain a high enough reputation to go on quests outside of their own class. Obviously, this will take some dedication on the part of the player to gain the trust and respect of the leaders of these other classes. Speaking of which.
Tasks "Tasks are the generic, "kill x, collect y" style missions that provide short, directed goals with a clearly defined benefit. Apart from experience, money and items, some of these Tasks will also gain the player increased Faction with other groups. This will be one of the ways players can unlock class-specific quests outside their chosen organization, as well as discovering other secrets in the world."
--Bill Roper, Fansite Interview, November 18, 2005
In this second interview, it sounds like Bill's not mentioning Events, and is splitting Quests into Storyline and Class-Specific. Does this represent a real change in the game, or just a different way of categorizing and explaining the same thing?
Some months earlier, he talked about Quests again, and stressed what really made them important, when compared to tasks and events.
"We wanted to make quests really big things in the world, things that can really change the world and the NPCs within it. For example, after one quest we return to the Underground Station to find it has been attacked by demons in our absence. It's messed up, the defences are weakened, and an NPC called Bodger has had his arm ripped off by a demon. These things really drive the storyline and the feel of the world. Our quests aren't little FedEx missions, but large events that physically alter the whole world."
--Bill Roper, Computer and Video Games Interview, June 9, 2005
Quest Types
There are seven main types of quests (given by an NPC), and story quests, which usually longer than optional quests and consist of elements of the other quest types.
| Story | Storyline quest, no matter what its contents. | A Luring | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bounty | Kill <Named Monster> in <Location> | Target Practice, Wanted: Saran | ||||||||
| Infestation | Kill # <Monster> in <Location> | Another's Work | ||||||||
| Collection | Take # <Items> from <Monsters> in <Location> | Deinde | ||||||||
| Use Item | Use <Item> on <Named Monster>/<Named Object> (in <Location>) | I Like Your Outfit | ||||||||
| Operate Object | (Re)Activate # <Objects> in <Location> | Fruitless | ||||||||
| Exploration | Explore <Location> | Passing Presence | ||||||||
| Messenger | (Go to <Location>) and speak with(/give <item> to) <NPC> | That Includes Blasphemy | ||||||||
Quest Prerequisites
Some quest have prerequisites: things you need to have, be, or have done before you're assigned the quest. Some of the most common prerequisites are listed below:
- Subscription: For subscriber-only quests, you need to have a subscription.
- Accept or Complete a quest in another quest line. Usually, you need to have accepted or completed a certain story quest in order to be offered a certain side quest. (Completing the preceding quest in a quest line is required, but not considered a prerequisite, since that's always the case.)
- Standing with a certain faction: at some point, there will be quests which you will only be offered after having achieved a certain standing with the faction of the NPC offering the quest.
Faction Quests
So we know what quests, tasks, and events are. What's this about class-specific quests, though?
"Factions hand out quests. Factions are also based on class. So, class representatives in the game will deal out quests that will help characters further align themselves with whatever faction they're questing for. There are also spontaneous quests where players stumble upon needy characters and special circumstances and must dive headlong into adventure on the spot. Like... Maybe you'd walk into a room and hear some terrified people talking about their friend that was just taken by the demons or whatever and then you'd have to do something about it ASAP."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Just so you're clear, the factions in Hellgate:London are not guilds or organizations any character can join. "Faction" means "class" in Hellgate: London, it's the inherent, unchangable classification you select upon character creation. For example, Blademasters and Guardians are parts of the Templar faction, and no matter what you do, you'll always be a Templar. You can't leave your faction and join the Cabalist or Hunter faction, though as Bill said, you can gain faction points and increase your standing in the eyes of the other factions.
"You can become friendly with some groups and less friendly with others, which does alter how the player receives certain tasks and what goods are made available to the player, but it's not like one faction will be violent."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
Higher faction points, means more trust by other factions, means you are given quests by those other factions. It's unknown.
Rare Quests
Like almost everything else in Hellgate: London, quests are randomized, to some extent. Every new character will get some essential plot-driving quests, but lots of others are randomly generated, and won't show up every game, or even every other game. Flagship has talked about random quests, rare quests, and even super rare quests, ones that will only show up once in hundreds of games. These sorts of rare quests are going to be part of the ongoing online content, since the Hellgate Team can drop in new quests, of any rarity, at any time.
Tying into Hellgate's randomized generation system is the chance event system, by which quests linked to certain map tile sets have a small chance of appearing when you uncover a room. Roper recaled one such event: "If I'm running around the maintenance rooms, there's maybe a one in a hundred chance that I'll run into this Templar who sends me a help request on my PDA by putting out a beacon. When you find him on the level, he'll have a side mission for you that takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes to complete..."
"You might be running through a level, but there's a grating in the ground you've never seen and it leads to a hidden passageway. Maybe it only happens 5% of the time or 1% of the time. You might be playing through the dried Thames riverbed, and you've been playing the game so long that you've been there 100 times, but this time there's a monster you've never seen, or a quest there you've never done, or a fissure in the wall that takes you to some crazy side instance. That's the power of the online portion, being able to create that continuing content. As we keep coming up with those ideas, we can keep layering them into the game."
Quest Organization
For full quest information, open the Quest Log. You see it below, and it displays all the quest information. Once a quest is selected the Quest Log will show every step required to solve it, along with your character's progress along that path. The Quest Log will also recap NPC dialogues related to the quest, and more.
Quest Rewards
Rewards for quests vary in Hellgate: London. Most of the simple quests give faction points, or palladium, or experience, or some sort of item, or other simple rewards. Others are more complicated, and in addition to advancing the plot and giving you new information about the game world, the rewards can be things like skill points, stat points, or other new abilities.
Faction Points
UPDATE: Currently Faction Points have no effect on titles, classes or NPCs. Possible future ideas are alluded to for "reputation". [1]
As you complete quests you gain faction points. These raise your standing in your own faction, and with the other two factions as well. So if your character is a Blademaster and you complete a quest given by a Templar, you'll gain in your own faction points. And if you complete one from a Hunter or Cabalist NPC you'll get faction points to raise your standing in the eyes of that faction. With increased faction points come special titles, like the Knights and Lieutenants seen in this recent screenshot. What these actually mean in the game is not yet known. Presumably they kick in as you reach pre-determined numerical levels, and grant you some increased respect or the ability to buy better quality items or trade with different NPCs. Each station has one or two vendors who rebuff your initial entreaties, telling you that you must get a little better known (gain more faction points) in the station before they can trade with you.
Flagship has also talked about special rewards for high faction scores, though there aren't any details. Early previews hinted at the ability to equip items that are initially reserved for other faction, but more recently this has been floated as a potential Elite (HGL Online) only feature. The whole concept is still being tweaked and adjusted, and we'll get more details on the faction system before the game launches, no doubt.
Specific Quests
A few samples of quests.
Quests can provide a very different play experience than the rest of the game, and may involve exploration, control of NPCs, or the use of equipment you don't get to touch in the regular game. For example:
You might run across a fellow Templar (see the backstory ) 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
A more recent discussion of some quests came in an IGN preview in July, 2007.
One of these missions really was crazy. In fact, it was about diving into the neural synapses of a crazy engineer named 314. The Mind of 314 charges players to dive in and bring the wayward engineer out of his doldrums and into his pool of happiness. Yes, very loony, but it definitely adds character in a world overtaken by demons. The mission takes players into the mind where they'll have to battle their way through a bunch of enemies, including some invisible ones, to fight the boss of the area, the Ego of 314.
Using the Engineer to create a bunch of these bots along with some other supporting offensive bots, Tyler entered the final area and eliminated some of the extraneous bad guys before taking on the Ego of 314. After defeating the Ego, it split into three smaller Egos, all versions of the Templar, Hunter, and Cabalist classes providing three different challenges to kill.
After killing off the three smaller Egos, Tyler changed the scene to one of the other later quests called Hold Fast. The part of the quest demoed charged the character (switched over to a Blademaster Templar) to enter the Millennium Battle area to turn on a bunch of weaponized bots in the area by taking down all of the demons, including a few huge bosses. Along with the large rainy area and many different types of enemies were a bunch of friendly characters in the area to help with the fight.
Opening Tutorial
A new character in Hellgate: London starts off right in the action with a quick and easy opening mission that introduces you to the game concepts and controls. The setting of the opening tutorial has changed several times during the game's development, though the concept has remained consistent.
As of May 2007, at Flagship's community day, the tutorial was set in a small indoor area, comprised of about a dozen connected rooms. Immediately upon entering the game your communicator hisses and beeps and a prompt, "hit enter to receive the message" shows up. When you do, a voice crackles and tells you of a missing citizen who must be found. He's Murmur, kind of the Deckard Cain of HGL, in that he follows you from town to town, and seems to know everything and constantly fills in background information and plot details when you talk with him.
You must find Murmur and then a wounded templar who gives you a note to deliver to a Templar commander in Holborn station, the first town area you enter in the game. Along the way you destroy a fair number of zombies, but these are very lazy, AI-lacking monsters, who don't even attack; they merely shuffle along and wait to be put out of their misery. That's why it's a tutorial, after all. Your character will gain enough experience from the tutorial level to reach level two. At the end of the small area you'll find a portal to take you and Murmur to Holborn Station, where the real game begins.
Economic Quests
Another type of task (or would this qualify as an event?) is related to the game economy. The Hellgate: London merchants will offer daily specials and sales, for those players who check often enough to find them. This idea was inspired by 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
Though the preview calls it a quest, this is pretty obviously a task or an event. As for Animal Crossing, the Hellgate Team has been waiting to work in real time market fluctuations for years. When Flux visited Blizzard North's offices to play test the Diablo II v1.10 patch in 2003, some Blizzard North designers were fooling around with Animal Crossing in the breakroom. The Diablo II game engine would not support this sort of global, time-based quest, but since Hellgate: London has been programmed with it in mind from the start, this sort of quest can fit easily into the game.
Mercenaries and Companions
One type of quest that we will not see in Hellgate: London is one to earn you a mercenary buddy.
"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 plain fun to have."
--Bill Roper, Fansite Interview, January 2, 2006
So persistent companions, but not mercenaries? Do they just walk around and give you bad advice, then run when the shooting starts? Kind of like what Chris Tucker is to Jackie Chan in the Rush Hour movies? How delightful.
While there won't be any permanent mercenary companions, there may be quests where you must control NPCs in a battle squad.
Their experience also gives the designers the confidence to try experimental ideas to keep players curious about what might come next. We'd heard rumors that one quest could involve controlling a squad like you would in a strategy game. We saw it, and it works, but that's not the only curveball in store... Flagship's design experience also pays off in knowing exactly how long to make these side excursions so that they feel rewarding and fun but don't become a distraction.
--1up.com preview, April 2007
The Final Quest
Ultimately, you'll work your way through the game and face the final quest. Bill Roper talked about it once, in general terms.
The main objective of Hellgate: London is to shut down the means of the demonic invasion. This gateway between worlds is far from unguarded, and closing it will require a lot more than just good intentions and big weapons. This means that the players will need to find out a way to close down the Hellgate while defeating a host of monsterous minions and their vile overlords along the way.
--Bill Roper, Gamevision Interview, November 18, 2005
Note that this is just the means of demonic invasion of London. Not the whole world, since there were many Hellgates opened all across the earth. You aren't going to defeat the demons that quickly, not with Flagship's plans for Hellgate expansions, Hellgate merchandise, Hellgate sequels, and so on. If all goes well we'll be battling these demons for a good long time, yet.
Categories: Quests | Basics | Story
