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Future Plans
From Hellgatewiki.com
Flagship hinted at Hellgate: London expansions during the game's early development, but didn't say anything definite about it until they revealed the details of their planned online support. We now know that Hellgate: London will be supported with ongoing online content, with major additions every three months and smaller additions every month or so, for the Elite, paying subscribers. Flagship is considering bundling the content additions into actual retail expansion packs that would be sold every 6 or 9 months, and would give non-subscribers or offline players access to all of the added content. A subscription would still be required for the online-only content, such as higher functions of Guild Halls, PVP Arenas, the Auction House, and so on.
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Sequels and Expansions
From the start Flagship was planning on expanding the Hellgate world, both with additional games and other ancillary products, and their early comments on the issue reflected that.
We have a lot of hopes and dreams for the Hellgate universe, and while talking about sequels is definitely premature, we have been looking to bring our vision to other areas. As I said before, 2006 is going to be a year of revelations, so stay tuned! --Bill Roper, January 11, 2006, eToyChest Interview
More concrete details have since emerged, and with the planned major updates every quarter, all that remains is for the details to be worked out.
"About every three months for a significant update. We'll fix bugs and things as we're going on, but as far as a big set of features coming. I've seen teams that do it monthly--I don't want to live that life, to be honest with you. It's a constant under-the-gun lifestyle. Also, they don't get much press or attention, because it's every month it's not really news. Because you guys are always asking, what's news? 'They just did that one last month, they're doing another one this month. Am I going to cover this month's?' So if we do it every three months, you're willing to talk about it. That's important.
"The coolest part is that it's so easy for us add things to this game. If you saw the expansion pack for Diablo II, we added things to the entire game. There were items that dropped for the whole thing, there were new character classes, new monsters, AI changes, tons of stuff. Because of our random, crazy nature, it's really easy for us to add and grow. I put in three or four weapons in a single day. And the the sound guy has to do his thing, and the particle guy has to do this thing, but as far as getting missiles to explode, bam, bam, bam--I can knock those things out. I gave an intern the job of taking four base monsters and adding four new behaviors to every one of them, and he finished it in like three days. That's part of the ongoing content--we can crank this new stuff out, for both subscribers and non-subscribers."
--Tyler Thompson, Shacknews Interview, E3, July 16, 2007.
Sequel Humor
"Our first expansion is going to be about the Demons trying to conquer the moon. Basically you'll play the role of an astronaut on a moonwalk collecting rocks or whatever the nuts. Then all of a sudden thousands of Hellrifts and Gates will appear and billions of demons will begin to stream through them only to immediately die and float off into space. This will go on for about six hours until the player will hear, from beyond the largest Hellgate, a voice commanding the other demons to, "Oh shit! Turn it off! Turn it off!" After that, the player will get in his moon rocket and be immediately killed by Kevin Bacon. That's going to be our secret twist. He's not a demon. He's just really mad...and in space with you."
It's going to be an awesome game.
--Ivan Sulic, June 2006
Roper jokes, "There could be a Hellgate: Poughkeepsie!"
--CGW April 2006
Hellgate Bonus Goodies
"I know we're planning an eventual collector's edition that I can't officially confirm, but as to what it will include...I honestly have no idea. I don't think anyone knows yet, actually. Now, if Flagship wants to include anything I create in the collector's edition, the company certainly can, but no plans have been made. We want behind-the-scenes video content in there at the least. I know that much."
--Ivan Sulic
Console Temptations
Flagship hasn't made any announcements about future game plans, for the PC or otherwise, but they are (wisely) keeping their options open.
Do you plan to stick to the PC platform for now?
"Certainly, Flagship is really focused on the PC, but, being in partnership with Namco provides us with a lot of opportunities to every other realm, specifically the console side. So, we're excited over the fact that we have a publishing partner who has a vast amount of expertise in that area, is a leader in that category. And we're hoping, with what we're working on, to be able to create a real world that we can set a lot of games in--to make something that hopefully blossoms into a franchise. Like you said, there's a StarCraft console game coming out, which really isn't an RTS, but it's based out of that world and those characters. And that's kind of the way that we've always approached building the intellectual property behind the games. For us, we're allowed to focus on what we believe we do best, to the best benefit of both us and Namco. And, at the same time, if that becomes something that's compelling and interesting that has applications elsewhere, we've got a fantastic partner that can take advantage of that."
--Bill Roper, March 18, 2004 IGN Interview
"Yeah, I mean, we have talked about doing console games, and we had talked about doing it at Blizzard for a while. And in fact, we ended up doing some Game Boy conversions of some of the games and stuff. Lost Vikings, and I think they did Rock N' Roll Racing as well. And so consoles have always been something that we've grown up on and we play a lot -- I still play a ton of console things, and I'm very excited about Xbox 360, but I think that for us, our expertise really is in the PC. We know that genre, we know how to design for that. For our first game as Flagship, that was really important for us to stick to that. That being said, there are a lot of people that play console here and are interested in console, and so maybe sometime in the future we'd think about doing something like that."
--David Brevik, September 13, 2005 1up interview
Future Features
"We have a lot of plans for location in which to set the action, and it is all going to be a matter of time as to what gets in. We do have long term plans to support the game well after launch, so if it doesn't make it into the game when we ship, it will most likely be in the queue for later. I mean, at some point we have to take a day trip out to Stonehenge."
--Bill Roper
Socketable Armor
What about socketable armor? (Only weapons are socketable in Hellgate: London.)
"Not yet and possibly not ever for first-run Hellgate. Ongoing content (be it expansion or whatever) should definitely have modifiable armor, but the current game does not and may not when it launches."
--Ivan Sulic
Class-Specific Weapons Used by Other Classes
Flagship also talked a lot about class-specific weapons being used by other classes who gained enough faction points. This has not been mentioned for many months though, and it's possible the concept has been shelved for an expansion or other ongoing content addition.
Larger Melee Weapons
Ivan Sulic, July 2006: "Lances, spears and axes... Not right now. We have a variety of swords and some of the more outlandish ones resemble these weapons, but we do not classify them as such. We are hoping to get some actual weapons of that type put into the game as we near launch, however. We'd certainly like them in, anyway. We'll see what happens."
Ivan Sulic, October 2006: "There are no two-handed swords in the game right now. And I'd bet there won't be for launch. But they're certainly something we'd look at adding post-launch."
Word eventually trickled down that two-handed swords weren't working with the overall game balance, and that therefore the animators never got around to creating two-handed sword swinging animations for the character graphics. It's possible they'll add this sort of thing in continuing content, though. Perhaps the third Templar class could have some specialization in two-handed weapons?
