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An archived Hellgate: London feature. See the Hellgate Archives for more.

Feature: IGN Pre-E3 Preview
Date: April 26, 2005
Source: IGN

IGN Preview

Hell's up to its old tricks again. It seems like every time you shove those smarmy ass demons back into the hole whence they spawned, they just find some other little crack to crawl out of and goose you with their devil sporks. If there's anybody that knows about these devils and their sporking tendencies, it's the guys who designed and worked on the Diablo series. While these veteran game developers aren't working for Blizzard North anymore, they are still working together, including former super producer Bill Roper (who took the time to demo the game), Erich Schafer, Max Schafer, and Dave Brevik--the men behind Diablo. Their newest game, Hellgate: London, has begun to take a beastly form, and Flagship was nice enough to let us into their San Francisco offices for a little chat and very early look.

Hellgate: London is, as you hopefully guessed, set in London amidst a flood of demons and evil. I suppose the moral of this story should be "never let your guard down," but as we all know, humans have a very short attention span, especially when there are lots of shiny flashing beeping things to play with. So goes the horrible situation that Earth seems to have gotten itself into. Hell basically snuck into London while the Brits were preoccupied with their fancy "science" and "technology" and brained them flat.

These particular demons are a tireless lot. They've been looking for a way into our universe for a long, long time. Up until recently, humans have had many champions looking to hold back the flood. Various real-world events are referenced in the background of the Hellgate story as averted crossover attempts. The Crusades were actually undertaken to fight back the minions of Hell, as was the charring of London in the great fire to wipe out the Plague. According to the fiction, the famous Knights Templar were the keepers of knowledge on how to battle these demonic forces. Unfortunately, these heroes underwent a charring of their own at the hands of a jealous King Phillip IV, who hated the power they held in the world at large. While the Knights Templar survived as an organization, their numbers were severely diminished and were forced to remain in hiding to stay alive.

Unfortunately, as time passed and technology progressed, the old ways began to fade from memory and the arcane was replaced with the arcade. When the demons attacked this time, they came again into London and found their enemies unprepared. The modern military found itself severely under-equipped when bullets and tank shells started bouncing off their targets. It would seem that a different strategy was in order, but when the Templars offered their special kind of services to the military, the leaders balked, blinded in their refusal to believe in the new truth. Hell broke into London and set up shop, erecting a huge new gate for demons to freely travel back and forth. Survivors, led by the few surviving Templar, headed underground into safe areas, hoping to one day find an opportunity to reclaim their home.

Five years later, London is in ruins. The fate of the rest of the planet is unknown, while demons roam the streets of London. "All players know is that it's been five years,, and no one has come to help them," says Roper. The goal is to find out what exactly has happened to the world, along with a way to close the gate between realms to stop the constant flood of demons. The story actually reminded me of the recent movie 28 Days Later, which was also set in London and full of killing machines, though Hellgate sounds a bit... bigger.

Now, Bill Roper is a talker. He obviously likes his job, loves the game he's working on, and thinks the world of the crew there at Flagship. After loading one of the early versions of the game up for demo purposes, he explained the game as it is now and what they're hoping it will be, in a great amount of detail. I'm guessing you don't want to spend three hours reading a preview, so I'll try to keep it succinct. I'll start by saying if you're a fan of Diablo, this game is certainly one you'll want to keep your eyes on.

A lot of the same principles are back at work here, including dynamically generated content and levels, tons of weapon and item drops for treasure hunters, and an emphasis on adventuring in the hell torn London with a group of friends. Weapons and skills are being designed to be both satisfying in single player and cooperative modes, and although PvP is something that's still being considered, it's not likely to play any kind of major role, due to weapons balancing issues. You try to balance 100 different weapon types perfectly for both single and multiplayer, and I'll talk to you in five years when you've pulled your hair out.

The biggest and most immediate difference is probably the perspective at which the game is experienced, with first-person replacing the 3/4 field of view of Diablo. "The first-person perspective allows us to create different environments in feel as well as look," says Roper. While they loved the game they created at Blizzard, it just didn't provide some of the atmosphere that they were hoping for. One level in particular Roper mentioned was the Maggot Lair. In that 3/4 view, it just didn't provide the claustrophobic punch that could have made it perfect. They're hoping that allowing players to look through their character's eyes will provide them with more opportunities to frighten and wow them with new things that pop up around every corner.

This should be especially important when dealing with the dynamic generation of levels and content. The basic idea is that players will never know what's around the next corner is exciting. Exploring streets, alleys, and buildings will keep players on constant edge. There will even be some secret areas randomly generated and special content that not everybody will experience the same way.

Levels, item drops, creatures, events, and difficulty level are all dynamically generated based on the group entering the zone of play. How big the group is and what level they are will directly affect the way the level is generated. At this point, they don't have a definite number of players that can be in a group, though Roper says it's theoretically as large as you want it to be. We'll have to wait and see what the verdict is when the game finally ships, but the prospect of large teams of weapon toting humans bent on revenge is pretty awesome.

Either way, warriors in the new London can look forward to fighting a whole array of demonic monsters. While there will be plenty of different types of baddies in the end product like the nasty Hellmeat, a twisted creature with a human melded into his torso complete with floppy arms, all of the demons can be roughly categorized into one of four areas.

Beasts - Mindless "destroyer" type monsters that will simply come after you with a hunger for your face. One such creature encountered in the demo was called a Ravager. This dog-like demon stalked the streets and attacked by jumping long distances.

Necros - Demons that use the deceased to their advantage. The Flesh Eaters found roaming the cities eating bodies reside in this group. While they look like zombies, they're actually corpses that have been inhabited by demons looking for a home like a hermit crab looks for a shell.

Spectral - These guys can only partially form in our world, giving them an ethereal appearance. An Orbile is one of these creatures and moves around the world sucking the essence out of corpses to use for its own power.

Demons - These are the real bad guys. Not only are they the most powerful, but they also have the most intelligence. They'll communicate with each other, use their own version of technology and weapons, have special abilities and powers, and are butt-ugly.

As Flagship is aware, blasting these demons back to hell is going to be what draws the crowds. Therefore, they're bringing an unprecedented array of weaponry to the table. While I can think of some online games, mostly MMOs, that provide weapons into the hundreds, I can't think of one where the weapons were built to be so fundamentally different. Giving a sword a different name, different stats, and a different color doesn't really hold a candle to completely original ranged and melee weapons that have some especially bizarre designs, in some cases. Mixing arcane human weapons and demon technology reaps strong rewards.

The way weapons work in this game is a bit different than Diablo fans will be used to. That game's weapons dealt predominately physical damage at the base level. Hellgate: London is actually going to break that mold in a way encourages the use of several different weapons. In the build we saw, each weapon begins with a base damage type. The Vulcan Bolter, for instance, will provide a base of 4-8 fire damage. Good for creatures that are hurt by the heat, but bad for those that aren't. Other weapons will have different uses and damage types. With an array of around 100 weapons (including melee and ranged) to choose from, players will have a hard time not finding a few they'd like to hang onto.

The variety of weapons was pretty damn cool, and Roper was only showing small percentage of the final number. Each of the weapons will be something special. There's no room for an AK-47 or M4 here. Every weapon has to be imbued with some sort of power that can actually damage a demon. As I said before, the entire English military couldn't even put a dent in the smallest demon. Instead, players will find weapons like the Grenadier that throws canisters of Greek Fire, a Zeus Rifle that acts as a chain lightning gun, or a Jacklight that shoots out an area effect blast of spectral energy.

If the variety wasn't enough in itself, players will be further encouraged to try out different weapons with the dual wield and modding features. When confronted with a large group of creatures which have a wide variety of protection, having two different modes of destruction in hand will probably be a good idea. Any two weapons can be used in dual wield. One of Roper's suggested combinations was a one-handed flame thrower along with a melee weapon of some type.

Nearly all item and weapon types will come with or could be upgraded to accommodate mod slots. These slots serve as holsters for weapons upgrades including different damage types and effects. For instance, a battery might fit to provide electric damage while fuel could add that needed fire kick to an otherwise spectral damage based weapon.

The presence of the mods will even be visible in the weapons effects. One weapon demonstrated called the HARP (a stream weapon that holds an enemy in place while inflicting damage, making it great for co-op and bad for fighting large groups of enemies at once) begins as a single stream of white light. Adding modifcations such as spectral damage and fire damage will add thin red and purple streams twining around the original.

One thing noticeably absent from all of the weapons is ammunition. In fact, the only thing even referred to as ammo is a type of modification. They've decided to forgo the need for ammo so that players can concentrate on combat without the worry of suddenly being defenseless in a dangerous place. This is just one of the ways that Hellgate is trying to make the break from the automatic assumption that it's a basic first-person shooter, simply because it's in the first-person and has guns. "Hellgate is an action RPG, first and foremost. So we're making the action more friendly for players that aren't huge FPS fanatics," explained Roper. "Success should be based on skills, level, items, and so on. So it's really based on what makes you successful in an RPG. That being said, it certainly isn't going to hurt a guy if he's good at shooters." In order to keep down on the twitch factor, most of the weapons will actually be pretty splash happy or will track targets. For example, the Grenadier will cause a large explosion when hitting a target or the environment, while the HARP gun will arc it's beam to stay attached to a target to add some forgiveness to what otherwise would be an largely skill-based weapon.

Of course, melee weapons don't have any of these concerns and will be more familiar to RPG fans in general. The tradeoff for using a melee weapon will be a third-person perspective. While they'd love to be able to keep melee fighting in the first-person, it's just too difficult to get a sense of distance and space in general to be useful. When's the last time you saw a really good melee fighter in first-person?

Items that affect combat and stats will also be found in the game world in various locations. Trinkets like magic jewelry fit alongside more modern day items like implants. More arcane stuff like runes and magical tattoos can also play a part, maybe even replacing armor. Some of these items will have stat requirements as well. For instance, useful demonic items will take concentration or willpower to keep under control, and each character will only have a limited amount of each. This should be good for balancing issues, since only a certain amount of concentration or willpower will be available to each player.

Getting the coolest stuff is part of what made the Diablo franchise so damn popular. There were people bragging about having the best stuff for years. Hell, they probably still do and Hellgate will be no different. Just like Diablo, all weapons, armor, items, and mods will be randomized. The base weapons and armor will be relegated to types, but the randomized drops change the stats of all the weapons. So you might find a basic Vulcan Bolter, but you also might find a Vulcan Bolter with more mod slots with extra power. Same goes with the items and mods. You never know what you're going to get, prompting you to kill "just one more" bad guy in the hopes you'll find something awesome.

Of course, while there's a fair share of mindless killing involved, Flagship is making sure that the story is an important part of the reason players fight their way through the streets of London. Quests drive the story along and will require players to do things that relate directly to the story. All other mission types are simple extras for players looking for more reason to go out and kill stuff, gain more money, or gain experience. These types of missions will consist of getting things for people that need them. The cool things about these missions is that they're time sensitive like you might find in Animal Crossing. What an NPC needs on Monday he might not need anymore on Wednesday.

One of the interesting things about Hellgate is that Flagship is creating content for players to continue fighting after the story ends. There may even be a bit of helping to clean up London so that humans can start to reclaim their homes.

Running all of this devilish fun is a proprietary engine developed specifically for this game. They had apparently looked into many licensed engines, but none could handle the amount of randomization that Hellgate required without a serious hit in load times. The only component that Flagship has licensed is Havok for physics.

Graphically, Hellgate looks like it'll compare pretty well to most shooters out there. It may not be the cream of the crop by the time the game releases (which Bill Roper says is "not this year" and "when it's done"), since Unreal Engine 3 games will have begun hitting the market, but it should be pretty damn nice, considering everything that's going into it.

There's still more to say, some of which will have to wait for another time. Hellgate: London is still in a very early stage of development, so many things haven't quite been worked out yet. The skill system needs a lot of work, and the only class Flagship is willing to show right now is the Templar. How the classes and skills work with each other will therefore have to wait as well, though that's worthy of a dedicated article of its own, especially when adding in the variety of weapons.

Only time will tell if all of this adds up to as entertaining an experience as it could be. Certainly, things seem to be on the right track. The Electronic Entertainment Expo in May will provide us an opportunity to actually get behind the controls and beat up on evil a bit, so we'll make sure to let you know our updated impressions at that time.