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

Feature: Gamespy Article
Date: May 13, 2005
Source: 1up.com

Hands-On With Hellgate

London Bridge is falling down, and it's not alone. The Thames River is a strip of mud choked with debris, Parliament is a wreck, and Big Ben looms alone over a shattered city. Fires burn perpetually amongst the rubble and the sky above is a pale green soup. The Hellgate has opened, and only a handful of humans survive in the demon-infested aftermath.

Fortunately, they have big guns. Lots of 'em.

It was nearly two years ago that a talented team of Blizzard employees -- responsible for Diablo and Diablo II among others -- struck out on their own and founded Flagship Studios. Their first game may look wildly different, but it doesn't fall too far from the tree: Hellgate: London plays like a first-person Diablo. You'll mow down hordes of demons and collect phat lewt at a blistering pace, advancing your character as you explore the twisted remains of London.

When we first heard about the project we couldn't understand how Flagship planned to have a first-person shooter where your personal skill didn't matter and where your character's skill would determine if you hit and how much damage you do. Everything cleared up once we started to play. The weapons you're using aren't your typical first-person weapons. Most of them don't require you to aim, and many track targets automatically. Forget about pixel-point damage, trying to lead an opponent, or carefully lining up a head shot: The arsenal of weapons in Hellgate is completely over-the-top and utterly customizable. You'll worry less about aiming and more about tactics as you mow down room after room of demonspawn. We may have been in hell, but it felt like heaven to us.

Anarchy in the U.K.

London turns out to be the perfect city in which to set a demon-infested dungeon crawl. This sprawling city has seen its share of disasters, and it's been rebuilt again and again since Roman times. Aside from the baffling mix of centuries old architecture, London also boasts multiple underground networks. Everything from Roman aqueducts to a mail train network to the famous London Underground and World War II bomb-shelters. These sprawling underground networks make for perfect dungeons. For the backstory, Flagship took historical fact and blended it with their own fiction, heavy on the occult and conspiracy theories.

About half the game will take place on the surface, where maze-like city streets are choked with the smoldering remains of familiar round mailboxes or double-decker busses. The other half of the game takes place in the dark and twisting corridors beneath the surface.

Most impressive of all, the maps are completely random. Players will venture from one hub to another, and while these "safe zones" are static, the journey between each one will be different for everyone. Games like Diablo have created random 2D dungeons, but to do it in a 3D first-person environment is impressive: Flagship had to design a game engine from scratch. We tooled around these random levels for quite a bit, and the level of detail was incredible; streets and alleys and intersections snaked around unpredictably with random debris providing cover for random groups of randomly-armed demons in unpredictable numbers. This isn't like any first-person game you've ever played.

An Unlimited Arsenal

The same seemingly limitless content applies to your weapons as well. Flagship claims to have over 100 base weapons available in the game, and each one can be customized with different ammunition types. Moreover, there's a prefix and suffix system in place, similar to Diablo, meaning (for example) you might find a gun or you might find a gun "of burning" that will add extra fire damage. Five different damage types are available, each with their own perks:

- Physical Damage has the ability to knock down enemies - Fire Damage may ignite enemies and burn them over time - Spectral Damage can cause enemy armor to fade out - Toxic Damage can poison certain creatures, damaging them over time - Electrical Damage can potentially stun an opponent

Snapping on different types of fuel, batteries, or ammunition can adjust the properties of a weapon, allowing you to do additional or different types of damage.

You can mix and match weapons however you like. As you snap on additions, the weapon model changes.

Some of the bigger weapons require two-hands to wield, but one-handed weapons can be wielded in either hand. As a result you can totally mix and match your arsenal. Want to launch holy grenades with your left hand while your right uses a Greek-fire flamethrower? Go for it! Different types of monsters will be susceptible to certain attacks so it's worth it to have different weapons handy.

Melee weapons are also in the game, allowing you to wield everything from holy blades to cricket bats. One melee weapon we got to play around with was called the Firebrand: it looked like a cross between a lightsaber and a flamethrower, and would spew searing flames as I swung it around. It's tricky to use melee weapons in first-person view, so Flagship is tinkering with the idea of panning the camera back Jedi Knight-style when a player equips a melee weapon. That way you could see all the cool moves.

Check it: you can also wield a sword in one hand and a gun in the other. Sweet. The demons don't stand a chance.

Questing in Real Time

Hellgate: London is arranged as a series of hubs connected by random dungeons. The main plotline is the same for all of the players, and the story will be told through cutscenes during the big moments. But the majority of the game, the adventures between those hubs, will be unique for every player.

Quests will be randomly scattered into the cityscape. 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.

Hellgate: London also 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.

Multiplayer Massacres

Flagship is still being tight-lipped about what kinds of multiplayer options will be available, and we weren't able to play online during our hands-on time. But the team has big plans.

For the most part multiplayer will focus on cooperative play. Small teams of adventurers will venture into the Streets and sewers of London to massacre demons as a team. Flagship is planning on setting character limits for each region in order to keep balance: some areas will only be for two or three players, while other special areas may be able to accommodate large groups.

On top of adventuring, there will also be special challenge areas set up for online players. The team is kicking around ideas for scavenger hunt zones, or an area where teams will see how long they can hold a safe zone against ever-increasing waves of demon assaults.

One thing that Flagship definitely wants to concentrate on is allowing players to really invest in the online part of the game. Buoyed by the success of StarCraft tournament play overseas, the team wants to build-in tools to allow people to observe games or watch replays with commentary. They're also setting up leader boards and ladders, tracking dozens of stats including most demons killed, wealth accumulated, etc. etc. Details on the multiplayer might be hazy, but it's clear that the company is committed to making it a great experience.

Hands-On in Hell

All talking aside, it was time to fire this sucker up (no pun intended) and experience the carnage firsthand. The first thing we noticed once we sat down with the game is that the controls are intuitive to anyone who's played first-person games on the PC: running, strafing, jumping, firing... it all felt natural. And the game engine had a great framerate, even at this relatively early stage in development, despite the hordes of creatures on the screen or the massive explosions we were dishing out.

The only playable character class at this point is the Templar, an armored modern-day knight descended from the Knights Templar of old. Templar characters are built for close-quarters combat. They have lots of abilities for moving quickly and jumping in or out of a fight. Their main source of power is something called "vengeance," which builds up as you take physical damage at close quarters. You could expend vengeance doing special moves.

I quickly discovered that my favorite weapons were a pair of explosive handguns that quickly shot fireballs in a wide spread. I tucked one in each hand and before long was able to outfit them with fuel that increased their damage. I set up my left mouse button to fire both at once. In Hellgate you don't have to worry about running out of ammo, so I could run rampant through the city ushering forth a stream of fiery death.

The mouse buttons are configurable by simply dragging weapons or skills from the inventory menu, so I bound my right mouse button to a "super-jump" ability. This ability required vengeance to use, but vengeance was in ample supply as I booked through crowded city streets shoulder-to-shoulder with hordes of enemies. I fired madly and was able to spring over debris in a single bound, aiming a slew of flaming death to the unsuspecting demons below me. The action in Hellgate is non-stop!

The effects of my weapons at full power was so gratuitous that sometimes I didn't know when to stop shooting -- I'd plaster a horde of demons with rockets and then I'd stop and look to see if anything was still moving when the smoke cleared. After the carnage, I got to scoop up the loot. At first blush the game plays like a first-person shooter, but once you pull up the 'paper-doll' of your character and begin tweaking your weapons, skills, and armor with your spoils of war you begin to get a different vibe from the game. It may be heavy on the action, but this is definitely an RPG, and a big part of the fun is developing your character's fighting abilities.

It's still early, but Hellgate is already coming together. It's fast, it's fun, and it's a welcome change of pace from what's on shelves today. Stick around GameSpy for more coverage from the front lines in the months to come!