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

Interview: Bill Roper on development windows and the London setting.
Date: January 12, 2006
Source: eToyChest.org (Dead site.) Page one of three seen here, courtesy of InternetArchive.org. Pages 2 and 3 can not be retrieved.

eToyChest Interview

Hellgate: London is a first-person action RPG for the PC from the mind of Bill Roper the talented folks at Flagship Studios. The game puts players in the midst of a demon-infested London cityscape where they must take up arms and do battle with the denizens of Hell. Among the many innovative aspects introduced by the game, Hellgate: London will feature a completely randomized world that offers a unique experience every time you play. Recently we had the opportunity to speak with Bill Roper regarding his newest creation.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us regarding Hellgate: London. This is a title that has intrigued us since it was announced, and after going hands on with it at E3 I have to say I was left wanting more. How would you say the game is coming along? Any recent developments you'd like to talk about?

Bill Roper: Hellgate: London is coming along great, and the past couple of months have seen a lot of things get into the game. We made a push right before Halloween for a party we were throwing where we let our friends play, so it was important that we have a host of new monsters, items and skills in. Between then and now we�ve added more of everything � monsters, skills, weapons, armor, monster AI, backgrounds � the works. We�re also working on completing the storyline and breaking down the key parts into a quest structure. There are basically a ton of ideas and content flowing into the game right now, so there is literally something new every day.

I know you probably don't want to set expectations, only to have to disappoint fans, but has the team managed to nail down a delivery date for the game, or perhaps even a window when you expect it to ship?

Bill Roper: We have an internal window we are working towards, and while it is looking good at this point, it is still too early to talk about when that is. You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned not wanting to disappoint fans. We know that there is a lot of excitement over the game and that expectations are high � and that goes for both our community and us here at Flagship Studios! We�re definitely playing it on the safe side in regards to the release date because we want to do everything we can to meet and exceed the expectations we set. We�re still far enough out where a release date, or even a window, would be educated guesswork. Trust me � as soon as we have a handle on a date we think we can honestly hit, we�ll announce it.

For those not up to speed on what you and your team are doing with Hellgate: London, can you give us some background as far as where the idea came from and what the game will entail?

Bill Roper: The official marketing spiel reads, "Hellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games with the action of first-person titles while offering infinite playability with randomly created levels, items, and events."

Hellgate: London is an action-RPG with quite a few twists on the model made popular by the Diablo series. Set in a post demonic apocalyptic London, players take on the role of survivors empowered with items and weapons that blend arcane spells, divine power and super-science in order to try and re-establish a foothold for humanity. The game is in 3D and is played from either first-person or a tight third-person perspective, depending on what the user prefers. When we were coming up with the concept for the game, the merging of Half Life 2 and Diablo 2 was common shorthand.

Hellgate: London is playable as a stand-alone single-player game, but it's the multiplayer components that we believe will really make it shine. We're building our own online destination for the game that is comparable in features to any MMORPG. This means a client/server structure to provide safe and secure gaming, character databases, customer service, guild support and so on. We want to provide ongoing content for the game long after it has shipped, and we're building both the game and our infrastructure to lay the ground work for doing just this. Online gaming has a lot of higher expectations than it did five years ago, and we're looking forward to providing a much more compelling experience than we did in the Diablo days.

London, and England in general, is a place steeped in heroic, monster-vanquishing literature. Did you draw any inspiration from this extensive fantasy background for weapons, monsters, etc.?

Bill Roper: We've all spent a lot of time researching English mythology, the background of the Templar and Masonic orders, fantasy tales and pretty much everything we could lay our hands on that seemed even remotely applicable. This also includes delving into the many different religions that are reflected in Europe since London is such an international city. We're trying to reflect some of this not only through the visualization and naming of demons, but also in the items and even the NPCs. I think that there will be a lot of little details that reflect the culture, history and mythos of England.