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

Interview: Erich Schaefer on combat system, weapon variety, demon types, quests, and more.
Date: July 7, 2006
Source: RPG Vault

RPG Vault Interview

Jonric: What kind of combat system will Hellgate: London have? How will if function in overview, and how important will this element be?

Erich Schaefer: Hellgate: London will have a unique hybrid combat system, reflecting its blend of RPG and action-shooter gameplay. In Hellgate: London a hit is a hit; if a rocket looks like it hits a Demon, and explodes, it will do damage. We do not do any "to hit" calculations. However, how that damage gets applied to your target relies on a complex statistical system taking into account armor, shields, weapon and skill bonuses, temporary buffs, etc. With some character classes and builds, the player's ability to maneuver and aim will definitely help, but will not be enough to advance too far without paying attention to skills, equipment and leveling up.

Combat, and your character's ability to defeat monsters, is paramount to your success in Hellgate: London. You must defeat demons... lots and lots of demons... to propel yourself through the storyline.

Jonric: Since many RPG fans enjoy finding and collecting loot, how significant will this part of the game be?

Erich Schaefer: Hellgate: London is definitely a "loot" game. Characters will constantly be finding new, random weapons, armor and equipment as they adventure. Your character's equipment is very critical, roughly equivalent to the importance of your skill use and your attributes.

Jonric: Given that it's pretty obvious weapons will be important, what would you like our readers to know about the overall variety and how they will work?

Erich Schaefer: We will be shipping Hellgate: London with over 100 base weapons types (guns and swords), each with unique graphics and behavior. On top of that, there are many magic and technological properties that can be found on special, randomly generated weapons. Our loot system will create an endless variety of cool weapons, some of them very rare, and some unique ones that we are labeling as "legendary".

Weapons can be further improved with "mods", like fuel tanks and rocket clips. The amount of mod slots on a weapon is variable, but largely based on the base type, so you won't find swords with ammo slots.

In addition to traditional assault rifles and grenade launchers, we've got some really unusual weapons, like a Scarab Pistol that fires a swarm of flesh-eating beetles, lighting bolt dischargers and incinerator rays.

Jonric: What about magic? How will it function, and what will govern how much and how often it can used?

Erich Schaefer: Hellgate: London's magic system is really a skill system in that the same process governs casting spells as well as performing special combat moves. All characters have a Power stat, and skill use is governed by power cost as well as cool-down times, limiting how often a skill can be used.

Jonric: What variety of enemies will we have to defeat? What are your main considerations in designing them, and are you willing to discuss some interesting examples?

Erich Schaefer: We don't have a final opponent count, but there will be somewhere over 50 different types of demons to fight. And, like we usually do, we'll take those base types and expand them into many varieties with different stats, abilities, textures and effects.

Our main consideration in designing monsters is making them unique, and ideally, forcing the players to change their gameplay to adapt to their uniqueness. So, we like to contrast Ravagers that jump attack with Imps that fire missiles and Dark Seraphs that spawn right next to you in an explosive column of fire. We try to create a good mix of flyers, runners, melee types and shooters, peppered with mini-bosses that buff or command the lesser monsters.

Some of Hellgate: London's more unusual monsters are Orbiles that suck the energy from newly created corpses and then go into an aggressive lightning mode. The goal for the player is to kill them before killing any other monsters; they are pretty easy to deal with until they can suck a corpse - can I say that?!? I'm also partial to our new Fellhorde race of demons - a whole hierarchy of creatures that burrows out of the ground in packs.

Jonric: What kinds of functions do the game's friendly and neutral NPCs fulfill? Will any of them fight alongside you?

Erich Schaefer: The NPCs in Hellgate: London serve all your basic RPG functions as quest-givers, merchants, healers and such. Small towns might only have a handful of NPCs, while larger ones can have dozens. Many NPCs belong to various factions, and doing missions for those factions will improve your standing with them.

The biggest challenges were related to creating a random environment layout for each time a player enters a level. The paths, spawns and loot will never be the same from game to game or player to player.

There will indeed be occasions where you are fighting alongside NPCs, but the extent to which that happens is still undecided.

Jonric: What role do quests play in Hellgate: London? Are there many of them, and do they fall into different categories?

Erich Schaefer: In Hellgate: London, we present the player with three different quest types. Storyline quests are fairly linear and limited in number. These propel the character through our landscape, explaining the state of the world and what the player has to do to succeed. Randomized missions are smaller in scope, but unlimited in amount. Certain NPCs will ask you to perform tasks, recovering specific items or vanquishing certain foes. These can be done for special rewards at any time, and are geared toward giving the player something to do if he or she only has 15 minutes or so to play.

Jonric: How will multiplayer work, and aside from more people, what differences will there be compared to single-player?

Erich Schaefer: The multiplayer and single-player versions of Hellgate: London will be very much the same game. The difference will be whether you go through the quests alone, with a friend or a big group. In multiplayer mode, you can also trade for items that you wouldn't have access to in single-player.

In multiplayer Hellgate, you will log onto our servers and find yourself in shared, communal towns. In these towns, you can form groups, trade items and socialize. Leaving town, you will enter an "instanced" adventure area that will be specifically created for you and your party.

Jonric: What's noteworthy about the technology you're using? Did you develop it in-house, and why or why not?

Erich Schaefer: We developed our own engine and networking technologies largely because no commercial products could do the things we wanted to do with this new kind of game. The biggest challenges were related to creating a random environment layout for each time a player enters a level. The paths, spawns and loot will never be the same from game to game or player to player.

Another problem was adapting a client / server architecture to an action game. We have to do a lot of optimizations to track all the missiles and collisions for thousands of players on one server.

Jonric: How much experience does your Flagship Studios team have developing games in general, especially action RPGs? Where is the company located, and how large is it?

Erich Schaefer: Around half the team at Flagship Studios worked on Diablo and Diablo II before leaving Blizzard. The founders of Blizzard North and brains behind all its projects joined up with the best artists and programmers we worked with at Blizzard to create this new company. So, we have a lot of experience in the action RPG genre (or at least our version of it).

We're located in San Francisco, and we've expanded to around 35 members now - a good mix of experience and talented new blood.

Jonric: Are there other important aspects, features et al that you'd like to note for our readers, anything you'd like to tell them, or something you want to ask?

Erich Schaefer: I've got a question that we keep returning to internally. Do you readers understand the character classes we've been presenting, the Templar and the Cabalist? We're more used to creating games in the fantasy genre, and we worry that players won't be able to immediately get into the heads of these character classes. Are they more confusing or intriguing?