From Hellgatewiki.com

Hellgate: London is divided into 3 acts, with each act having several town areas and many 'dungeon' levels. The Hellgate Team has said these "acts" will be transparent to the player, so they're more for internal reference. Hellgate: London will not be like Diablo II, with complete change in venue each new act. The subway map for Act One can be seen here.

See the Locations page for information about specific levels and locations in Hellgate: London.

Level Randomization

Most levels in Hellgate: London are randomly constructed, like those from Diablo II, however FSS have tried to expand their algorithms and improve the various combinations and layouts of levels available.

"The game is an action-RPG that is based on the game play philosophies of the Diablo series, so every time a player sets out on an adventure, the world, monsters, treasures and even some of the quests and events are dynamically and randomly generated."
--Bill Roper, November 2006, GamersInfo.net interview

Programmer and art designer David Glenn discussed random level construction in the January 2007 issue of PCGamer magazine.

PC Gamer: One of the Diablo series' coolest features was its randomly generated levels, yet, surprisingly, very few other action RPG devs have implemented it in their games. Why do you think that is?
David Glenn: "While its a fairly simple concept, implementing randomly generated levels is [difficult] to do well. Fortunately for us, we began this project with the core team that's been doing it since the original Diablo, and the basic principles remain the same. The ability to change the overall size, flow, and characteristics of q level with the simple tweaking of a few values in a spreadsheet is an extremely valuable tool when balancing the game."

PCGamer: Does randomness ever come at the cost of pretty graphics? Would handcrafted levels look better?
David Glenn: "The balance between true randomness and believable architectural spaces gets more delicate the more realistic a game starts to look. The increased resolution and detail between Diablo and Diablo II meant we couldn't rely on just a few tiles for an entire dungeon. The irony lies in that increasing the level of detail ads to the richness of a space, but also adds to noticeable repetition, which destroys the illusion. One solution is to add rules that prevent tiles from occurring adjacent to each other. Another is to increase the size of the basic building blocks. Increasing the base size allowed us to add quite a bit of realistic detail to individual rooms without losing the overall randomness of the level as a whole."

Level Size

Levels can vary greatly in size. Lanth reported that during his play testing in September 2006, he found one particular level in Act 1 that took him at least ten minutes to run through and find the exit, while slowing to kill enemies only if they proved a potential road block. He also said that other levels were much smaller; some required only a minute or two to fully clear.

There are some levels that are wholly or partially fixed place, usually with respects to specific storyline and quest events, much like particular levels in Diablo 2 such as Tristram. See the Locations page for more details.

Many of the areas have very distinct styles of layouts, for example London city street levels are usually in grid layouts whereas underground tube levels tend to be long snakey affairs.

Interconnecting areas between levels can even change their tilesets between games, so in some games Covent Garden Approach may be a London Streets level, and other times it may be a Tube level.

Level Variety

Some interesting bits from IGN's GDC coverage:

...we also had the opportunity to check out a couple of new levels including a new cathedral template. These areas look a bit more structurally complex than what we've previously seen adding some nice visually interesting ideas. Colors are still pretty gray and depressed in these areas which keeps with the overall theme. Inside the cathedral area we got a nice look at the Morphid monster. This creature start off small and if given enough time will morph into a much larger version of itself that can deal out a lot more damage.

The second new level, called Chocolate Park, is apparently tied to the story a bit more heavily, but offered a different look from what we've seen at this point. The entire area is covered in a brown haze. More importantly, there's a Chocolate Fog rolling around the area that causes damage and disorientation but can't be destroyed itself. Players will have to keep moving around the area to avoid the fog while dealing with any enemies. Inside the Chocolate Park we were able to see Apocalypse Walkers that teleport around the area at different intervals, Zombie Summoners that can heal zombies and generate armies of smaller zombies on the fly, and Imp Shamans that can throw shield bubbles around the smaller imps that we've seen before. Also seen floating around the area are some of the large Exospectors that are more for atmosphere than any real combat though, as with everything else in Hellgate, could change at a moment's notice.