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Misc Info
From Hellgatewiki.com
This page is a FAQ of miscellaneous tidbits that have not yet been integrated into other pages. Information from this page should be removed as it is duplicated elsewhere in this wiki.
Contents |
General Information
Will there be an in-game tutorial?
Yes. New players will have an opportunity to go through a tutorial that explains the game basics.
"...after you see the opening cinematic -- provided by Blur, the Oscar-nominated animation house -- there will be a 30- to 40- second event that introduces your character to the game world. And after that you're off to hack and slash..."
--PC Gamer Hellgate: London Preview, May 2005
Will there be children in Hellgate: London?
Yes. Not as playable characters, but as NPCs both decorative and functional. This isn't necessarily a good thing; remember Wirt? (Flagship certainly seems to, judging by the one-legged kid (L'il Joey) mentioned in the following CGW quote.)
"There are children and quite a few people (more so than Diablo, anyway). But I certainly wouldn't say our population is astronomical. In the first equivalent of a town there are about a dozen people. It's a very small outpost, too. There are also children, yes."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
We literally trip over a micro-sized templar put in current builds of the game as a joke. They call him "Li'l Joey." For the moment , it's fun taking a mission from a fully armored man who's only knee-high. Presumably to be replaced by a little kid, Joey is missing his prosthetic leg and need it back. Of course, we're obliged to help the runt.
--CGW Magazine preview, May 2006
Can players steal monster abilities or skills?
Not exactly. They can't steal from you either though, as far as we know.
It's not possible to acquire demonic abilities from a demon in real-time (like Rogue from X-Men), but we do have special demonic weapons, skills and items.
--Ivan Sulic
Will Flagship stop hacking and cheating better than Blizzard did with Diablo II?
We sure hope so. They say they will, at least.
"I believe we're going to be doing more outsourcing to maintain a stable, cheat free multiplayer environment in addition to relying somewhat more heavily on our publisher. These two things alone should greatly decrease the amount of unscrupulous multiplayer action in our game. Additionally, we have a big internal focus on maintaining Hellgate's multiplayer. It's a huge priority for us, whereas at Blizzard current Flagshippers were split between expansions, other projects and regular upkeep. We get to focus more here, basically."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Will there be inside jokes and references to past Blizzard games?
Yes and no.
"Not really. We don't make any direct references to older Blizzard titles in Hellgate, but we do poke fun at ourselves and other things. We have some funny items, tasks and Easter eggs scattered throughout the game, anyway."
--Ivan Sulic, Community Interview, March 2006
Will there be weather and night/day in Hellgate: London?
Yes, on the surface, and within limits.
"There's ash and fog of different values and some thunder and lighting, but there's no rain or snow. Earth is going through THE BURNING, remember...but of course that doesn't effect fog...because we said so.
Moon! Full shot here.--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
"As for sunshine, there are lighter skies where the sun peeks in, but I wouldn't expect to see a clear sunny day in the game."
Oddly, there are plenty of shots of the full moon, so clear it almost looks like it's in front of the clouds. Perhaps The Burn dies down at night, so the demons can worship their heathen moon gods?
Will there be traps in Hellgate: London?
Unknown.
"Actually don't know if there are any in traps in the game. No one's spoken about traps at all, as far as I know."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
There are some trap-like skills known, so it seems Ivan was taking this as a "open a chest and it blow up" question. Flux never saw any traps of that nature during his two 2006 play tests.
Advertising
Do Namco and HanbitSoft zombie shirts count? Other than these, nothing has been seen in any screenshots.
"1) Like anyone, I don't mind in-game advertising so long as it's appropriate. That is, when I am playing a game in a sports stadium, I expect ads to surround the stadium. I also expect to be beaten upside the head with ads if I'm wandering around Tokyo. But, the key is to keep them in context. For instance, blatant, pristine advertisements for Tampax Tampons in Hellgate: London just wouldn't be appropriate. But if they can make a Coke billboard half toppling over onto a London street from Hellfire, why the heck not?
"2) We won't do anything if it doesn't look good in the game. But if someone wants to pay us to do something we were planning on doing anyway -- to recreate a devastated London you must incorporate the recognizable, which may include urban advertisements -- then I'm sure we're all for it.
"But to directly answer your questions, while we've had offers pitched at us in regards to in-game advertising, we haven't signed any deals simply because we wish to maintain control over our product."
--Ivan Sulic, April 25, 2006
No ads were sold in the game as of early 2007, as this article on Mtv's website in February 2007 made clear.
Placing the ad in the game, even just temporarily for a demo, I thought, was inspired. It was clever. It drew a connection between the game and a smart piece of fiction, a good movie that might well match the interests of Hellgate players. It also gave some extra bite to Hellgate, since Children of Men has a lot to say about why London might wind up in a state of post-world-war trauma.
Roper told me the ads were just placeholders, that his team put them in there to be clever but expects to yank them before the game is released. When he told me that, a thought flashed in my mind for the first time: I'm going to miss those in-game ads.
Game Mechanics
Much, much more about the game controls, damage types, movement and so forth can be found on our Game Mechanics page.
Is there a death penalty in Hellgate: London? If so, how severe will it be?
There will likely be some sort of penalty, at least at higher levels, but the details have yet to be finalized. There hasn't been any in the builds shown at public shows thus far, but that's not surprising; people at E3 and TGS and GStar aren't playing for long, and there's no point in making them waste time retrieving their corpse or anything along those lines when they've only got a few minutes to get a taste of the game.
"Our death penalty isn't set, but there are a LOT of people here who aren't into making it horribly punitive. I have always believed that when you die you should be thinking, "If I would have done that just a little differently I could have won that fight! I have to get back there and try it right now!" Many online RPGs have such severe death penalties that, when you die, you just want to turn the computer off and go curl up in the corner of your room. We don't like making our player's lives miserable, so I don't anticipate our death penalty being very harsh while at the same time, it won't feel meaningless."
--Bill Roper
Can you touch other characters and enemies? Is there friendly fire?
Yes to touching. Friendly fire is still being evaluated in game testing.
"HG: L does have collision detection. You cannot bull through enemies as if you were a ghost, nor can you slide through obstructions. But, once an enemy dies, it can be walked through just like every other game out there (since the corpses pile up and navigating around them would be impossible in some places, and probably also difficult to calculate and maintain).
"Friendly fire... We don't know yet. That's the sort of thing we'll figure out after playing for a million hours and asking everyone we know."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
How important will resistances be?
It depends. Not completely critical, but not irrelevant either. We hope resistances will be balanced better too, compared to the unbalanced "lightning is all that really matters" state of affairs in Diablo II, but Flagship has not commented on that yet.
"Specific resistances to damage types (slashing, fire, spectral, toxic, etcetera) will be important to the game, but no more so than any other action RPG out there. That is, you'll want to possess well-rounded armor and skills to help protect your character against more powerful enemies and enemies prone to dishing out specific types of damage, but constantly switching between armor types will not be a requirement."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Will NPCs buy and sell everything? Will there be items that only monsters can drop?
This is not yet completely decided. NPCs will sell a wide variety of gear, but Flagship has said the best items will probably only be found from monster drops.
"...there are TONS of weapons and items and armor. You can buy a lot from vendors, but most of it will have to be discovered. There are also a huge amount of class specific weapons and items and armor, but I think the vendors will buy pretty much anything."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
Will there be a gambling feature like in Diablo II?
This has not yet been determined.
"Officially, I don't think we've made a concrete decision regarding gambling yet."
--Ivan Sulic, April 21, 2006
Gambling in Diablo II was a great way to improve your equipment, and about the only thing worth spending money on late in the game. Various NPCs displayed a menu full of various item types, with prices that scaled up with your character level, and when you bought them it was as if that base item was being dropped by a monster; you could get almost any random stats, and while (approximately) 98% of it was junk, that happy 2% made it worth the struggle.
Game Difficulty
Will there be different difficulty levels?
This is not yet decided. The game will get harder, and be replayable at higher difficulty, but it's not going to be set to three specific "normal/nightmare/hell" difficulty levels, as Diablo and Diablo II were.
"There will be different difficulties. We're still looking at exactly what will change between the settings, but obviously enemies will be tougher and you'll be weaker. I wouldn't expect to fight a great deal more enemies at one time, but to rather fight enemies that are significantly stronger than they were on other settings."
--Ivan Sulic, March 2006
Will Hellgate: London include a "hardcore" mode like Diablo II?
Yes, there will be something like a hardcore mode (your hero is mortal; if they die they can not be restarted) but it won't be exactly the same as D2's. Flagship hasn't given out any details about it, yet, but it was confirmed by Ivan Sulic in March 2006.
"Hardcore is a really great challenge for players, though, so it is at the top of our list."
--Bill Roper, September 2005 Fansite Interview.
Hardcore has since been confirmed, though details are still sparse. More here.
Music and Visuals
Will there be more cinematics like the one Blur Studios did for E3 2005?
Yes. There will be one featuring the Cabalist released at E3 2006, and the final game will include additional cinematics that show us more of the plot of Hellgate: London.
"Blur did such an amazing job bringing our world to life last E3, we had to lock them up for the rest of our cinematic sequences. We'll have something all-new for E3 this year, so if you thought the last one was great, wait until you see what coming next!"
--Bill Roper, February 2006 fansite interview
What kind of music will we hear in Hellgate: London?
Bill Roper spoke about this in a February 2006 fansite interview.
"We have two separate groups of composers working on all-original music for the game. The mood we have been striving for is an eclectic mix of both modern and classic sounds with a post-industrial edge. The music in the first Blur cinematic was a good launching point, and represents the genesis of our ideas in regards to the music for the game. We are also doing some things compositionally and technologically in how the music is being presented to the player that accentuates the game play experience.
"This has been a real challenge for the composers, but the results so far have been great. Basically, the music is written, performed and integrated to support and reflect what is happening in the game at any point in time. This also means that the music and the sound effects are very conscious of each other from a mixing standpoint, making for a very complex and rewarding soundscape."
--Bill Roper, February 2006
