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Locations
From Hellgatewiki.com
Many of the locations you see while playing Hellgate: London are based on and modeled after real life locations in London. Most are inspired by, others are directly modeled on, with some modifications to allow randomization or better playability.
Are the London locations based on real london geography?
Some of the places are made up. The maintence rooms and sewer systems and such. The above ground has a lot of locations from the real London. Covent Garden Market, the British Museum... you walk along the river bed, the river Thames, you see the bridges and buildings along the side. We've got a lot of landmarks we incorporated. In addition we had guys walk through London and take pictures of the signs, the ground and such and you can see this really looks like London.
--Tyler Thompson, IGN video interview, e3 2007
Contents |
List of Locations
- British Museum -- Architectural marvel noted for its vast open atrium beneath a distinctive, blue glass ceiling.
London Landmarks
Many prominent London locations will be seen in the game, and on those the team spent special effort to be sure they looked right.
Helping to root the game world and orient us will be fixed social hubs (the equivalent of Diablo's towns and camps) and landmarks like the Tower of London, St Pauls, Tower Bridge, and that clock-topped gothic phallus off the brown sauce bottle.
Bill described to us one early concept (that may or may not end-up on the cutting room floor) in which players find themselves fighting their way up the limestone esophagus of a battle-scarred, off-kilter Big Ben. At the top is some unspeakable demonic monstrosity and a breathtaking vista of a city laid waste.
... Reading between lines and over shoulders other environments will almost certainly include at least one based on an overgrown park (Serpents in the Serpentine anyone?) and another set in damp east-end docklands (packs of hellhounds fouling the Isle of Dogs, perhaps).
--PC Gamer Magazine, May 2005
Lots of areas were planned; how many will make it into the game, or be added in expansions, remain to be seen.
"We have realistically themed areas like Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Holborn, River Thames, Tubes, Moorgate, Piccadilly Circus, Camden Town, Tower Hill... In terms of specific places, the design docs call for the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, Piccadily Circus and a bunch more."
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
Architecture and Location
The sense of London in Hellgate: London goes beyond locations that are modeled after real places. Most of the game is randomly-generated, after all, so they could not just copy street layouts. The Hellgate team had to get into the "feel" of the city and its architecture, and they've done their best.
"There are centuries, aeons even, of history beneath the streets of London. From druidic sites to plague pits to Victorian era sewers, to WWII bomb shelters and factories, to the modern Underground system: there's a whole host of locations that make for great, creepy, spooky gameplay." So, in short, we're the quaintest of the quaint and the spookiest of the spooked - in a nice fuzzy historical way. "But the single biggest factor would be the historical fame of the Underground," chimes in Dave Glenn, art director on the project. "Most major metropolises have subway systems, but none have the recognition or historical significance of the original one. The iconography, the mix of old and new, the varied historical uses, even the construction methods of the tube gives us a bottomless well of history from which to weave our own unique story."
"Currently, the surface levels are very much just an interpretation of what the streets of London 'feel' like to us," adds Glenn. "Our aim is to include a few points of interest in each area to really give them a sense of location. But our priorities always lean towards gameplay over realism. If a level including, say, the British Museum is too big or small or confusing then we'll make adjustments until it feels right according to our gameplay goals in that area."
Perhaps the feel of the game is more important than being a direct port of the London A-Z (and remember too that the PS2 Getaway games were rubbish despite their street-map accuracy). "Our randomised layouts will contain reproductions of actual buildings, signs, and the familiar icons that make London look like London," continues Glenn. "And what's more the major landmarks, like Big Ben and the Thames, are fixed in place. We've also tried to capture the traits of each area such as the width of streets, the style of buildings, the number of parks, and the density of buildings to make the neighbourhoods feel like they should, even if the street layouts aren't strictly accurate."
--PC Zone UK Preview, December 2005
The Hellgate Team made several trips to London to research the architecture and geography, though these visits didn't always go as planned.
"The most concentrated research we did consisted of Dave and I spending a week walking all over London taking thousands of photographs. We both have architectural backgrounds and we were like kids in a candy store walking the streets and alleys of London. One problem we hit was that our game is dark, brooding, and spooky, and we figured that London's grey skies and wet weather would give us the atmosphere we needed in our source photographs. But from the moment we landed, the sun came out and we had the most beautiful, sunny, pleasant weather one could have wished for -- in Hawaii! It sure wasn't the cold damp London we'd anticipated and even wished for, as it's harder to get usable source photos in bright sunlight."
--Max Schaefer, PC Zone UK Preview, December 2005
The underground areas of Hellgate: London are legion, and you'll battle demons in subway stations and abandoned tracks, through Roman tunnels, plague pits, and much, much more. To quote Bill Roper, "Bearing in mind what's actually under London, we feel we could put almost anything down there, and it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility." (PC Gamer Magazine, May 2005).
"About half the fighting in the game takes place above ground, and the other half takes place under the city. Another reason we picked the city is that it has this really rich 'city beneath a city' heritage. There's the network of tunnels that makes up the London Underground, there are Roman aqueducts, there are World War 2 bomb shelters, there are Victorian hospitals, and there are plague pits. It's a perfect dungeon-type environment that we can randomly generate and then explore."
--Bill Roper, June 2005.
Outside of London
Will players ever leave London?
Not in Hellgate: London, no. But it's always been our plan to make Hellgate a franchise that visits other notable locations. So eventually, yes, you will come out... assuming all goes according to plan, anyway.
--Ivan Sulic, April 2006
We have a lot of plans for location in which to set the action, and it is all going to be a matter of time as to what gets in. We do have long term plans to support the game well after launch, so if it doesn't make it into the game when we ship, it will most likely be in the queue for later. I mean, at some point we have to take a day trip out to Stonehenge.
--Bill Roper, etoychest preview, January 2006
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