Hellgate: London Updated Q&A - Random Loot and Vicious Monsters
Flagship Studios' chief visionary officer David Brevik discusses the random loot and encounters you'll find in this upcoming hack-and-slash game.
Back in 1996, computer game players everywhere became hooked on Diablo, a simple action role-playing game in which you played as a fantasy warrior and defeated your diabolical enemies by repeatedly clicking your mouse button to attack. One sequel and countless destroyed computer mice later, the creative forces behind the original Diablo games have reunited as Flagship Studios to create the soon-to-be-released Hellgate: London, a futuristic hack-and-slash game in which you'll fight against a demonic invasion in a postapocalyptic version of London, England. Over the course of the game, your character will amass huge piles of randomly generated loot, much of which can be crafted together to assemble powerful weapons and armor. However, you'll also be hacking your way through many areas that will be randomly generated themselves, and populated with random squads of hellish beasts. We sat down with chief visionary officer David Brevik for more details.
GameSpot: We understand that randomization will play a key role in adding variety to Hellgate: London's gameplay. For instance, tell us about the role it will play in creating adventure environments for players, with different types of monsters scaling to players' experience levels. How will the game offer a new experience each time without disrupting the experience (such as by having a key enemy spawn inside of a wall, or having the entrance and exit too close to each other)?
David Brevik: The monsters do not scale to the players' experience levels. They are a set level range for that particular section of the game. We just try and track your level with theirs to keep an even difficulty.
That being said, we spent a lot of time designing and implementing random level generation in the game. We have designed it in such a way that we create rules to govern the look. These rules are run in an order to ensure that the level is a size we like. We can run rules a variable amount of times and loop and skip and all sorts of stuff. We can design exits and entrances to be right next to each other or start by placing it at the beginning, and then grow it, then add the exit at the end. It is an extremely flexible system--one that I believe could create any random level you could imagine.
As far as making sure the level is playable, we stick quest set pieces in the level generation, as well as many other layout props and nodes to ensure that things can look OK. Many of those layouts have random levels associated with them as well. There are layers and layers of randomness associated with the way we generate the levels.
GS: We understand that random loot will play a huge role in what should be the addictive pastime of treasure hunting. What kind of item variety should players expect to see in-game? Will it be possible for players to randomly find items that are much more powerful than regular items suited for their current level? How will players avoid looking like motley clowns if they're wearing armor from 12 different sets?
DB: Random items are the bread and butter of our game. The whole game is designed around the addictiveness that the random items systems possess. There are many looks associated with the different armors that you can find; each class has several complete sets of armor.
It will always be possible to find random items that will increase your power. That is the most exciting aspect of what you are doing. Trying to find that one magic item that makes you a little overpowered is always a blast.
As for the clown suits, we don't have any. Instead of a particular item having a particular color, each item has a color set associated with it. You can right-click on any item you are wearing and set your suit of armor to use that particular dye. We also have a slot that you can put rare dyes into and have suit colors that are difficult to obtain.
Hellgate: London Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices
- GameSpot Score7.0good
Check Prices: $12.49 – 24.99
| NothingButSoftware.com | $12.49 | SHOP › |
| eBay | $24.99 | SHOP › |
Content you might like…
-
Hellgate: London Game Guide
Demons have overtaken London, but GameSpot's Game Guide is here to help you kick them back out.
- Nov 2, 2007
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Images
- EA Games
- Flagship Studios
- Role-Playing
- Release: Oct 30, 2007 »
- Classification Board: Mature Accompanied
Games you may like…
-
Tabula Rasa
(PC) -
Loki Heroes of Mythology
(PC) -
AVENCAST Rise of Mage
(PC) -
Two Worlds
(PC) -
Silverfall
(PC)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
63 Comments