Good News from the Hellgate London Forge

In an interview over at RPG Vault, Chief Creative Officer Erich Schaefer went into more details concerning the highly anticipated release of Hellgate: London.

"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."

The developers created a cross breed between Diablo's roleplaying game style and the action filled first person shooting of Half Life. Just imagine a loot game that supports full 3D, real time action, where both reflexes and proper strategy are involved. This time around you actually have to manually aim at what you're firing at.

"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."

The idea in itself isn't new, but monster specialization and diversity in pairing up different types of attacks will prove challenging to the player's ability to adapt. This simply spells "team work", as the developers already announced the multiplayer mode will be instanced and available for cooperative adventuring.

Although there still is a fair amount of information that hasn't been discussed in detail, including the complete class list and how the skill systems will work, Hellgate London promises quite a lot.