Hellgate London

[Kappamerc]

So, I can simply say that I am disappointed.

 

A game developer has taken the time to carefully lay out the problems with the game in its current state:

 

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I work for a large game development studio. I won’t say the name, as it will bring awkwardness to this thread and will end up sidelining the topic. I’m just going to state some of my opinions of Hellgate from a developer’s point of view. Also, keep in mind that while I work for “another†game company, doesn’t mean I don’t love games that other companies make. I love video games and that’s why I’m in the industry.

 

Hellgate has been a game I’ve really had my eyes on since its declaration. I was honestly really surprised and exited that I got selected for the alpha tests. I wanted to love this game. This game, which came from the same guys who created diablo should have blown me away. It should have blown diablo away. Unfortunately, I feel a little under whelmed and disappointed.

 

If you cut away all the fancy marketing hype, this is an action rpg that CAN be played from a first person view.

 

Now, what are the central game features/mechanics to an action rpg?

1 – character building

2 – battle system

3 – storyline

4 – quest system + bosses

5 – online system (if there is one)

 

However, despite those 5 points being each very important in their own right, there’s something even more important than them. It’s what glues them all together. It’s pacing.

 

Pacing is what keeps the player’s interest in the game. When a player plays a game that’s not essentially pvp, it is up to the developer to deliver game content to them in a speed that delicately keeps them constantly excited and happy as well as hungry for more. That’s where the above points come into play. The successfulness of a game’s pacing can be measured by the speed of delivery of the above 5 points and the player’s reaction to them. Let’s discuss each.

 

1 – Character Building. Personally, to me, this is the make-or-break part of an action RPG. I generally play these games to see all the neat things they’ve allowed characters to do and how they grow. With Hellgate, this is arguably the weakest part of the game. There are only 6 classes so far, which is already not that many. Many classes even have overlapping skills (family skills). Furthermore, some classes overlap roles with other classes not even in the same family (engineer + summoner).

 

The skills themselves are also not terribly interesting. They don’t really enable your character do gain new abilities and do cool, unusual things. Wouldn’t it be cool if the cabalist got an ability to fly or metamorph into enemies or gain their skills? Wouldn’t it be cool if a marksman could dual wield 2 handers? Wouldn’t it be cool if an engineer could create a “weapons backpack†that could launch missiles and bombs while he attacks? These are really quick examples that I just came up with off the top of my head. They may not be great ideas, but are just there to serve a point. Having these abilities would really make each class feel very very different and behave very very differently. As it is now, each ability can essentially be classified into 3 categories

 

a – passive

b – summon

c – new attack (which honestly, is like picking up a new gun – you get a new attack. Whoopee)

 

Even if they were to improve the skill system so that each point makes the skills deal more damage and thus makes investing in skills more worth it, it doesn’t matter because the skills are _fundamentally boring_. They’re already in Beta, so there’s no way they’ll be coming out with brand new skill trees all of a sudden. At most they’ll tweak the skills to make it more worthwhile to specialize. However, that’s a band-aid fix as the skills are simply boring.

 

2 – Battle System. This is good. They got this right and it’s fun. From watching videos, this is the only part of the game you can see and is what got us all so excited from the get-go. There’s a few weird issues like the way a sword master swings. It’s unnatural for swings to always go from state to state like a finite state machine. Swordplay should feel more free flowing. The way they attack is like watching a complete sword amateur attack stuff. It’s like the grabbed the star wars kid and made him a hero in Hellgate. The lunge you do when you do a melee attack is also very disruptive an annoying. They would have really benefited if they consulted some weapons masters on how to properly fight. Other than the melee, the game is great. Shooting stuff is fun =)

 

3 + 4 – Storyline. Yikes. Really light hearted and the text is an absolute chore to read. Shulgoth? Who’s he? Apparently the boss of act 1. Gee, why didn’t they have any build up at all for that fight? Instead the storyline is simply “go here, go there, get this, do that.†The whole storyline is quest driven and at no point does the player feel _intrinsically_ motivated to do it. There’s rarely missions/maps where the briefing is something like “we’re under attack by ____!! We’re going to die… reinforcements won’t get here in time…. Etc†Then after you beat the map, you come back and you’re welcomed as a hero. These kind of things help drive the story a lot better than “some hellgate opened up in picadilly circus. Can you go check it out, puh-leeeease? Oh and while you’re at it, don’t forget to bring back 10 imp ears. I need them for my fetish collectionâ€. A sign of a good storyline is one that gets your adrenaline going even when you’re not in an action moment. What I mean by this is that if a storyline is welldone, your adrenaline will be going just from the raw anticipation of what’s to come and the excitement you get from the uncertainty of everything.

 

5 – at the moment the online system is limited to co-op play. I’m pretty sure they’ll be bringing in end game content like arenas for the live game, but because it’s not in right now, I can’t comment on this.

 

 

With all this said, I’d also like to say that don’t make the excuse that “Oh, it’s BETAâ€. Do you really think they’re holding back MOST of the game on us? We’re testing their product for them. They want feedback. We can’t give feedback if they hold back MOST of the content. Don’t you guys see the contradiction in logic here??!!? Furthermore, the game is scheduled for release on the 31st. Printing discs isn’t instant. At my company, a week to a week and a half is reserved for printing and shipping. That gives them just over 2 weeks to fix and add stuff. 2 weeks. Do you think in 2 weeks they can fix the fundamentally broken skills? Do you think they can fix the story and really dry missions? They have a heck of a lot of work to do still, and it seems like only subscribers will benefit from that. For the free players – not totally free, they did buy the game – they’re left with nothing but a game with a great battlesystem, but fundamentally flawed pacing, character building, and storyline/missions. I hope you read this as a critique and not a huge long whine. I really want hellgate to be successful and I’m TELLING them what’s wrong with the game from my point of view, a developer’s point of view because I WANT them to do well.

 

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I say the game needs 6 months of work before release but it will release on October 31st no matter what. The combat is great and I think even at release I would enjoy playing it with a bunch of friends. However, the bugs in the game and the uninteresting skill trees make me want to pick up Titan Quest and tell the devs to take some of those skill tree ideas.

 

At any rate, hope this was informative.

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