Hellgate: London Preview

ActionTrip: How often will we see NPCs?

Look, I tried reasoning with it.

It came from the butcher's.

Bill Roper: Quite often! They populate the Underground stations, serving many classic RPG functions such as buying and selling goods, providing healing, handing out quests and so forth. There are also many who are there to bring the world to life and offer tidbits of information. You can even find some NPCs while adventuring that may need your help!

ActionTrip: How do you intend to present quests?

Bill Roper: We are using predominantly the same method we did in the Diablo series, with some excellent augmentations that have sprung up in current RPGs and MMOs. Many are gained through NPC interaction in the common areas of the game, while others can be earned "out in the field." In order to get in as many quests as possible, we don't try and have every line of text read by the characters, although you do get to hear them talk to you whenever you interact with them.

ActionTrip: Tell us more about skills and how characters progress throughout the game.

Bill Roper: We have just recently gone through a major overhaul of the character classes and skills, so it is a little difficult to be specific since we are still tuning. Basically, training points are earned as players progress through the game that can be spent on learning new skills and spells. These skills are quite varied, depending on the class you're playing. They are presented in a modified "skill tree" format that allows more diversity in growing your character than the Diablo series. We also cap certain skills at specific maximum levels of expertise to avoid many of the balance issues we see in other games (including some of our past work). As players gain levels, they can add points to their base statistics and also raise or learn new skills / spells, balancing the two for maximum effect.

ActionTrip: How's the multiplayer going?

Bill Roper: Very well. We've been playing a LOT of multiplayer games and have already started testing our server infrastructure in a closed alpha. It is very encouraging from a technology standpoint and is a heck of a lot of fun from the point of playing the game.

ActionTrip: Who do you have working on the score for Hellgate:London? What type of music can we expect to hear?

Bill Roper: We have a pair of composers (Sascha Dikiciyan and Cris Velasco of ­Sonic Mayhem) out of Los Angeles that work with the development team to create the music for Hellgate: London. It is probably best categorized as industrial, horror, electronic, drum & bass, breakbeat, classical, with a twinge of hard rock and metal. (Sweet! - Vader)

ActionTrip: Roughly how many hours of gameplay can players expect?

Bill Roper: We're estimating it will take somewhere between 30 - 40 hours to get through the single-player storyline content. Of course, when you go online, that explodes into lots of additional content and our dedication to continuing to create more and more for players to do.