EA aids Hellgate publishing

By Tom Bramwell Published 8 November, 2006

While Flagship Studios talks up the FPS-style Hunter class.

Encouraged presumably by the success of its collaboration on We Love Katamari (oh), Namco Bandai's come back to EA for help with publishing Flagship Studios' PC debut Hellgate: London in Europe and North America.

Meanwhile, Flagship has announced the game's third playable character class, the Hunter, with developer Bill Roper revealing that its introduction comes in response to requests for a class that emphasises player skill. "By removing auto-aiming and target-locking, the Hunter has been designed to provide a gameplay experience which will appeal directly to FPS players," he said.

Hellgate: London aims to combine the depth of role-playing games with the action of first-person shooters, and thanks to dynamically generated levels, items, enemies and events also aims to offer enormous scope for replay. The game's release date is currently unknown, but we do have some new screenshots.

And with EA now involved in the deal to bring the game to market, the companies were quick to add that this won't affect Flagship's granting of future Hellgate: London product publishing rights to Namco Bandai. Although what that means for other Hellgate titles is hard to predict.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • PearOfAnguish #1 5 years ago

    Auto-aiming? Target locking?

    What?

    Why would you even have those things anyway, it's a damn FPS. And now they need a separate character for them. Stupid.

  • jlaakso #2 5 years ago

    I think it's great that devs are finally playing around with these basic gameplay concepts. Like giving auto-aim to some classes but not to others.

  • Ceatlan #3 5 years ago

    PearlOfAnguish,

    It's not an FPS at all, most previews have described it as a modern day Diablo, with some FPS like components.

    So auto aiming, target locking etc make sense in an action RPG world. Although it does also sound like a good idea to give those who don't want to use them the option not to.

    Edited by 3 at 08/11/06 @ 11:05

  • YourMessageHere #4 5 years ago

    Er, yeah, I have no idea how I managed to play through Deus Ex, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and System Shock 2 without autoaim and target lock. Those are action RPGs, and from the videos I've seen this looks basically like a first-person action RPG like the above games. Autoaim belongs on consoles, there's no excuse for it in first person games on PCs, at least for weapons; granted spells etc. might need something like that.

    Every new thing I see about this makes me suspect a little more strongly it's going to suck. Way to take a good premise and screw it up.

  • MrAtheist #5 5 years ago

    Why the hate? :)

    The game has never claimed to be an FPS, every preview over the past two years has hammered this point home (more about stats than twitch). As Ceatlan says, its a modern day Diablo - Flagship Studios was formed after the shutdown of Blizzard North, many people working on Hellgate were the key people behind the Diablo franchise.

  • Roamer #6 5 years ago

    This is meant to appeal to the RPG fans as well - not just the FPS guys. Hence the auto-aim and target locking, I guess.

  • Ceatlan #7 5 years ago

    YourMessageHere,

    I don't think those games you mentioned fall into the classic definition of action RPGs, they are really FPS games with RPG components (quite heavy I admit in some cases). And as I pointed out, several previews have likened this game more closely to classic action RPGs like Diablo, Dungeon Siege etc albeit with the ability to play in first person 3D.

    I am not saying your desire to not have auto-aim, target locking etc is not a perfectly valid point of view, rather that the previews I have read have indicate that this game is not designed to play exactly along those lines.

    Ceatlan.

  • YourMessageHere #8 5 years ago

    Ceatlan,

    Fair enough, I suppose those games blur boundaries somewhat. However they all allow much more character customisation,they all have dynamic dialogue trees and what amount to XP, which is what makes me think of them as action RPGs. Plus, in engine terms, they're all very clunky compared to pure, non-RPGish FPS games. I'm much more an FPS person than an RPG person; if you're more an RPG person, I can see how the relative lack of character customisation freedom might get you thinking that way. Frames of reference and all that.

    I've neither seen nor read of any option other than a first person camera perspective, so how playing Hellgate can really be compared to playing Diablo is a bit beyond me. The gameplay videos I've seen, however, make me think this game's likely to play broadly like SS2/Deus Ex/V:TM-B did; it was all about first person ranged combat. Having seen those videos I've avoided previews and the like, since it totally turned me off the game, so I may be speaking from ignorance. I love the three games I mentioned, and in hopes of finding another like those I desperately wanted this to be something I'd like, so the fact that, now I've seen it, I utterly loathe the entire look of the game makes me extra-pissed off. Which is why the hate.

  • Reaper #9 5 years ago

    Hellgate:London does have alot of First person screenshots and video's but it does have both first and third person perspectives.(controlled by the mouse wheel)

    The new class that was announced yesterday 'The Hunter' is a twitch based character and was put in because it's what alot of the community wanted to see.

    More info-------------------------------------------
    http://hellgatecentral.rpgplanet.gamespy...