EA aids Hellgate publishing
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.