http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/hellg...ml?sid=6148723

"In observance of this year's Electronic Entertainment Exposition, we took an up-close look at Hellgate: London, the upcoming first-person action role-playing game from Flagship Studios--a studio founded by the original creators of Diablo and Diablo II. Flagship's founders hope that this next game can be as compelling as those previous games (which were infamously addictive), though the developer is taking a slightly different tack by making the new game fully 3D, and played from a first-person perspective."

Relatively basic preview.
-- Scaper-X

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Scapes

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/hellgate-london/704131p1.html

"Until now, only one of Hellgate's character classes had been revealed -- the tough-as-nails melee class known as the Templar. Flagship is using E3 as an opportunity to showcase another class, one quite the polar opposite to this hardy frontline fighter. It's called the Cabalist, and as the name implies, its purview is the metaphysical realm. Hellgate's world being one that is besieged by demons, it's logical that certain humans exist that will attempt to subvert their considerable power. The Cabalists are these people. Descended from an ancient order of mystics devoted to furthering human evolution, these seekers of knowledge dabble in and explore every avenue that may serve their ends. The demon invasion is unquestionably such an opportunity."

Cabalists screw with superscience.
-- Scaper-X

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Scapes

http://pc.ign.com/articles/704/704165p1.html

"We've seen Hellgate: London more than once at this point. We've seen the heavily armored Templar character class in the past but at Namco's pre-E3 event, we finally peeped the recently announced Cabalist class. Where Templars are hard-core combatant defenders of the future, cabalists see the demons and the Hellgate as a opportunity for the evolution of mankind."

And people wonder why Templars and Cabalists hate each other so much.
-- Scaper-X

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Scapes

What do you do if you put your heart and soul into the gaming company you work for, only to have them decide on major changes within the organization that just don't fit with your own vision of the future?. For Bill Roper and several other employees at Blizzard North, the answer was to bid Blizzard adieu, and embark on an entirely new adventure. Flagship Studios was born, and the development of Hellgate London began. Now, creating a whole new game is a difficult enough task without the added pressures of founding a studio at the same time. But if you take into account that this group consists largely of people who worked on the Diablo games, you have to believe that they will succeed not only in overcoming these obstacles, but that the end result will be something special… Let me take you to the hells and beyond.

http://www.hookedgamers.com/forwarde...llgate_london/

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

In the wake of Diablo and Diablo II, the point-and-click action role-playing games that let you hack your way through hordes of monsters, there really haven't been many followers. Until now. The year 2005 has already marked the appearance of a few new action RPGs, and there are several more in the works. It's fitting that one of them will be from the original creators of the Diablo series, who have set up a new shop at Flagship Studios. Their game is Hellgate: London, a hack-and-slash game that takes place in a postmodern version of London, England, after a catastrophic demonic invasion, and, unusually enough, plays from a first-person perspective (or a third-person, behind-the-back view). Some time ago, we had a chance to get our hands on the game once more, to take a closer look at it. Here's what we found.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/hellg...&mode=previews

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

THE ACRONYM RAM now means "Random Access Mayhem."

Hellgate: London will bring us a stylised and randomised London, with hellspawn to boot.

"London is perfect for the sort of game we sought to make," said Max Schaefer, chief operating officer, Flagship Studios. "There are centuries, eons even, of history beneath the streets of London. From druidic sites to plague pits to Victorian era sewers, to WWII bomb shelters and factories, to the modern Underground system. There's a whole host of locations that make for great, creepy, spooky gameplay."

The upcoming first person shooter will present each player with a different game, a different path through the plagued streets and underworld of London.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28556

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

Something wicked this way comes. A portal to hell is soon to open in the centre of old London town. Residents will be killed, the Knights Templar resistance will be forced underground, the mad Liverpudlian who stands at Oxford Circus asking everyone whether they're a 'sinner or a winner' will be proved to have had remarkable foresight. Put simply: we're up shit creek. Why us? Why us Flagship Studios? What have we done to anger you?

"London is perfect for the sort of game we sought to make," explains Max Schaefer, chief operating officer of London's imminent destruction. "There are centuries, aeons even, of history beneath the streets of London. From druidic sites to plague pits to Victorian era sewers, to WWII bomb shelters and factories, to the modern Underground system: there's a whole host of locations that make for great, creepy, spooky gameplay." So, in short, we're the quaintest of the quaint and the spookiest of the spooked - in a nice fuzzy historical way. "But the single biggest factor would be the historical fame of the Underground," chimes in Dave Glenn, art director on the project. "Most major metropolises have subway systems, but none have the recognition or historical significance of the original one. The iconography, the mix of old and new, the varied historical uses, even the construction methods of the tube gives us a bottomless well of history from which to weave our own unique story."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=131777

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

London, a land famous for the London Bridge, Big Ben, Ali G, Harry Potter, the Spice girls and... demons? (And no I don't mean Scary Spice). Yes it's true, in the near future, demons will freely roam London. No need to cancel your travel plans though, I'm merely talking about Hellgate London (HL), developer Flagship Studio's macabre vision of London in the not too distant future. Unlike conventional RPGs, HL is similar to Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (VTMB), an action RPG, played out from a first and third person perspective.

http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp...582&cat_id=698

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

"It's very much, 'Hey, you got your shooter in my RPG! Hey, you got your RPG in my shooter!'" says Dave Brevik, creator of Hellgate: London (and formerly project lead, design lead, and lead programmer of Diablo and Diablo II ). No doubt, the game reaches across the shooter-RPG chasm-and into totally new fantasy-game territory-in more ways than one, though the most obvious is the inclusion of first-person gameplay. Although melee combat always takes place in the third person ("There are lots of visual moves and melee skills associated with animations, and you'd lose all of that by being in first person," explains Brevik), both first- and third-person play are at your disposal through the rest of the game.

"I love shooters, but I hated the lack of depth. I hated that I was limited to six guns, and that I went through a maze and at the end I fought a big boss and I won," Brevik says. "I never felt like I was changing my character or there was any story involved. So I said, what if we have a first-person game where we randomize the levels like we did in Diablo, and there are not six guns-there are 100 guns? That's the game I wanted to play: a first-person shooter with an RPG on the back end." Which pretty much describes Hellgate to a T. "It's action oriented; you're shooting all sorts of monsters and there are lots of things happening. But at the same time, it's very much an RPG: You're doing quests and there's a story and you're building up your character and modifying stats-things that aren't in most shooters."

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3145761

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus

Genuinely innovative games are pretty rate these days. You'd think someone would've had the idea to hybridize the multiplayer FPS shooter and the tried-and-true hack n' slash style of an multiplayer action RPGs before, but Flagship Studios' Hellgate London is the first real effort in this direction. Much of the game will be very familiar to FPS fans, and much of it will be very familiar to Diablo vets, but the overall shape of the game is simply like something we've never seen before.

The demo we saw featured the female version of the only class revealed thus far, the Templar, and demonstrated the way the melee and ranged weapons would interact in the game. Ranged weapons could be used in first person or third person modes, while melee weapons required third person mode. Dual-wielding any type of weapon was possible for the Templar, as was wielding one weapon of each type. In fact, during the demo, we were shown some of the possibilities of each combination.

http://www.worthplaying.com/article....thread&order=0

[ | Comments: 0 | Post a Comment] Posted By: Sol Invictus