Easy ways to make Hellgate London much better

[Grandpa Gamer]

Yes. I bought it and played it. Knowing it would be bad. The sucker I am.

First: I do think the premise is perfect. Nothing beats an invasion from hell as an excuse for slaying hordes of enemies. It's such a great concept, and yet the game fails to take advantage of it.

Take the weapon drops for instance: When you kill the foul demons of hell, they drop fancy weapons and stuff. Why? (They don't seem to use the weapons themselves.) Is it just because it's a computer game? A cliché not in need of any explanation? Come on! Let me propose this: The demons of hell hunger for death and destruction. Their goal is the opposite of life and creation. They don't care if it's their own death and destruction. So, they provide humans with fancy new means of said death and destruction. Voila! A reasonable way to explain the abundance of fancy weapons in the game.

But wait! There is more! If the weapons you use, and your use of them, are part of some evil scheme, should you not be wary of those weapon drops? Could there not be two human factions - one faction that fights evil with evil (conjuring up demons to fight demons is an option in the game) and another faction that shuns anything from the demon realm, only using human weapons? Suddenly we have to make important choices, not just look at the numbers and go with wahtever dishes out the most damage. Instant depth to the setting and enormous potential for story developmnet and role play.

It didn´t take me long to come up with this. And in my (not so humble) opinion, it's much better than anything the game has to offer. Did they have any writer on the staff at all?

 

[kingcomrade]

 

[Erzherzog]

Their goal is the opposite of life and creation. They don't care if it's their own death and destruction. So, they provide humans with fancy new means of said death and destruction.

 

[RK47]

*post above me sums it up well*

 

[OSK]

I thought it was the gameplay that was heavily flawed, not the story.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

I thought it was the gameplay that was heavily flawed, not the story.

my opinion as well, although the story was also rather lacking. its a crying shame, because the cg cinematic they showed at e3 for it years ago looked fucking badass.

 

[Naked Ninja]

because the cg cinematic they showed at e3 for it years ago looked fucking badass.

Agreed. I don't know how the cinematics department got the memo about theme and tone but the in game level designers fucked it up so badly!?! Idiots.

 

[Keldorn]

FPS gameplay + waves of clickfestian combat + eye candy = GARBAGE.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Rubbish, the gameplay had potential and I enjoyed it for a while. There were just some glaring design flaws.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

I thought it was the gameplay that was heavily flawed, not the story.

Sure, the gameplay is flawed. But I suppose making a well balanced game of this kind is rather difficult. The point of this thread is that Hellgate London, perhaps more than any other game I can think of, has glaring design faults that would be extremely easy to fix. I'm used to rubbish writing in games, but here the writing is bad beyond belief. Doom 3, for instance, a game not known for it's superb story, is much more involving on a simlilar theme.

Another easy way to improve Hellgate London: Get rid of the voice acting. Simple as that. The game is bucking the trend an is not fully voiced, but the little snippets of spoken monologue you get each time you click an NPC are ridiculously bad and annoying. What were they thinking?

 

[Kingston]

The E3 cinematic was indeed badass. But the game itself is horribly bland, and the story is complete bollocks, the gameplay is tiresome. Such horrible execution on all fronts is rather astounding.

 

[Nicolai]

There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climbbbbb
dance dance dance

why can't we embed music, I have the perfect song for this post

 

[Raapys]

There were many problems with Hellgate. Heck, the game didn't even look great; the texture quality in some places are of lower quality than Wolfenstein 3D.

As to some of the problems; the enviroments are simply horrible. In addition, there's not nearly enough variation, making it laughably repetitive after an hour or so. They basically ruined the excellent item system from D2; no more set items, no more unique items. The skill trees are not nearly as great as D2's. There's fewer and less interesting classes. Where in D2 you had 5 very different cities to visit, in Hellgate you're going from one stupid subway station to the next.

So, just like most other Diablo 2 wannabes, this one fails on improving upon the fundamental aspects of the original and thus becomes little more than 'average'.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

Ok, here's another one: The design of the game environment.

Many have complained about the bland and repetitive streets of London. Myself I don't care if one street corner looks much like the next. The ruined city is not the problem. No, what irks me are the human underground bases. They don't look lived in. Other than a few token bedrolls on the floor, they seem completely sterile. No clutter. No sign of human activity. I don't mind NPC:s just standing around doing nothing. That's just convenient. But their hideouts should look inhabited.

Worse still: Hell. You get to visit parts of the demon realm. But here hell looks rather like some extension of the British Museum. Sterile. No clutter, no nothing. I recall another game with hellgates... they were called Oblivion gates... Sure, the demon realm of Oblivion got repetitive too, but the design was infinitely better than what Hellgate London has to offer. Hellish environments are pretty common in computer games, and any derivate of Doom or Quake would have been an improvement. Designing hell should be an invitation to let your imagination run wild. But instead, it's blatant lack of imagination that stands out here.

 

[Crispy]

Yet another perfect example of what ails the CRPG and computer game industry in general: all hype and promises, utterly ridiculous end product compared to its original premise.

It has good sound, though.

 

[RK47]

i think it's the only diablo clone where i never made it past level 10. There was not much incentive except phat lewt to go on since te environs are pretty dull and the mechanics are old and tired. Skills trees lack any effective diversity, so why bother going different path?

 

[Radisshu]

This topic reminds me on that "how to RP in Oblivion"-thing someone linked to.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

This topic reminds me on that "how to RP in Oblivion"-thing someone linked to.

No. This is nothing of the kind. Read my posts.

Perhaps the title of this topic should have been "Missed opportunities of Hellgate London" or "Why Hellgate London could and should have been much better". I'm not suggesting actually making Hellgate London better. I'm suggesting that we learn something from the mistakes the designers of the game made.

 

[Radisshu]

This topic reminds me on that "how to RP in Oblivion"-thing someone linked to.

No. This is nothing of the kind. Read my posts.

Perhaps the title of this topic should have been "Missed opportunities of Hellgate London" or "Why Hellgate London could and should have been much better". I'm not suggesting actually making Hellgate London better. I'm suggesting that we learn something from the mistakes the designers of the game made.

Well, it reminded me of the "How to RP in Oblivion"-thing because it too suggested that you should add another level of gaming by pretending (e.g, "Maybe the demons really want me to use those weapons?").

 

[Thrasher]

It was just plain medicore. After the hype, and the pre-release cinematics, it was a huge letdown.

Nothin special about it. Nothin deep. And clunky looking and feeling.

 

[Texas Red]

What cinematics are you talking about? The one with a woman in tight clothing doing ninja stunts and shooting monsters? *That* got your attention?

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

Well, it reminded me of the "How to RP in Oblivion"-thing because it too suggested that you should add another level of gaming by pretending (e.g, "Maybe the demons really want me to use those weapons?").

No. (Well, I understand that it reminded you of that, but I'm suggesting nothing of the sort.)

This is not about ways the player can enhance gameplay by pretending or by any other means. It's about how easily the developers could have made Hellgate London a much better game.

Here is another one: The quests. They ar all of the most simple kind: Go! kill! fetch! (Faster Pussycat) Kill! Kill! THat's okay in this kind of game. But the reasons you are given for all this killing and fetching are flippant and pointless. Here is a suggestion: What do people eat in this game world? How do they avoid dying from starvation? My best guess is that they eat demon meat. There's obviously plenty of that to be had. Quests should concentrate on such necessities as food. What if only certain species of demonkind are edible? Why not have a scientist chef trying to figure out what demon parts are viable as food? Plenty of opportunities for dark humor involving taste and nutrition value, instead of the terrible attempts at "hilarious" jokes the game throws at you.