Hellgate: London is the game that never dies. Originally released in 2007 as an action RPG set in demon-infested London, developer Flagship Games went bankrupt in 2008 and the game shut down the following year; it reemerged as a free-to-play MMO in Korea in 2011, Steam in 2014 Tried Greenlight (which I don't think went anywhere), and finally launched on Steam a few years later. And now, for some reason, it's back again with Hellgate: Redemption.
Lunacy Games, the developer of Hellgate: Redemption (not the official title, at least for now, but the codename), is led by industry veteran Bill Roper, who served as producer, writer and director on Hellgate: He is an industry veteran who, after a long career at Blizzard, served as producer, writer and director on "Hellgate: London. I've dreamed for years and years about returning to the franchise we created in 2007," said Roper. That's why the project is code-named Hellgate.
Details of the game have not been released, but according to Lunacy, it will be a "triple-A PC/console game" made with Unreal Engine 5 and set in "an alternate universe, an as yet undisclosed part of the demonic apocalypse world."
"'Hellgate: but our intention is to build an exciting new experience that leverages the many advances the industry has seen over the past 17 years since the original game was released."
"The game will be a new experience for the game's developers and publishers. [Hellgate: London was by no means a terrible game: it had an overall Metacritic score of 70% and sold just under a million copies; there was quite a bit to like, even when I reinstalled it a decade ago; it was a great game, but it was also a game with a lot to like. [Hellgate: London was a cinematic smash at E3 2006.
But it was not quite ready for the spotlight at launch: in a 2013 interview with Edge (via Wayback Machine), developer Max Schaeffer, like Roper, a veteran of early Blizzard games including Diablo He said that the game was rushed, unpolished, the storytelling was choppy, and the economic model, which includes a single-player campaign, free multiplayer, and subscription-based premium multiplayer, was "jumbled and confusing."
"One of our regrets with the 'Diablo' series is that it was like 'set it on fire and forget it.' "We did one expansion, and that was it. We missed the opportunity to grow the game and grow the universe as much as we wanted. With [Hellgate], we didn't want to do that. We wanted it to grow over time. For example, we wanted to leave London and visit all the major cities in the world."
That was more than a decade ago, and it's been more than 17 years since Hell Gate appeared: but apparently that dream won't last long. Maybe this time it will work.
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