Hellgate: London Community Interview

IAHGames’ official Hellgate: London website has been updated with a new community interview targeted at Hellgate: London art director Phil Shenk.

Q: Will unique items be revamped to have more unique models/textures? Currently, unique items don’t have much differentiation from normal / white items.

A: I sort of addressed this in the question above, about set-piece items. Uniques fall into the same category. We all know that it would be superior to have a unique look, well, unique. When we shipped, we just ran out of time to make new models or textures. Going forward, we’re going to try and do more of that. either make new textures for them, or figure out a way to change their colors, or ideally make new models.

Again, the more work we put into making them look special, the less of them we can do. It’s always a tradeoff between spending time to make new art, and putting in lots of cool stuff that improves the game-play.

It’s funny, because in D2, it *seemed* like we had a lot of unique looks because all we had to do was make a new inventory art for it. You didn’t really notice that it didn’t change your character, since it was so small on the screen.

We’re in a different world now. a modern world of high-end graphics that take forever to make 🙂 But know that it would definitely be cooler to have unique looks, so we’ll do our best!