Hellgate: London Interview

GamingTrend has posted a new 52-minute Hellgate: London interview they recently did with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper. For those of us who’d rather not spend nearly an hour listening to one interview, there’s also a full transcript available.

GT: The idea is to minimize the downtime at the shop when you’re playing in multiplayer.

BR: Exactly. And one of the things we wanted to do is that you know there’s a lot of.in RPGs especially, there’s this kinda like hopping between faction and function. Players want the weapons, the armor, the items that give the absolutely best functionality. But in terms of armor, that means that you end up with a brass chestplate, and silver leggings, and orange boots, and white gloves, the yellow hat, and the loose sleeves, and you look.

GT: Like a reject from clown college.

BR: Right. So what we use is that we actually have color themes. So every item here which shown is actually shown in its color theme. So in that radial menu, when it’s equipped, I can do down and use the eyedropper and I can apply that color theme and apply it to everything. So there’s one that changed. So I’ve got this.

GT: Kinda like a burnt orange.

BR: Yeah. And if I go up here to that one, and swaps over, so you can be totally in theme the whole time. That’s one of the other things that happens in terms of for example rarity with items, is that you can find items that has a color theme that’s totally different. The color themes tend to run by faction, so the Cabalists tend to get color themes for all of their armor, but the Hunters set might be really rare, and the set might use the Cabalists so you’d run around and. Basically the idea is that we give the players the ability to customize as much as we can. One of the things that’s so special about this Tempest Rifle that I found is that if I right click it, is that it has these mod slots. This has 3 battery slots in the weapon that I can actually use to enhance the weapon specially based on these different mods that I find. Let me see if I have enough money to buy any. That’s also under misc. He doesn’t, because he’s pretty advanced, as you tend to find them by the time you get to the next station, about an hour in maybe, half hour, you start finding mods. The mods are used to actually customize your weapon, and when you get them, they actually go onto the weapon, but you see it in the inventory screen, you see it when you’re playing in first person, and other players when they get to your character, they’ll actually see the mods as well, and it’s really a fun way that players can do that.