Hellgate: London Q&A

GameSpot has conducted an interview with Flagship Studios’ Erich Schaefer, in which the quiz the chief creative officer about their recently announced action RPG, Hellgate: London. An excerpt to follow:

Q: What can you tell us about the game’s character classes (like the templar) and its character development system? Are we in for a system that features branching trees of skills that will help players make highly different versions of the same profession? Will the system be an extension of what we saw in Diablo II? What will be new?

A: The skill system is currently in flux. Originally we were planning to have skill maps, which would be an extrapolation of Diablo II’s skill trees. We became concerned that this was too complex and might lead to player’s being paralyzed by strange options that they didn’t know enough about, so we are experimenting with a new system. It’s too early to talk about this new system, because it will probably radically evolve, but one big benefit is the ability to create random and rare skills.