Hellgate: London Soundtrack Review and Postmortem

With the Hellgate: London soundtrack now available for purchase outside of the Collector’s Edition, Music 4 Games has kicked up both an in-depth review and a postmortem article written by Flagship Studios audio manager Dave Steinwedel. A snip from the former:

Back to Hellgate specifically, the music is really effective in capturing both mood and scoring events. The world is going to Hell, you’re in London tasked with the job of sending hell back from whence it came. Cue music…and Cris and Sascha’s score is exactly what I would expect to hear. I didn’t get to play the game as much as I had hoped. But I was playing a bit; someone passed by and said “uh oh, sounds like bad news.” And I thought, yeah…this is pretty bad news. I really love that about game music, well music in general for sure, that many times, basic impressions count for a lot. That guy who just glanced in at the action and heard the music playing got the idea without even processing the information. That’s a qualitative connection there, the music is very appropriate here with very little stipulation otherwise. With me, that’s half the battle, getting that connection.

And a snip from the latter:

In terms of our goals, we met all of them to some degree. The music consistently changes and it does so based on the player. I’ve received comments from both users and developers indicating the sleight of hand works. (I was playing and really into it and all of a sudden I realized the music was blasting away! Where did it come from?)

However, there’s plenty that can be improved.

Since Hellgate can’t be pinned into a certain game category (is it an ARPG, FPS, MMO, or something else altogether?) and has customizable skill trees and over 100 viable weapons, it makes for an infinite number of play styles. Our system, which was scripted and balanced by one person, works well as long as you play the game somewhat like I do (a badass, nonstop killing machine). Stopping to inspect every item, playing tepidly, warping into town to sell loot, and tons of other actions can stop or slow the pace of the game enough to reset the system and keep music from working as intended.