Diablo III and Hellgate: London - Same Genealogy?

[GameBanshee News]

Blizzard Guru takes us through some of Hellgate: London's original concepts and speculates as to why they'll be more successful when applied to Diablo III.

Whilst the HG:L hype built for years prior to its release at the end of October 2007 and the D3 hype is just beginning I can’t help but “feel” as though I’ve been presented with some of the same concepts and suggestions about enhanced gameplay for D3 as I’d been promised for HG:L.

We’re being promised random quests, random maps, engaging quests, distinct classes, epic combat, epic characters, fast pace, massive amounts of replayability etc etc. If you watch some of the WWI developer panels and pay attention not only to the shiny glimpse of the new game, you should notice the same language being thrown about that was, and is, thrown about in regards HG:L by Flagship Studios.

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I get the overwhelming feeling that the staff at FSS took with them their preliminary notes and/or knowledge from their short lived development of a D3 product with Blizzard North. It feels like the base notes for a D3 were taken wholesale and used as the basis for HG:L.

Lets face it: that’s what had us so excited wasn’t it? HG:L “felt” like it was the spiritual successor to D2. Everyone thought it, almost everyone said it. We loved it because it “fit” almost everything we’d expect from a D2 sequel. It was even in 3D, had sexy cinematics and guns!

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Seeing the Diablo 3 pre release stuff coming out has been a nail in the coffin for HG:L for me, because I just can’t shake the feeling that FSS were trying to rip the idea and failed. That, because of all the above observations, Blizzard will succeed where FSS could not. At the crux of it Flagship Studios were trying to achieve something that should have been kick arse.

And that, dear reader, is what is at the heart and soul of what I see as FSS’s failure to deliver:

I saw HG:L, I heard it heralded as the spiritual successor to D2 and something instinctive, something primal in me, driven by earlier experiences with D1 and D2, said - “yes, those ideas … I’ve waited so long …”. Then they failed on execution. I had hope for HG:L, right up until the Blizzard WWI. And to be fair to Flagship Studios, the game could still be salvagable certainly.