Diablo III and Hellgate: London - Same Genealogy?
Saturday, 28th June 2008 - the day demons rose once more in Diablo 3.
With the announcement of Diablo 3 and the evident excitement building I’ve been reflecting on another relatively recent game launch, the hype preceding it’s launch, and it’s failure to gather the critical acclaim that so many eager fans wanted: Hellgate London.
The fact that I’m mentioning the two games in the same breath shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, not even the developers: Flagship Studios (FSS) endeavored to lever some extra hype into their product by precision use of the “From the makers of Diablo” message. Many people now excited about the prospect of D3 were (and some still are, I guess?) excited about HG:L.
What I do find strange is that very few people are really looking at the roots of these two games. Whilst I don’t think they really should be compared as like games, we shouldn’t dismiss where they both came from …
Reflections
I’ve been trying to absorb as much information as is being variously distributed through interviews and snippets from developers at Blizzard regarding Diablo 3 – hey, I’m a huge fan (in the figurative sense) of the franchise and it has me really excited, I’ll not hide that.
And what has struck me from listening to some interviews, some of the developer panel streams from the WWI, from witnessing some of the effects and what-not already in the D3 gameplay is this: there are some striking similarities between HG:L and D3, and not just in gameplay elements or mechanics, but in the emotive language used by the developers to describe their products.
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.
I guess that might not seem terribly surprising if you know your developer history, considering that the founders of Flagship Studios were once working at Blizzard on a then un-announced sequel to Diablo 2…
The Harsh Light Of Day
It’s too difficult to write this in a completely speculative tone, so the easiest way is for me to just outright say it and then try and smooth the ruffled feathers later:
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!
The failing beyond this is that whilst FSS might have had the notes, they did not have all the staff responsible for some of the brilliant ideas. They knew what they wanted, but an incomplete vision of how to achieve it. This would equate to brilliant ideas, gloriously presented, but poorly implemented. Which sounds like HG:L to me.
It just feels too “right” to me that this is what transpired and led to the birth of HG:L.
I can’t say I blame the FSS founders though. I mean they put some hard work in, no doubt, to concept development for D3 before they left Blizzard. I can almost see, or hear, the dialogue.
I can so totally see the redundant Blizzard North employees sitting around commiserating themselves on the couch, when one of them says “hey you know, I still have the prelim brief for D3 on my PDA as well as some sketches for some cool plague graphics …”:
FSS 1 “Take a look at these notes and tell me what you think”
FSS 2 “Wow, those look great”
FSS 1 “Ok, so let’s implement it and get this game going!”
FSS 2 “Any more detail on how to implement <idea x>?”
FSS 1 “Nope - that was <such-n-such>’s concept, they would have been in charge of the team on that one. Can’t you just work with the idea?”
FSS 2 “Umm … sure … not really certain on how that was supposed to integrate with the rest of the game, but we’ll see what we can do”
Disclaimer: this is purely speculative bullshiting and hypothetical. What really happened after Blizzard North dissolved is a matter for those involved to divulge.
HG:L fanboys may at this point be readying pitchforks and torches to come get me, but let me make this clear: I’m not up for a fight on this, I will concede in a heartbeat that this is just my gut feeling, and that I’ll also concede that it could be wrong.
What Blizzard are talking about, and what they’ve shown us, just seems more genuine. And I find myself wondering “Is this how people feel when they finally get to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa in person after seeing so many reproductions; that no matter how good a copy, the original is always better?”
The Result Of Using Something That You Don’t Understand In The First Place
Given that many elements of the Diablo franchise mechanics were (sorry, ‘are’ – they’re not dead yet) present in HG:L, and this is undisputed I believe, no-one should be surprised that FSS tried to leverage as much of their experience and knowledge from days at Blizzard North as they could.
What annoys me is the failure to execute.
If you’re going to replicate an idea - execute it at least as good, if not better than, the original developer.
I’ve had highs and lows with HG:L. From glorious joy at the start, through to anger at bugs and patch release schedules, then some comfort in patches, more anger at performance issues and finally to apathy.
My disappointment with HG:L has only been reinvigorated by seeing the seeds of D3.
What Could Have Been And What Might Be
These are my impressions and comparison between the two products in terms of how each studio appears to have taken the idea of developing a next-gen D2 sequel by improving on the concept of D2:
Some of what follows might seem a bit disjointed. I believe this is a result of the disjointed subject. These could also serve as notes for Blizzard on What Not To Wear … errr sorry, wrong programme! … what not to do. See I couldn’t help myself; had to include a British cultural reference.
Idea: Add depth to quests and NPC interactions so the story comes to life.
FSS: Add pop culture references and a bucketload of British Pythonesque humour. And the broker *boggle* Oh, and don’t forget the book cut scenes.
Blizzard: Add pop-up overlaid screens displaying NPC/PC interactions. Continue doing what works: voice acting for everything and fitting to the theme of Gothic Medievil.
Witness:
I saw more “life” in the brief NPC interaction in the D3 gameplay trailer than in the entire of the HG:L experience. It is INCREDIBLE how much of a difference it makes when the NPC’s talk to you. When they don’t try and be cute or funny the whole time.
HG:L bears down on you tirelessly with quests driven by text boxes; text boxes fuelled almost entirely by “in” jokes and pop culture references. I found myself dreading the next quest.
It’s INCREDIBLE how much of a drag it is when it simply seems the NPC is trying to be “smarter” than you and forcing you to analyse their words to detect the cultural references. Character development and NPC integration? Jessica Summerisle? WTH? Massive intro cinematic, used to hook the world into buying the game, where a small girl survives, supposedly because she will have a massive part to play in saving the world … and she what, leads you into a dark cavern so you can “touch” some “sigil” ?? ummm - she has a bigger role to play? yeah, what’s that? Perhaps she could bring me a coffee next, I’m a bit tired! There is absolutely no life at all to the NPC’s in HG:L, they may as well not be there. And I HATE the way they all stand around like they’re doped up on lithium and then freaking dance and clap their hands when you complete a quest. Yeah, way to express yourself as the burn consumes the world *boggle*
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: More engaging environments. Better depth and immersion.
FSS: Go 3d. Build our own engine. Add distance and motion blur. Gravity. Oh and smoke. And breakable crates. Broken building fronts. Random heavy machinery (tractors/diggers) and other vehicles broken and scattered. Insurmountable concrete blocks on the road. Rinse and repeat. The list goes on. I’ll stop there.
Blizzard: Levels where you can move up and down, artistic and graphical detail. Use industry proven pre-existing graphics engine and simply build the content around it’s capabilities. Trees. Water. Weather. Fog. Gravity. Destructive environment.
Witness:
The environments in D3 (whilst reminding me a little of Baldurs Gate 2) seem to have a lot more loving detail in them. The rooms actually have shit strewn around, “things” left behind broken in the wake of fleeing masses. There appears to be real texture to things. You can see beyond the ‘plane’ you’re travelling on. Things rolls down hill nicely. You can break things.
Even in newer patches for HG:L; entire buildings appear completely and utterly cleaned out - except for maybe a chair, or a bed side table and a still working lamp - there’s no sense of “being”. No sense of exploring a destroyed city on the verge of being absorbed by the burn. Too “clean”. No random crap and rubbish. What, the first thing the the minions of hell send through is the Blade Husks … followed closely by … the Janitor Husks? WTH?!? And lets not get started on poor collision detection and ragdoll physics. And the cultural references fail in the environment as well, there’s no depth to them: imagine if you stumbled on the Tardis and you could actually enter it to travel somewhere. There’s an opportunity missed.
What is baffling here is that D3 looks so much more engaging in the only small section we’ve seen, and it’s a damn iso perspective game. If an ISOMETRIC game has more visual appeal than a 3D one, shouldn’t you worry?
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: Reduce dependence on Potions for more fluid fast play.
FSS: Umm. Pass. No seriously – lets just copy the potion types from D2, including the different strength levels of them.
Blizzard: Introduce health (and other?) globes.
Witness:
Blizzard have made potions somewhat “redundant” by introducing droppable and instantly applied “health globes”; for better or worse they’re in (feels a little Nintendo to me .. but *shrug* potions are still there apparently). They will add to the fluidity of the game I guess. Better than simply removing the complete reliance on potions though, is reusing the space for a decent hotbar (see next).
FSS made potions somewhat redundant, accidentally, by having a ludicrous monster scaling up to a point whereby it’s near impossible to survive more than one hit by a higher level monster - certainly rarely long enough to hit a potion key enough times to save your sorry arse. And where a monster is equal or lower level you rarely need a potion as they never seem to hit you. Potions only really usefull when fighting an exactly matched oponent.
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: Make access to and use of skills more intuitive and fluid for faster gameplay.
FSS: Hotbar for skills (and items - since items are just skill delivery objects).
Blizzard: Hotbar for skills (and items – can anyone confirm this?)
Witness:
This is a little speculative, as it’s not entirely clear from the trailer … but it appears as though Bliz have made it so that when you hover over one of your hotbar entries it shows similarly related skills, presumably from the same skill tree, so you can quickly change them on the fly. Also added switching skills with the wheel of the mouse. Small thing - but looks like it will work.
FSS? Umm, ok so to add ANYTHING to your hotbar you need to open up your inventory or skills panel (and that doesn’t take any time at all, does it children?) and drag items to the hotbar slots. I hate it. It’s cumbersome, and for some god only knows reason, graphically intense so that the draging of the skills does actually feel like it’s a drag. Sure, you can reassign keys - but seriously, having everything assigned to the numeric row by default - insanity!
And the wheel mouse REALLY should have been defaulted to cycling through the weapon sets rather than the view mode. In the heat of battle who switches from 1st to 3rd person or vice versa? Not many. Who would like to switch weapons quickly? My guess = many *boggle*
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: Random quests for replayability.
FSS: Umm. Pass. Oh - Broker! no wait… still pass.
Blizzard: Randomly generating quests in virtually any location, including having enterable sub-areas.
Witness:
Again, another hard one given how much we’ve seen of D3, but Bliz are talking about random quests and not just hunt and gather types, and I for one believe that they will do it. If only because they have seen how badly received not having it was with HG:L.
FSS talked about it - and what we got were “run to <x>, <kill || collect> <y>” quests.
And they couldn’t even get that right - there’s no replayability in that, the “wanted” posters don’t update with new random monsters to go hunt down, there’s no on-going generation of quests - simply the ones coded into the game, and once you’ve completed them you’re done. No replayability beyond trawling areas killing random mobs hoping for a drop.
Oh I almost forgot the “broker”. Damn, maybe I’ll be lucky next time and not remember him. I say no more. If you like the “broker” implementation you need help.
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: Customise the player character experience so players feel more ownership.
FSS: Allow players to select and customise character appearance variables.
Blizzard: Allow players to pick gender on all classes.
Witness:
FSS made the characters fully customisable in terms of appearance, but why? Many combinations just look like shit. Seriously. Try hitting random a few times and tell me how many you actually like? Wanna be a fat midget with a fucking purple mohawk? ahhh - doesn’t scream hero to the world. More like Attitude ridden biker lesbian - which is fine if that’s what you are, but then I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of gamers who dream of being an angsty lesbian biker.
Bliz seem to have said “nah - we know you guys just want to look HOT, so we’re adding gender, but you’re all going to be kick arse HOT legendary heroes - deal with it, and trust us - you’ll look COOL in your gear, which will be so abundant and varied that you’ll feel unique”. At the end of the day I’m happy with chiselled muscles and an awesome physique in my hero – if I want to play with modelling 3d characters I can grab Poser(tm), I don’t need a game for that.
Win or Fail: You decide.
Idea: Random map generation to extend game life through replayability.
FSS: Integrate random map generation with graphics engine? Another custom random generator?
Bliz: Custom random map engine. Distinct from the graphics engine.
Witness:
The streets in HG:L are dull.Lets not mince words here: maps in HG:L, aside from the well generated fixed maps like British Museum, totally blow chunks. Seriously any map where I can run from one end to the other in under 30 seconds, such as ALL the above ground maps in HG:L, just dodging around monsters … wtf?! NO wrong turns, no branches, and whilst the streets may “curve” around corners, they’re all essentially straight line runs. Random maybe. Enjoyable? no way.
And broken. By their own admission the development of their in house graphics engine lead to smaller content sets at launch. But seriously - they promised all along for maps to get better. And they just haven’t - they’re adding things like the wilds, “endless dungeons”, but for some reason they can’t go back and triple the size of the London street maps?
What’s the point of a random map generator if you can’t simply code a command that simply tells the engine to generate larger maps.
It’s still too early to really see what Blizzard are doing, but the language they’re using is the same. They’ve both got acronyms for their random map generators (I’m at work and have references to neither with me - if pressed I’ll find them for you *shrug*), but again I can’t help but think, based on the snippet in the gameplay trailer, that Bliz will have it right - the areas already look to have more “depth” than HG:L maps - and again, D3 is isometric! How can an isometric game have more depth than a full 3d???
Win or Fail: You decide.
The Day The Music Died
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.
But right now, having just seen one small piece of D3, I’m already pretty confident I’d be happier playing the beta of the 1-2 levels we saw on the weekend over and over and over and over than I would be re-entering the world of HG:L. I would trade my HG:L for a single playable D3 level today. And yes - I like the graphics displayed in D3, y’all can go to hell if you think they’re too “pretty” and “light”: I’ve had 7 months of grey and bleak and welcome the prospect of variation.
Saturday, 28th June 2008 - the day the music died for HG:L.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Blizzard, Diablo 3, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
