07-23-2006, 01:58 AM
Hellgate: London certainly has a lot of promise; perhaps the most of any game-in-development since NWN from my perspective. We'll just have to wait and see how much of that promise it is able to live up to.
I hope the gameplay ends up being a bit more nuanced than the early video clips would suggest. So far in most CRPGs that use 3D graphics, the graphics end up being more of a hindrance to the gameplay than an enhancement. For example, imagine a melee fighter in NWN or WoW (or insert many other 3D CRPGs here) walking along in the great forest, when he encounters a firebreathing, flying drake. What is he going to do? He's going to run up and hit it with his sword, right? Could you do that if you were playing Quake? No, you couldn't even do it in Starcraft.
These types of considerations aren't necessary for it to be a very good game, in the vein of Diablo II (which to me is a step down from Diablo in this regards, but that is debatable). But at the same time, if it ends up being "just" an updated graphics format for Diablo II style gameplay, it will be a bit of a shame.
I hope the gameplay ends up being a bit more nuanced than the early video clips would suggest. So far in most CRPGs that use 3D graphics, the graphics end up being more of a hindrance to the gameplay than an enhancement. For example, imagine a melee fighter in NWN or WoW (or insert many other 3D CRPGs here) walking along in the great forest, when he encounters a firebreathing, flying drake. What is he going to do? He's going to run up and hit it with his sword, right? Could you do that if you were playing Quake? No, you couldn't even do it in Starcraft.
These types of considerations aren't necessary for it to be a very good game, in the vein of Diablo II (which to me is a step down from Diablo in this regards, but that is debatable). But at the same time, if it ends up being "just" an updated graphics format for Diablo II style gameplay, it will be a bit of a shame.