Hellgate: London At A Glance

Not long after posting my previous article about the upcoming release of Diablo 3 I spoke with a friend (over Live Messenger, of course--oral dialog is for illiterate losers) about the matter to see what he thought of the news. His blunt reply was that Diablo 3 would "be boring." Surprised, I asked him why, and he (with a bit of a smug attitude, I might add) informed me that the true creators of Diablo had broken off from Blizzard (under the name Flagship Studios) and created the "true Diablo 3" (which I'd never heard of), Hellgate: London.



Now, as much as I would like to retort that the game should have been called "Hellgate: Reno" for the sake of accuracy, the article and trailer (a trailer almost worthy of Blizzard's own cinematics department, if not for some cheesy clichés of acting and directing flaws--as one YouTuber so accurately observed, "That demon ate that ladies TITS LOLOL [sic]") gives me pause. As I've mentioned previously, post-apocalypse and sci-fi futuristic are favorite themes of mine, so this game gets points right off the bat. As for whether or not it is actually "the true Diablo 3", I'm inclined to disagree. Of course, the rights to Diablo 3 are owned by Blizzard, and so no second company can just go off and create an obvious direct sequel, and the visuals do have a dark, gothic appeal. Hell, even the box art has clear Diablo-inspired themes. I'm inclined to say that the screenshots show a game that is a bit less Diablo-like than my friend would imply, though. It looks more like a dark Oblivion than some kind of Diablo spin-off to me, but then I've never played the original games.



I'll try to find time to at least have a peek at the earlier Diablo games, then compare what I see to what Hellgate: London is, versus what Diablo 3 will be. I'm not of the opinion that great art can't be emulated, and even if the new Diablo 3 graphics look a bit like Word of Warcraft ("it IS WoW", claims my over-exaggerating friend), I'm willing to bet that they'll get all the kinks hammered out by the time of release. I almost have to believe that, or else I'd be giving up any hope that Starcraft 2 will be a credit sequel to the fantastic series.