Do you remember Hellgate: London? Flasgship Studios’ pretty flopped Hack&Slay from 2007? Well, the game is getting a successor and ex-Blizzard legend Bill Roper is behind it.
Hellgate: London wasn’t exactly a success story, despite some original features and a thoroughly entertaining multiplayer mode with instanced, randomly designed levels. Released in fall 2007, the title largely flopped despite solid ratings and Flagship Studios went bankrupt. Publisher Bandai Namco consequently pulled the plug on the servers at the beginning of 2009. The Korean publisher HanbitSoft took over the rights to the game in order to initially continue to operate it for the Asian market with another studio and later bring it to Europe. However, not much came of it.
Now, however, the newly founded studio Lunacy Games surprises with the announcement of a successor for PC and consoles. The game will initially be called Hellgate: Redemption and will be developed as a AAA title based on Unreal Engine 5. Rights holder HanbitSoft is apparently once again acting as publisher for the loot-heavy demon hunt.
What’s interesting is that Diablo legend Bill Roper is once again behind the studio. Exactly the same Bill Roper, who founded Flagship Studios at the time and went bankrupt after the two games Hellgate: London and Mythos.
“I’ve dreamed of returning to the franchise we created in 2007 for many, many years,” said Bill Roper, CEO and co-founder of Lunacy Games. “I’ve always felt like I had a score to settle with the Hellgate IP, and that’s why our code name for the project is Hellgate: Redemption.”
Lunacy Games not only wants to rely on Unreal Engine 5 for development, but also on cloud servers and as many standard solutions as possible in order to put resources into development as much as possible. “We will retain the core gameplay and story elements of Hellgate: London, but our goal is to create an exciting new experience that leverages the many advances the industry has made over the past 17 years since the original game was released has,” said Roper.
In the announcement, the predecessor is described somewhat pompously as “an influential game that was ahead of its time in many ways.” “It pioneered the looter-shooter genre with randomly generated levels that required its own 3D engine with real-time lighting and a then-unique business model now known as the Battle Pass. At the time, a second company even had to to develop and operate the online portion of Hellgate: London.”
Well, let’s be surprised at what Lunacy Games will give us with Hellgate: Redemption. In any case, there are no pictures or even videos for the time being. But we actually found an old video from 2012 on our server about the attempt to publish the predecessor internationally.
Hellgate is now free to play. Are you interested now? In any case, the fresh trailer conveys impressions.
