There's a new interview up at a site called Jorg Spielt with Bill Roper, formerly of Blizzard and now heading up the development of Hellgate: London. He discusses many issues including why he left Blizzard and what similarities there are between Diablo and this latest work. Here's a small snip:
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The interview is offered in two languages, English and German .Joerg: When critics say that Hellgate is just another Diablo clone with different graphics and a different szenario – what is your answer, apart from perhaps hitting them?
Bill Roper: It’s okay if people compare what we’re doing at the core with Diablo – Diablo is a fantastic game. A lot of the core gameplay concepts are definitely part of what Hellgate is. The massive amounts of randomization, tons of loot, collectability, rarity levels. So in this respect, we are very happy with comparisons. Beyond that, we’re doing so much more that it’s difficult to even quantify it. We’ve added the concept of randomizing to almost every single aspect in the game. This allows us to increase the enjoyability of the game, and to add more and more and more content after the game is released. We’ve actually added randomization to rarity locations the game uses to create your game level. For example, you might have been various times to the Underground tubes beneath London. But this time you’re going through, you find an access code which opens a doorway which you never have seen before. And later, when you continue through the level, you find a boss monster which drops a key card which opens that doorway. You go through and find a mini dungeon which has a special reward in it.
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