Does Hellgate: London offer anything innovative to the genre or to players that are used to Doom 3, Counterstrike/Half-Life 2, Diablo II who feel familiar with first and third-person view modes?

Bill Roper: We believe that there really isn't a game out there that is quite like Hellgate: London. Our experience with people actually playing the game at E3 proved that out to us, as well. Hellgate: London is first and foremost an Action-RPG, so in terms of how you gain success in the game, it is much more akin to Diablo II than Half Life 2. We do, however, employ a very different perspective for game play than the Diablo franchise in that we use both first person and close 3rd person views. Although at times the game has a very distinct FPS feel to it, we have gone to great lengths to remove the necessity for players to have pixel-perfect aiming skills or hyper-accurate reflexes to succeed in the game. Killing monsters is all about your character level, your character skills and spells, and the equipment and weapons you've managed to acquire.

What we learned specifically from E3 was that both RPG and FPS players couldn't put the game down. RPG gamers immediately were picking up loot, comparing items, equipping their Templar, and wading knee-deep into randomly spawned packs of demons. FPS players went straight into the demon slaying, and at first didn't seem to really notice all the loot dropping around them. And even though they weren't immediately taking full advantage of new equipment, they were having a blast. It was also great fun to see a hard-core FPS player's eyes widen when the huge LEVEL 2 ACHIEVED message came up ion the screen. We really beat people over the head with that at the show since you don't get a lot of set-up as to what you're playing when you walk up to a game at E3. I had more than a few Shooter fanatics stop and say, “I leveled? What can I do with that?” When we'd open the character stat and inventory interface they flipped.

Basically, some gamers found an FPS in their RPG, while others found an RPG in their FPS. All of them were very happy.