Tabula Rasa video delayed, as I got the chance to interview the creator Richard Garriott and that's going to take time to do. So DOAG Age of Conan will likely launch first :D
I think about Tabula Rasa sometimes wishing I could play it again, it was spectacular but I just remember being drawn to it when I was young and the sentiment lingers with me.
+nerdslayer If you ever need a great game to talk about, there is one from the 80's called Alternate Reality:The City/The Dungeon by Philip Price. They made two parts but stopped and never finished the game. They worked for Datasoft at the time. I think you'll find the history very interesting. (It was in my opinion the first ever MMORPG Simulation. Basically simulated a MMORPG before they were invented.) It had 3D grafix that were way a head of its time. Pretty much one of the most indepth detailed RPG ever made.
Amen to that. There was also a trilogy of novels released that were REALLY good and fleshed out the world and and story That's just BEGGING to be used to revive the entire IP, and with the benefit of a ready made story blueprint ready to go.
It's even more of a gold mine today due to its internal design that supports expansions and DLC within the lore: just add a new train line, or an entire new city!
@@Olsenator, there are plenty of high quality games, (especially the old school shooters), that are a million times better than this abomination of a game, called Hellgate London. Only someone with bad taste, or lack of experience with actual good shooters, can love this unfinished, unpolished, ugly, repetitive, boring piece of garbage, that also controls like crap. You have amazing 90's and early 2000's shooters that have fantastic co-op or pvp gameplay, and if you like the ARPG element, you also have Borderlands. How can you compare Hellcrap London with any of these? You kid know nothing about a good gaming experience, with or without friends.
@@dimetime35c No! There are objectively bad games out there that you just cannot defend (unless you're an idiot), and Hellgate is one of them. The type of games that i like are the good ones, you know... the ones that are non-repetitive and have good level designs, none of which can be found in Hellgate. Only a minority of "gamers" may dislike the type of games i like (because i like quality and fun), but in the case of Hellgate London... only a minority may like that trash, and only because that small group of people has a poor taste and understanding of what makes a game good! Either that or they're just casual morons.
@@Duderonamy1337 that is exactly what led me to pick Guild Wars 1 over this when I quit SWG after the NGE. GW1 still had GREAT graphics for the time and it didnt require an immensely powerful machine. albeit, shortly after I got a state of the art PC that could play anything on any setting but by that point, Hellgate was dead on the water.
I definitely recall Hellgate: London during my highschool days, a friend of mine bought in an artbook and a comic book after having it pre-ordered at the local gamestore. Interesting premise and art, but when I came over his home and saw him play it, gameplay looked abit lackluster imo. At least the comics were an interesting read.
Well done video, man! I also very much enjoyed your SW: Galaxies autopsy as well. Seems like your video and mine are the two biggest analysis videos on Hellgate of the last few years.
Thanks for your video btw, I stumbled upon it while composing the script for this one and it was very influential. I don't think I linked your video on screen when I mentioned your video in my video so let me do that. I thought you summed up the design flaws of the game really well.
Hellgate wasn't very good. All of the efforts of HanBit Soft are funding a game that is barely A level, let alone AAA. Hellgate is the type of videogame your mom sees in the background of a TV show, and based on that, she thinks less of you for even playing video games at all.
I think what killed the game for me the most was the inconsistent or frankly bizarre mood. It didn't surprise me that another company made the cinematic intro for the game and trailers. You went from cool, grimdark cinematic expectation and marketing to weird jokes and references in-game. It's like if I was playing a Warhammer 40K videogame and they keep making jokes and references to Star Wars and Star Trek. OTOH, I enjoyed Borderlands precisely because the mood is consistent and the jokes and references goes with it. I was hoping Nerdslayer to cover that, because (to me at least) incorrect mood kills the will to be invested in something. Admittedly, the universe (the grimdark version of it) is still really cool and worth going back to.
I would have loved a finished game. This dead dog just needs to stay dead. It's not worth resurrecting it. It was never good enough to warrant all this worry over it. It was an okay project but just wasn't finished and never got the content it promised to deliver.
First time I've run across your channel and I gotta admit I'm happy I did. Having someone go so in-depth and give everyone a good look into what happened and what was (or never were). Really appreciate the effort and work you put into your videos
Iv been watching your older videos and I must say its fantastic to see how much youv improved your newer ones. Not saying these ones aren't great because they are, all your videos are fantastic!
They should have made a movie instead. Those cutscenes were damn good, and still are. Will you do a DOAG for "Earth & Beyond" or for "Auto Assault"? :)
I bought that game in a box set when I was like 11 yrs old or around that age, the bastard behind the counter didn't tell me that it had 1 week until shutdown
I know this video is 4 years old at this point. So I’m just yelling at the void, but this vid is missing the most important contributor to the death of hellgate London. They made legendary quality items hundreds of times more likely to drop on your characters first kill of a boss. This ruined the endgame. As it was faster to farm loot for your main character by making a new character of the same class and replaying the entire story line, so you could get a high drop rate chance of a legendary on the final boss. This meant you spent 99% of your time playing a weak character that was not your main. A character that was flavourless as it would lack the customization of gearing it well. And so you had no ties to your character and lost all sense of player identity. It made the in game market pretty impenetrable to, as most people would have very few good items to trade, as the majority of players would only level one character and then be unable to get high quality loot, because it was seriously like 1/100th the drop rate after your first kill of a boss. Everyone that was serious about mmo’s immediately ditched the game.
This was only one Boss (Sydonai), wich was the Story Endboss and only one Unique/Legendray Item (Sydonai´s Chestplate) wich he dropped with a 99% Chance on your first run. And it was pretty bad anyway, so no one ever bat an eye about this. Never heard about players who created a new char just to get this item.
@@nidhoggminiatures3009 interesting to hear two sides of this. I played this when it came out but I was in middle school so I just didn't get as deep into it as I would've liked. Shame because the setting/the art style was extremely cool.
At 6:05 you start talking about Blizzard North and say they were responsible for the "ill-fated version of Diablo 3" which is very unclear since very few people would know about it. All of the key Blizzard North members left ~1 month into Diablo 3's initial development, but that iteration was scrapped 2 years later along with Blizzard North. Since you don't mention that iteration being scrapped and a new iteration being created by a new team, you make it sound as though Blizzard North was responsible for the version of Diablo 3 that released in 2012 with some pretty big criticisms due to several factors including the Real-money auction house.
Arjun Chakraborty That's kind of how I felt so I went and confirmed because I was sure he was incorrect. Turned out he just missed some important context.
Doubtful, but I didn't research it too much. My guess is since it got scrapped Blizzard wouldn't release any information about it and all the guys who worked on it would have had an NDA. The only way we could learn anything is if the former Blizzard North guys decided to talk about it now.
gamerant.com/diablo-3-images-cancelled-version-2005-jc-68367/ The only things they had done were prelim builds. Due to the chaos going out with the sale to Vivendi and shifts in management not much beyond art mockups got done. They hadn't even decided whether or not they were going to go free to play or subscription (most were leaning towards a free to play model with no forced microtransactions or pay to win-like Path of exile while corporate wanted a subscription).
Found these while I was downloading the new nier game. This series is fantastic and a REALLY good idea! Its hard to find quality content on youtube nowadays. Keep up the good work!
Damn, this game sounds dope as hell on paper. Apocalypse London with demons and Greek fire AND MMO stuff? This sounds like it could've been the hot tits.
In Singleplayer, this game was fucking rad. I enjoyed it a lot. Wish they would remaster it as a Single Player game and sell it again. Up the graphics, clean out the bugs and this can be a new old hit.
God I used to love Hellgate, I still have the whole prequel comic book set, autographed by the artist! This video made me so nostalgic I feel slightly depressed.
I actually really like the look of this game, its a shame i never saw it at the time.. I really am intrigued with this revival attempt, i may actually play it, this is sort of the thing i wish Diablo was. It looks really good :p. Keep up the series man, I really love it so much and your opinions on it. They are so down to earth :p
Glad this vid popped up for me. I used to love the setting of the game, felt like something out of a mignola comic, sadly i only played the single-player, other than the game being very repetitive, i didn't had much to complain about.
this game looked so good when i was younger... then when i installed it to be blind sided by paywalled aspects, then a poorly explained system with little ideas of progress or direction torpedoed it for me... hopefully it can be revived someday... would be amazing to see that in 4K today.
One of the other things that this game did that none of the others that I've alpha/beta tested was to bring in more talent. Testers no only gave feedback, but suggestions, and those suggestions were responded to by the developers and usually implemented on the next patch. This may have led to that gumbo effect you mentioned, but it's part of what made the game so dear to the first round of players. We all had a piece of ourselves in that game, and it was very fun to see how all of our different ideas were blended into a single story. The other titles I've tested considered the testers to be nothing more than somebody getting to play the game for free, and treated us like vermin. Hellgate treated us like co-creators.
You forgot to mention, or didn't put enough wait on: When Hellgate: London (HGL) was originally promoted LAN Party multiplayer was what it promised. That, later, was morphed into MMO. LAN support was never implemented/released. They focused on the MMO aspect at the expense of the Single Player game. Understandable from the subscription point of view, but very disappointing. Watching Flagship release updates and patches fixing bug and re-balancing the game for the MMO version, but leaving single player languishing and needing attention. They acknowledged the situation, and promised fixes in the never released patch. I did like the game, and still play it, occasionally. It just hurts knowing what could have been ...
I remember being hyped for Hellgate (before it was even called Hellgate: London I think), back when it was an upcoming solo player title. I bought a comicbook series, I bought the novels (both were pretty good, but the novels were riddled with spelling errors, the like I'd not seen before in a professional publication, it was so much, it really detracted from the overall experience). Back then I played next to no online games, so a switch to an MMO killed my interest and it vanished off my radar, when I found the free-to-play version, it was practically dead already and they shut down, weeks after I created my character.
The theme I'm mostly getting here, is that the games that die are those where the dev forgets to ask themselves what should be the fun thing in this game, what strong feel do we want the players to experience here? And focus on that one thing. Not spread themselves out and grasp for EVERYTHING! Then every addon to this concept should be, how do we support this simple core element of fun, which the player experiences.
there was 3 books released to go along with story. Mel Odom (OU professor) was the writer. Pretty good. Way better than the game.. It was originally a turn based game, should have stayed that way IMO.
man i used to love this game, one character build i found branded a sentence into my brain, that i still can't get rid off when thinking about Arpgs or games in general: Never stop running, never stop fighting
I have to disagree with your statement on Mass Effect 1. Thanks to it rpg elements you could really use the system to your advantage. You did not need to used the cover in Mass Effect and you could complete the full game on the hardest setting with out taking a single point of damage. Hell I was killing thresher maw and Geth Colossus on foot. Try that with ME2 and ME3 and your corpse will be strung up in their garden being used as a bird feeder before you can say “reload, Doctor Freeman!”. Also do one of these on Fury. I can not wait for you to talk about that terrible mmo.
I think the problem with ME1 is that it was trying to be an action RPG shooter, but the RPG elements overshadowed the actual gameplay so much it felt very disjointed, the RPG elements were great and I hate how scaled down they were in 2 and 3 but sometimes in 1 I would think to myself "oh I have to shoot again, damn, I was enjoying that conversation, or puzzle" etc, I love ME1 but the shooting mechanics left a lot to be desired and since it was supposed to be a third person shooter RPG that is an issue.
I love this game so much. I bought a lifetime subscription at the time and never regretted it. Played from start until servers closed lol, and even after that I played single-player offline. It's been so many years since I last touched it yet I still remember my evoker build and most stations and memorable areas. I just loved playing the game and doing literally anything in it, even without an objective to do I just wanted to be logged in and roam around. I never got into it's reboot and steam versions because they are just shit cash grabs.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much! I played briefly at a friend's house in high school (he had a PC powerful enough to run it) and the style has stuck with me ever since.
This game should have been huge, it's sad. Really cool that you did a video on it though since not a lot of people really talk about it. But those who know, know.
I remember when it came out part of the reason the performance was toilet was that they didn't have an icon library for the inventory and shops, they were using the full-on models.
From what I remember, the game was launched as an MMO - it was done right at that moment. From 2004 to 2014 or so, there was a long string of 'WoW-killers' (I think it was Rift that actually added 'You're not in Azeroth anymore!' in a trailer) starting with Age of Conan, Aion, Rift, Tera, etc. They'd plot their launch in the interlude between WoW expansions, trying to hit that magical point about 2/3 of the way through the cycle when people were logging into WoW to clear a raid once a week. At launch there would be nothing but server queues, people would talk about how this game is going to kill WoW, then the first free month ended, but few people want to pay multiple subs. Not to mention these people all wanted WoW in London, WoW in (insert game location here). The slide begins. Amusingly enough, it's now to the point where new MMOs, the very few that there are, have set more realistic definitions of success and don't bother with taking WoW straight on. Someday, Nerdslayer, you're going to need to do a 'death of a genre' video.I'd argue that MMOs in general have died as WoW has basically killed the genre, as unlike other genres there isn't a lot of competition. MMOs, unlike other games, demand so much time and usually a subscription to continue to play the entire game that people rarely play more than one at a time.
It may be easy for you to look at it this way now. You might not remember that back in the day there was Ultima Online and from the hype it was completely new and interesting. Then there was Asheron's Call and it was better. So there was competition back then. It's just that when Blizzard came on the scene they were about as good as AC as I remember hearing but Warcraft brought all of the Blizzard fanboys to the genre. From there it was a steamroller of players that weren't going to leave and those that joined because it was the big one. Once people were there they had their friends and 'investment'. It was possible but it just needed a really solid game to pull them away and the genre was really expensive & difficult to do well. These days it's mostly impossible to break in as many people don't want to get into an MMO and those that want to play an MMO have already gotten so far in that they will never leave.
@@andrebrynkus2055 I disagree, people are HUNGRY for a new MMO. But, not surprisingly, WOW killed itself, not some other game. Look at the launch of New World, the game is a complete mess, but people are so desperate for a good new MMO that they flocked to it at launch. So I think the genre is ripe for at least one new major player in addition to the big five that exist currently.
I tried playing this last week and what killed it, for me, was the muddled storytelling. The big bright yellow exclamation marks are terrible MMO sidequests, with walls of text filled with bizarre jokes... while the muted skinny purple question marks that blended into the wall were super-serious grimdark plot advancement with constant references to NPCs that I either hadn't met or couldn't remember. If they had gotten voice-acting for the main plot, it may have forced them to write a main plot that's worth voice-acting.
Get a copy of the game that's, ahem, *TOTALLY LEGAL EVEN THOUGH THE MONEY YOU'D PAY WOULDN'T GO TO THE GAME'S ACTUAL CREATORS* and then go to the Revival site (hellgateaus dot info) for the mods under the "SP Modification" tab. Be warned that there are quite a few skills that aren't in Revival. For example, Summoners don't have Zombie Form, poison, or passive buffs to their elemental golems' health. If I manage to burn out on the new Path of Exile league, I'll see if I can finish Hellgate: London, even though my Summoner is really starting to struggle.
Futonrevolution Thanks! You mean a physical copy? Is that the only way now? I used to play the game a few years ago when it was FTP and it was really fun.
If you want a legal copy, then - yes - you're stuck with tracking down a physical copy that's fairly priced. I went the, erm, FTP try-before-you-buy route for my, erm, demo copy. If I decide to come back to the game to play as more than a historical oddity, I'd shop in the $10-15 range. I can't be _too_ mad at the $22.36 price tag on Amazon, but Bonanza currently has it for $11.88.
I'm curious -- did you somehow get the original storytelling, or the rehashed writing from the second phase after Handbit took over? Because when they revamped the game they washed the HELL out of the story and it lost most of its flavor.
Hey man, I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos, most of the "death of a game" videos are games I haven't actually played, but heard of and forgot about. You manage to make the videos interesting regardless of my prior knowledge of the game. Keep up the awesome work!
best game of my teenhood. So many options, so much loot! Didn't care about the story then, don't care about it now. just give me demons to shoot and skills to unlock!
I have played this game ever since it came out, read the books, and i have to say that it is one of if not the best hack and slash games i still play to this day. Hellgate london will FOREVER play a role in my gamer life. R.I.P Flagship studios, i wish i could have helped to maintain the game.
That opening cinematic and some of the trailers blew my mind, then and even now. I played the game long after it was dead as a single player game with tons of the locked content unlocked. I loved it. Hope it gets rebooted.
The alternative being that he says it wrong and everybody gets mad in the comments. Mind you, a quick text prompt either in the video or a youtube box tends to be a lot less obnoxious
That isn't the right fix either. Maybe try cutting your dialogue up more, so if you mess something up your next take won't be a sudden jumpcut mid-sentence. Have clear start and end points when you talk and when recording pause. You can shorten the pause later in edits and if you mess up you can re-record that sentence and simply splice it in without people noticing.
The problem with cutting dialogue tons is it creates inconsistent style due to change in position/volume/noise. I did a video where nearly every paragraph was cut up, and the sound kept going up and down inconsistently.
Played this at launch, too. I knew it was doomed when they split their community with- some can subscribe, but you don't have to- and then hilariously enough they screwed up the first update so free players got the guy fawkes gloves or whatever that subscribers were supposed to get. Also: game was lame.
Back when I bought this game, I was 13 and so I had little concept of checking reviews and game footage. I'd bought the game based solely on an old trailer I'd found, since the setting looked cool to me and I was really into shooters at the time. Of course upon playing the game, it turned out to be incredibly clunky. The graphics had aged by the time I bought it, the character was a pain to control compared to what I was used to, the inclusion of hotbar abilities, loads of RPG mechanics and allusions to multiplayer (I think the servers had been taken down at this point) confounded me at the time, and nothing about the way the story was presented really grabbed me. I returned the game to the store and never played it again. Now, looking back at it, I feel a strange nostalgia for a game I barely played, and for a community I've never been a part of. It's impressive how many things Flagship managed to put into a single game, and I can feel their passion in this. RIP Hellgate, and Flagship's dream.
@@eechee2979 I put 2k hours in d3, but there's been nothing new but a few gimmicks here and there for the past what...2-3 years? I mean cmon. There are N better games that came out since and people are still stuck on that mess?
Got into Hellgate when it came out. The randomized campaign map created an impassible barrier to get into the next zone, it was physically impossible to continue. Unwilling to start over from scratch just to risk it happening AGAIN, that was the end of that.
I don't agree, every video is someone's first. Thus he needs to incorporate context. Since you know the first 2 min in all his videos are the same, why not just skip forward? People are in such a hurry on youtube its crazy. 2 min of a nearly 50 min video is not the end of the world.
Celine Lanaro It's not his first. It's another in a series. After a couple videos you can assume the viewer know what is happening. If they're new, they can check an earlier video.
I knew one of the creators, Max Schaefer. I met him trading carnivorous plants on an internet forum in 2006-2009. It was huge for me because I was the biggest fan of Diablo II. He gave me early beta access during the original run of the game way back in the day. I also played Mythos in a beta-access level! This is a cool video to see!
i still love Hellgate London even for all its floors. I got the game the week it came out back in 2007 and played the single player on a laptop that got 10 to 15 fps on the lowest of settings and loved it to bits and even now i make sure to play it once a year or so just because i enjoyed it so much.
Thank you for this. This video was absolutely fascinating.The depth of your research into the company and their relationship with the banks has helped me in my interests of concerning the funding of game projects in general. Please do one on Evolve. That case is and continues to be of great interest.
felt this was the precursor to Borderlands, I loved hellgate but the combat really lacked the oomph and punchiness needed and which Borderlands brought to it
I remember back in the day they would sell "life-time subsciption" for $150 at some point instead of $10 a month... and well... i'm sure people that purchased it got really mad when they heard the news the game was coming to its "life-end" :P
I loved that game. Went in as an Engineer with double Miniguns, a speedbot for higher firerate + walking speed and a Drone with a Grenade launcher. One of my 3 mates went with the same configuration, one as Evoker and one as a Sniper with specialization on Napalm Bombing. Great times back then.
I was, and still am a big fan of the game. I agree with all the issues brought up in the video though, but the setting of Hellgate: London is what made me come back again and again. It had GREAT atmosphere and visual design.
Man, I completely forgot about Hellgate London after all these years, I jumped into it when it went Freemium and enjoyed it for a little while but didn't stick with it because I wasn't going to pay a sub fee for something that seemed so unfinished.
I'd kill for a proper Hellgate singleplayer RPG/Immersive Sim. Hellgate: Seattle could be nice, with a map that encompasses the whole bay and out to Mt. Rainer. The themes are great. ... The freemium bullshit is not. And being old, it's janky as hell.
Tabula Rasa video delayed, as I got the chance to interview the creator Richard Garriott and that's going to take time to do. So DOAG Age of Conan will likely launch first :D
I loved Tabula Rasa. Was the first time I was actually sad about the demise of an MMO.
Just curious, why not?
Oh cool. Make sure you really rail his ass.
I think about Tabula Rasa sometimes wishing I could play it again, it was spectacular but I just remember being drawn to it when I was young and the sentiment lingers with me.
+nerdslayer
If you ever need a great game to talk about, there is one from the 80's called Alternate Reality:The City/The Dungeon by Philip Price. They made two parts but stopped and never finished the game. They worked for Datasoft at the time. I think you'll find the history very interesting. (It was in my opinion the first ever MMORPG Simulation. Basically simulated a MMORPG before they were invented.) It had 3D grafix that were way a head of its time. Pretty much one of the most indepth detailed RPG ever made.
14 years later and this is still a gold mine of an IP just waiting for a proper video game lol. And god damn did those cutscenes age well.
Amen to that. There was also a trilogy of novels released that were REALLY good and fleshed out the world and and story That's just BEGGING to be used to revive the entire IP, and with the benefit of a ready made story blueprint ready to go.
London 2038 is a thing kid
@@thex45l35 doesnt mean its good. lol.
hellgate redemption is supposedly in the works. lets see if they can do it lol.
It's even more of a gold mine today due to its internal design that supports expansions and DLC within the lore: just add a new train line, or an entire new city!
I bought a lifetime subscription to Hellgate back in the day. Imagine my surprise lol.
F
How much was ?
@@jesusserrano8769 150$
I'm truly sorry. My roommate did the same thing.
You will be remembered forever.
I fucking loved this game. Sucks the Steam version is single player only.
I guess you hate good games then...
@@Olsenator, there are plenty of high quality games, (especially the old school shooters), that are a million times better than this abomination of a game, called Hellgate London. Only someone with bad taste, or lack of experience with actual good shooters, can love this unfinished, unpolished, ugly, repetitive, boring piece of garbage, that also controls like crap. You have amazing 90's and early 2000's shooters that have fantastic co-op or pvp gameplay, and if you like the ARPG element, you also have Borderlands. How can you compare Hellcrap London with any of these? You kid know nothing about a good gaming experience, with or without friends.
@@Soulfly415 if he likes the game then good for him. Im sure you like a game that someone would say is trash.
@@dimetime35c No! There are objectively bad games out there that you just cannot defend (unless you're an idiot), and Hellgate is one of them. The type of games that i like are the good ones, you know... the ones that are non-repetitive and have good level designs, none of which can be found in Hellgate. Only a minority of "gamers" may dislike the type of games i like (because i like quality and fun), but in the case of Hellgate London... only a minority may like that trash, and only because that small group of people has a poor taste and understanding of what makes a game good! Either that or they're just casual morons.
Hey bud there is a active mp server up
another great video man cheep up the good work.
i pre ordered this game, and played it SOOO much in launch month.
So sad it never got popular...
people could not run it that's what killed it.
@@Duderonamy1337 that is exactly what led me to pick Guild Wars 1 over this when I quit SWG after the NGE. GW1 still had GREAT graphics for the time and it didnt require an immensely powerful machine. albeit, shortly after I got a state of the art PC that could play anything on any setting but by that point, Hellgate was dead on the water.
I definitely recall Hellgate: London during my highschool days, a friend of mine bought in an artbook and a comic book after having it pre-ordered at the local gamestore. Interesting premise and art, but when I came over his home and saw him play it, gameplay looked abit lackluster imo. At least the comics were an interesting read.
This series was fucking genius man, quality content as always.
I really had fun with this as a kid! I wish this would be remastered and brought back! This in today’s Gen will be amazing!!
Well done video, man! I also very much enjoyed your SW: Galaxies autopsy as well. Seems like your video and mine are the two biggest analysis videos on Hellgate of the last few years.
Thanks for your video btw, I stumbled upon it while composing the script for this one and it was very influential. I don't think I linked your video on screen when I mentioned your video in my video so let me do that. I thought you summed up the design flaws of the game really well.
That VR game honestly doesn't look very good
Hellgate wasn't very good. All of the efforts of HanBit Soft are funding a game that is barely A level, let alone AAA.
Hellgate is the type of videogame your mom sees in the background of a TV show, and based on that, she thinks less of you for even playing video games at all.
Those HP bars are distasteful as fuck. Wouldn't trust people who thought that they were good enough to show off.
That demo is one such situation where the argument, "It's Alpha." Is considerably valid. There's much room for improvement closer to release.
VR is poop, and also, very very dangerous.
@@TheDyingScotsman yo face is poop and is very dangerous
You can tell how much yoy have improved over the years, because getting through your intros is like running a 5k.
If I had a ribbon I would give it I promise! Thanks for the support
I think what killed the game for me the most was the inconsistent or frankly bizarre mood. It didn't surprise me that another company made the cinematic intro for the game and trailers. You went from cool, grimdark cinematic expectation and marketing to weird jokes and references in-game. It's like if I was playing a Warhammer 40K videogame and they keep making jokes and references to Star Wars and Star Trek.
OTOH, I enjoyed Borderlands precisely because the mood is consistent and the jokes and references goes with it. I was hoping Nerdslayer to cover that, because (to me at least) incorrect mood kills the will to be invested in something.
Admittedly, the universe (the grimdark version of it) is still really cool and worth going back to.
Curiously enough, the same thing can be said about Diablo 3.
How much I'd love a new Hellgate game with current-year graphics... And you know, without it's predecessor's crippling flaws.
It's called borderlands.
Its called Ristar
I think Outriders looks like it’s basically the spiritual successor. Give it a gander.
I would have loved a finished game. This dead dog just needs to stay dead. It's not worth resurrecting it. It was never good enough to warrant all this worry over it. It was an okay project but just wasn't finished and never got the content it promised to deliver.
It's calle destiny... without demons
First time I've run across your channel and I gotta admit I'm happy I did. Having someone go so in-depth and give everyone a good look into what happened and what was (or never were). Really appreciate the effort and work you put into your videos
Iv been watching your older videos and I must say its fantastic to see how much youv improved your newer ones. Not saying these ones aren't great because they are, all your videos are fantastic!
The next video in the DOAG series will be Tabula Rasa, fear not friends.
thanks!
They should have made a movie instead. Those cutscenes were damn good, and still are. Will you do a DOAG for "Earth & Beyond" or for "Auto Assault"? :)
I absolutely loved that game! I was about to suggest you do a video on it.
I bought that game in a box set when I was like 11 yrs old or around that age, the bastard behind the counter didn't tell me that it had 1 week until shutdown
+Michael Prymula Fear online was just a shit game
I know this video is 4 years old at this point. So I’m just yelling at the void, but this vid is missing the most important contributor to the death of hellgate London.
They made legendary quality items hundreds of times more likely to drop on your characters first kill of a boss. This ruined the endgame. As it was faster to farm loot for your main character by making a new character of the same class and replaying the entire story line, so you could get a high drop rate chance of a legendary on the final boss.
This meant you spent 99% of your time playing a weak character that was not your main. A character that was flavourless as it would lack the customization of gearing it well. And so you had no ties to your character and lost all sense of player identity. It made the in game market pretty impenetrable to, as most people would have very few good items to trade, as the majority of players would only level one character and then be unable to get high quality loot, because it was seriously like 1/100th the drop rate after your first kill of a boss. Everyone that was serious about mmo’s immediately ditched the game.
Thank you for the comment, and gives me much more closure to this subject. 👍😁
This was only one Boss (Sydonai), wich was the Story Endboss and only one Unique/Legendray Item (Sydonai´s Chestplate) wich he dropped with a 99% Chance on your first run. And it was pretty bad anyway, so no one ever bat an eye about this. Never heard about players who created a new char just to get this item.
@@nidhoggminiatures3009 interesting to hear two sides of this. I played this when it came out but I was in middle school so I just didn't get as deep into it as I would've liked. Shame because the setting/the art style was extremely cool.
At 6:05 you start talking about Blizzard North and say they were responsible for the "ill-fated version of Diablo 3" which is very unclear since very few people would know about it. All of the key Blizzard North members left ~1 month into Diablo 3's initial development, but that iteration was scrapped 2 years later along with Blizzard North. Since you don't mention that iteration being scrapped and a new iteration being created by a new team, you make it sound as though Blizzard North was responsible for the version of Diablo 3 that released in 2012 with some pretty big criticisms due to several factors including the Real-money auction house.
Arjun Chakraborty That's kind of how I felt so I went and confirmed because I was sure he was incorrect. Turned out he just missed some important context.
I will make a note of this and put an annotation. Thanks.
Is there any info out there about that first build?
Doubtful, but I didn't research it too much. My guess is since it got scrapped Blizzard wouldn't release any information about it and all the guys who worked on it would have had an NDA. The only way we could learn anything is if the former Blizzard North guys decided to talk about it now.
gamerant.com/diablo-3-images-cancelled-version-2005-jc-68367/
The only things they had done were prelim builds. Due to the chaos going out with the sale to Vivendi and shifts in management not much beyond art mockups got done. They hadn't even decided whether or not they were going to go free to play or subscription (most were leaning towards a free to play model with no forced microtransactions or pay to win-like Path of exile while corporate wanted a subscription).
Found these while I was downloading the new nier game. This series is fantastic and a REALLY good idea! Its hard to find quality content on youtube nowadays. Keep up the good work!
Man, Hellgate is 10 years old?
Yeah... BUT THE BEST 10 YEAR OLD GAME
Gamer Nv2 No.
Dont deny him...
Yeah, seems odd. I would have sworn it was launched in 2004.
Man, wtf is Hellgate? This is the first I have heard of it and I like games alot 😄
June 2024 and I still play daily. I love this game.
Damn, this game sounds dope as hell on paper. Apocalypse London with demons and Greek fire AND MMO stuff? This sounds like it could've been the hot tits.
try out london 2038 its a private server
me and my friend loved playing this game together. RIP Hellgate: London
In Singleplayer, this game was fucking rad. I enjoyed it a lot. Wish they would remaster it as a Single Player game and sell it again. Up the graphics, clean out the bugs and this can be a new old hit.
If you still have the game you can play with the revival patch :) www.hellgateaus.info/
God I used to love Hellgate, I still have the whole prequel comic book set, autographed by the artist! This video made me so nostalgic I feel slightly depressed.
I actually really like the look of this game, its a shame i never saw it at the time.. I really am intrigued with this revival attempt, i may actually play it, this is sort of the thing i wish Diablo was. It looks really good :p. Keep up the series man, I really love it so much and your opinions on it. They are so down to earth :p
I thank you so much for time and effort you put in your videos. I even watched all ads till the end and clicked on them.
Glad this vid popped up for me. I used to love the setting of the game, felt like something out of a mignola comic, sadly i only played the single-player, other than the game being very repetitive, i didn't had much to complain about.
was waiting for this a long time ago..never knew it even got released
this game looked so good when i was younger... then when i installed it to be blind sided by paywalled aspects, then a poorly explained system with little ideas of progress or direction torpedoed it for me... hopefully it can be revived someday... would be amazing to see that in 4K today.
One of the other things that this game did that none of the others that I've alpha/beta tested was to bring in more talent. Testers no only gave feedback, but suggestions, and those suggestions were responded to by the developers and usually implemented on the next patch. This may have led to that gumbo effect you mentioned, but it's part of what made the game so dear to the first round of players. We all had a piece of ourselves in that game, and it was very fun to see how all of our different ideas were blended into a single story.
The other titles I've tested considered the testers to be nothing more than somebody getting to play the game for free, and treated us like vermin. Hellgate treated us like co-creators.
the fact that you only have a little more than 13k subs is an atrocity. keep the awesome content coming
shut up
hes slowly growing!!
Cheers for the content nerdSlayer , love the Death of a Game series.
Man you need a few zeroes on that sub count, this is some grade A content.
I'm genuinely surprised how in depth this is. Good on you.
You forgot to mention, or didn't put enough wait on: When Hellgate: London (HGL) was originally promoted LAN Party multiplayer was what it promised. That, later, was morphed into MMO. LAN support was never implemented/released.
They focused on the MMO aspect at the expense of the Single Player game. Understandable from the subscription point of view, but very disappointing. Watching Flagship release updates and patches fixing bug and re-balancing the game for the MMO version, but leaving single player languishing and needing attention. They acknowledged the situation, and promised fixes in the never released patch.
I did like the game, and still play it, occasionally. It just hurts knowing what could have been ...
I remember being hyped for Hellgate (before it was even called Hellgate: London I think), back when it was an upcoming solo player title.
I bought a comicbook series, I bought the novels (both were pretty good, but the novels were riddled with spelling errors, the like I'd not seen before in a professional publication, it was so much, it really detracted from the overall experience).
Back then I played next to no online games, so a switch to an MMO killed my interest and it vanished off my radar, when I found the free-to-play version, it was practically dead already and they shut down, weeks after I created my character.
The theme I'm mostly getting here, is that the games that die are those where the dev forgets to ask themselves what should be the fun thing in this game, what strong feel do we want the players to experience here? And focus on that one thing. Not spread themselves out and grasp for EVERYTHING! Then every addon to this concept should be, how do we support this simple core element of fun, which the player experiences.
I still have the game and still play it every now an again, thanks for the patch information.
I feel like The Matrix Online would make a really good choice for an episode in this series.
Hm, I feel there are far too many overhyped and failed MMORPG projects ...
OH THAT GAME! I forgot about that like... wait when did it come out? I forgot
Matrix Online never really lived, so it didn't die :D
To think it had the best imaginable premise for any MMO game, and yet failed so miserably.
What a brilliant idea for a RUclips series. Subbed.
there was 3 books released to go along with story. Mel Odom (OU professor) was the writer. Pretty good. Way better than the game.. It was originally a turn based game, should have stayed that way IMO.
ShamelessPlace God those books were good
They were really good novels.
I have the first one. I'm going to read it "soon"
man i used to love this game, one character build i found branded a sentence into my brain, that i still can't get rid off when thinking about Arpgs or games in general: Never stop running, never stop fighting
I have to disagree with your statement on Mass Effect 1. Thanks to it rpg elements you could really use the system to your advantage. You did not need to used the cover in Mass Effect and you could complete the full game on the hardest setting with out taking a single point of damage. Hell I was killing thresher maw and Geth Colossus on foot.
Try that with ME2 and ME3 and your corpse will be strung up in their garden being used as a bird feeder before you can say “reload, Doctor Freeman!”.
Also do one of these on Fury. I can not wait for you to talk about that terrible mmo.
I think the problem with ME1 is that it was trying to be an action RPG shooter, but the RPG elements overshadowed the actual gameplay so much it felt very disjointed, the RPG elements were great and I hate how scaled down they were in 2 and 3 but sometimes in 1 I would think to myself "oh I have to shoot again, damn, I was enjoying that conversation, or puzzle" etc, I love ME1 but the shooting mechanics left a lot to be desired and since it was supposed to be a third person shooter RPG that is an issue.
@@LilyApus ME1 is definitely the best story of the three, but 2 and 3 refined the gameplay massively.
Never had the opportunity to play it... great video as always!
Yo, Hellgate is coming to Steam, looks like for real this time :D
Yea got to rewatch this :D
I was hoping for a sequel or a redux.
yea, 10 years too late
Damn didn't know this until seeing your comment, now i'm exicted, just hope they remove or make some of the boring mini game part options!
stop complaining its better then nothing at all @Sparka
This is a great series keep of the good work.
I love this game so much. I bought a lifetime subscription at the time and never regretted it. Played from start until servers closed lol, and even after that I played single-player offline. It's been so many years since I last touched it yet I still remember my evoker build and most stations and memorable areas. I just loved playing the game and doing literally anything in it, even without an objective to do I just wanted to be logged in and roam around. I never got into it's reboot and steam versions because they are just shit cash grabs.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much! I played briefly at a friend's house in high school (he had a PC powerful enough to run it) and the style has stuck with me ever since.
This game should have been huge, it's sad. Really cool that you did a video on it though since not a lot of people really talk about it. But those who know, know.
I used to LOVE this game. Its got style and xfactor.
I remember when it came out part of the reason the performance was toilet was that they didn't have an icon library for the inventory and shops, they were using the full-on models.
From what I remember, the game was launched as an MMO - it was done right at that moment. From 2004 to 2014 or so, there was a long string of 'WoW-killers' (I think it was Rift that actually added 'You're not in Azeroth anymore!' in a trailer) starting with Age of Conan, Aion, Rift, Tera, etc. They'd plot their launch in the interlude between WoW expansions, trying to hit that magical point about 2/3 of the way through the cycle when people were logging into WoW to clear a raid once a week.
At launch there would be nothing but server queues, people would talk about how this game is going to kill WoW, then the first free month ended, but few people want to pay multiple subs. Not to mention these people all wanted WoW in London, WoW in (insert game location here). The slide begins.
Amusingly enough, it's now to the point where new MMOs, the very few that there are, have set more realistic definitions of success and don't bother with taking WoW straight on. Someday, Nerdslayer, you're going to need to do a 'death of a genre' video.I'd argue that MMOs in general have died as WoW has basically killed the genre, as unlike other genres there isn't a lot of competition. MMOs, unlike other games, demand so much time and usually a subscription to continue to play the entire game that people rarely play more than one at a time.
I don't really agree with the massive success of one game killing a genre.
It may be easy for you to look at it this way now. You might not remember that back in the day there was Ultima Online and from the hype it was completely new and interesting. Then there was Asheron's Call and it was better.
So there was competition back then. It's just that when Blizzard came on the scene they were about as good as AC as I remember hearing but Warcraft brought all of the Blizzard fanboys to the genre. From there it was a steamroller of players that weren't going to leave and those that joined because it was the big one. Once people were there they had their friends and 'investment'.
It was possible but it just needed a really solid game to pull them away and the genre was really expensive & difficult to do well. These days it's mostly impossible to break in as many people don't want to get into an MMO and those that want to play an MMO have already gotten so far in that they will never leave.
FFXIV: “How ya like me now?!”
@@andrebrynkus2055 I disagree, people are HUNGRY for a new MMO. But, not surprisingly, WOW killed itself, not some other game. Look at the launch of New World, the game is a complete mess, but people are so desperate for a good new MMO that they flocked to it at launch. So I think the genre is ripe for at least one new major player in addition to the big five that exist currently.
Excellent research and editing. Great work. Keep it up.
Do Tabula Rasa. That was a game that got shafted hard...
SmugPlatypus +1 I completely forgot about Tabula Rasa's existence until your comment xD
RIP Tabula Rasa
i think he said he was working on a video for that
that game was dead from the start.
Your "death of a game" series of videos are really nicely done.
Milo is still the best npc I've ever seen in a game. Some of his lines where gold.
great video. after all still lovin this game. keep up the good work
Too many cooks, too many ingredients, and not enough hungry customers.
The biggest problem with this game was that no one knew it existed...
The London2038 server is going strong with relentless patches and new content up to date.
not dead - For the living!
I tried playing this last week and what killed it, for me, was the muddled storytelling. The big bright yellow exclamation marks are terrible MMO sidequests, with walls of text filled with bizarre jokes... while the muted skinny purple question marks that blended into the wall were super-serious grimdark plot advancement with constant references to NPCs that I either hadn't met or couldn't remember. If they had gotten voice-acting for the main plot, it may have forced them to write a main plot that's worth voice-acting.
How did you play the game? Searching for it all I find is articles and the android version.
Get a copy of the game that's, ahem, *TOTALLY LEGAL EVEN THOUGH THE MONEY YOU'D PAY WOULDN'T GO TO THE GAME'S ACTUAL CREATORS* and then go to the Revival site (hellgateaus dot info) for the mods under the "SP Modification" tab. Be warned that there are quite a few skills that aren't in Revival. For example, Summoners don't have Zombie Form, poison, or passive buffs to their elemental golems' health. If I manage to burn out on the new Path of Exile league, I'll see if I can finish Hellgate: London, even though my Summoner is really starting to struggle.
Futonrevolution
Thanks! You mean a physical copy? Is that the only way now? I used to play the game a few years ago when it was FTP and it was really fun.
If you want a legal copy, then - yes - you're stuck with tracking down a physical copy that's fairly priced. I went the, erm, FTP try-before-you-buy route for my, erm, demo copy. If I decide to come back to the game to play as more than a historical oddity, I'd shop in the $10-15 range. I can't be _too_ mad at the $22.36 price tag on Amazon, but Bonanza currently has it for $11.88.
I'm curious -- did you somehow get the original storytelling, or the rehashed writing from the second phase after Handbit took over? Because when they revamped the game they washed the HELL out of the story and it lost most of its flavor.
Yeah you covered everything pretty much. Love this series man.
i still play, and am gonna run my summoner around for a while lol
I loved this game when I was a kid. I had no idea what I was doing, but it looked cool. Especially the cutscenes.
Take something that is amazing and fun, add in some gimmicky VR, and what do you get?
Shit.
Hey man, I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos, most of the "death of a game" videos are games I haven't actually played, but heard of and forgot about. You manage to make the videos interesting regardless of my prior knowledge of the game. Keep up the awesome work!
best game of my teenhood. So many options, so much loot! Didn't care about the story then, don't care about it now. just give me demons to shoot and skills to unlock!
Yuro My favorite class was always Summoner. Having a whole army behind me always felt badass.
I have played this game ever since it came out, read the books, and i have to say that it is one of if not the best hack and slash games i still play to this day. Hellgate london will FOREVER play a role in my gamer life. R.I.P Flagship studios, i wish i could have helped to maintain the game.
Tabula Rasa up next?
That opening cinematic and some of the trailers blew my mind, then and even now. I played the game long after it was dead as a single player game with tons of the locked content unlocked. I loved it. Hope it gets rebooted.
38:45 you really gotta stop doing this it sounds like shit
Yeah he spliced 2 or 3 different recordings together instead of re-recording 5 seconds of dialogue.
The alternative being that he says it wrong and everybody gets mad in the comments. Mind you, a quick text prompt either in the video or a youtube box tends to be a lot less obnoxious
Good point, I won't be fixing single words anymore.
That isn't the right fix either. Maybe try cutting your dialogue up more, so if you mess something up your next take won't be a sudden jumpcut mid-sentence.
Have clear start and end points when you talk and when recording pause. You can shorten the pause later in edits and if you mess up you can re-record that sentence and simply splice it in without people noticing.
The problem with cutting dialogue tons is it creates inconsistent style due to change in position/volume/noise. I did a video where nearly every paragraph was cut up, and the sound kept going up and down inconsistently.
This is really interesting, and I'm hyped about all the games you can cover here. Your work is amazing, keep it up!
Do Star Trek Online
awesome job!!! looking forward to your future videos :)
Played this at launch, too. I knew it was doomed when they split their community with- some can subscribe, but you don't have to- and then hilariously enough they screwed up the first update so free players got the guy fawkes gloves or whatever that subscribers were supposed to get. Also: game was lame.
Always looking forward to these videos.
Great work!
hellgate was so good ^^
Back when I bought this game, I was 13 and so I had little concept of checking reviews and game footage. I'd bought the game based solely on an old trailer I'd found, since the setting looked cool to me and I was really into shooters at the time. Of course upon playing the game, it turned out to be incredibly clunky. The graphics had aged by the time I bought it, the character was a pain to control compared to what I was used to, the inclusion of hotbar abilities, loads of RPG mechanics and allusions to multiplayer (I think the servers had been taken down at this point) confounded me at the time, and nothing about the way the story was presented really grabbed me. I returned the game to the store and never played it again.
Now, looking back at it, I feel a strange nostalgia for a game I barely played, and for a community I've never been a part of. It's impressive how many things Flagship managed to put into a single game, and I can feel their passion in this. RIP Hellgate, and Flagship's dream.
"Ill-fated iteration of Diablo 3"
*laughs in D3 2019's competitive leaderboard*
D3 Competitive. Lol. Good one x'D
@@Khazandar
It's funny because it's true.
@@eechee2979 People still play D3? o.O
@@cata112233
Low IQ bait.
@@eechee2979 I put 2k hours in d3, but there's been nothing new but a few gimmicks here and there for the past what...2-3 years? I mean cmon. There are N better games that came out since and people are still stuck on that mess?
Got into Hellgate when it came out. The randomized campaign map created an impassible barrier to get into the next zone, it was physically impossible to continue. Unwilling to start over from scratch just to risk it happening AGAIN, that was the end of that.
that intro is so annoying. it's like reading a really shitty intro to a boring essay.
You talking trash on pokemon?
rbrtchng Yeah, the video should have started at 1:55
I don't agree, every video is someone's first. Thus he needs to incorporate context.
Since you know the first 2 min in all his videos are the same, why not just skip forward?
People are in such a hurry on youtube its crazy. 2 min of a nearly 50 min video is not the end of the world.
Celine Lanaro It's not his first. It's another in a series. After a couple videos you can assume the viewer know what is happening. If they're new, they can check an earlier video.
Celine Lanaro After an intro video, perhaps this disclaimer is better suited in the description or as a block text in the end.
I knew one of the creators, Max Schaefer. I met him trading carnivorous plants on an internet forum in 2006-2009. It was huge for me because I was the biggest fan of Diablo II. He gave me early beta access during the original run of the game way back in the day. I also played Mythos in a beta-access level! This is a cool video to see!
i still love Hellgate London even for all its floors. I got the game the week it came out back in 2007 and played the single player on a laptop that got 10 to 15 fps on the lowest of settings and loved it to bits and even now i make sure to play it once a year or so just because i enjoyed it so much.
I actually loved hellsgate London so much I had multiple characters and still think it had brilliant ideas for back in the day
Thank you for this. This video was absolutely fascinating.The depth of your research into the company and their relationship with the banks has helped me in my interests of concerning the funding of game projects in general. Please do one on Evolve. That case is and continues to be of great interest.
been waiting for this
Really glad you're keeping with this video series,just sad you're not getting a lot of subscribers/views from it
I actually loved this game, i remember playing this when i was younger. Nostalgic af
felt this was the precursor to Borderlands, I loved hellgate but the combat really lacked the oomph and punchiness needed and which Borderlands brought to it
I remember back in the day they would sell "life-time subsciption" for $150 at some point instead of $10 a month... and well... i'm sure people that purchased it got really mad when they heard the news the game was coming to its "life-end" :P
Love the content keep up the great work
Solid video
Side Note: Mel Odom wrote a trilogy in this setting and it's still pretty fantastic, even without knowing anything about the game.
I loved that game. Went in as an Engineer with double Miniguns, a speedbot for higher firerate + walking speed and a Drone with a Grenade launcher. One of my 3 mates went with the same configuration, one as Evoker and one as a Sniper with specialization on Napalm Bombing. Great times back then.
Fascinating as always thanks man
I was so excited for this.
Really enjoy these. Hope you'll add Earth and Beyond to your future videos list.
I was, and still am a big fan of the game. I agree with all the issues brought up in the video though, but the setting of Hellgate: London is what made me come back again and again. It had GREAT atmosphere and visual design.
Man, I completely forgot about Hellgate London after all these years, I jumped into it when it went Freemium and enjoyed it for a little while but didn't stick with it because I wasn't going to pay a sub fee for something that seemed so unfinished.
I'd kill for a proper Hellgate singleplayer RPG/Immersive Sim. Hellgate: Seattle could be nice, with a map that encompasses the whole bay and out to Mt. Rainer.
The themes are great.
... The freemium bullshit is not. And being old, it's janky as hell.
You make some really good content. You deserve more subscribers.