Probably most people who read this news item will think 'Who cares?' and the rest of you are sick of hearing about Hellgate: London, the little game that almost could.
But for the other couple of you guys, you might be happy to hear that it looks like Hellgate: London is coming back from the dead.
And dead it is indeed, at the moment. All thirty-four of the Hellgate: London player base very much expected the game to fully descend into the P.C game-Abyss in February, with the few remaining servers finally being shut down. But this might not be the case!
Nutshell of the story so far is that Flagship Studios lost the whole game (code, kit and kaboodle) to Korean company HanbitSoft earlier this year. The game first came out a year ago today, and generally did poorly where ratings and box sales are concerned. But the end is sometimes not the end it seems, as Korean game-smiths have been diligently working on the Korean Hellgate: London, and an entire new version of the game appears to be coming to the US around February.
HanbitSoft has said that they have started a new studio in San Fran to work on the project, and that they have poached some ex-Flagshippers to work on it. The game will be re-launched with a whole bunch of new content that surpasses anything yet released. The North American Hellgate will be handled by a Taiwanese company called Redbana -- a company that has launched a good amount of successful games.
Perhaps even more importantly, it looks like Mythos is still alive. If you haven't heard of it, you can think of Mythos as Diablo 2.5. It is another game that has been forfeited by Flagship. Having played it in beta, I can tell you that it will be the best Diablo clone to come out, until Diablo3 does (in 2010 at the earliest.) HanbitSoft as said they will work on the game, and launch it in North America as well.
If the re-launched Hellgate: London does somehow manage to be a really good game (which is, at least theoretically possible), the history of its development may turn into the best great-idea-released-prematurely-then-completely-defrayed-to-a-Korean-company-then-re-released-in-North-America story ever heard.
Hellgate: London was generally reviled by gaming critics, and disappointed droves of gamers. But unknown to many, underneath deep layers of bugs and repeating tilesets were some solid game mechanics -- and even a bit of fun. With HanbitSoft finally being able to complete the game, about a year after its release, there is a small chance that the game could even turn out to be somewhat, halfway not unreasonable.
