Hellgate: London Development Diary #1
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We didn't want to do just another high fantasy world, and we'd done the ancient Gothic thing with Diablo. Max suggested we use London as a locale and the idea to blend fantasy and sci-fi by setting it in the near future was natural. London was a great idea for so many reasons. The city has a distinct look. Because it has been through so much turmoil over the centuries, London is the proverbial phoenix, literally rising out of the ashes. They've rebuilt the city numerous times, so there is Gothic architecture next to modern buildings next to Elizabethan and Victorian and Georgian styles. You get all these great looks and, since we wanted a modern city that had a foundation in mythology and magic, London fit perfectly.
It was also very important that London has an entire city beneath the city. The Underground stations to the plague pits that were dug in the 1660s to World War II bomb shelters to the brother and sister rivers to the Thames - and the list goes on and on. There are all these things that are really down there and perfectly met our desire to have the game take place equally above and below ground. London provided us a place where we could set a modern dungeon crawl!
