A new AAA title in the Hellgate franchise, codenamed Hellgate: Redemption, is in the works at Lunacy Games. The project was made possible with a licensing agreement between Lunacy Games and HanbitSoft. The studio was founded in September 2022 by Hellgate: London creator Bill Roper.
Released in 2007, Hellgate: London was arguably the original “looter shooter” preceding the release of Gearbox Software’s Borderlands by two years. The game featured randomly generated levels and was even ahead of the game with its business model, which largely resembled the Battle Pass that is ubiquitous across many titles and genres today.
In the announcement, Roper says the origin of the project’s codename comes from his feeling of having “unfinished business with the Hellgate IP.”
Besides the release platforms of console and PC, there’s not a whole lot of details to share on the project just yet. Roper says the core gameplay and lore of the original will be retained in Redemption, but besides that, development dollars are being focused on gameplay and innovation. The team is leveraging Unreal Engine 5, cloud-based game servers, and a number of other methods to spend its budget as efficiently as possible.
