- Site: City of Heroes: Going Rogue
- Publisher: NCsoft
- Developer: Paragon Studios
- Genre: Role-Playing Game
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By Brad Cook
A teenager runs away from her Mississippi home, earning herself the apt nickname “Rogue.” An impulsive kiss brought out her latent power, which is to absorb the life energy of someone else upon contact; the poor boy ended up in a coma. Left alone and bitter, Rogue was the perfect target for Mystique, leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
After many battles against the X-Men, however, Rogue found herself struggling to deal with the psychic residue of the people whose life energy she had absorbed along the way. She turned to X-Men leader Professor X for help, and he took her in; she eventually became a valuable member of the team.
That’s just one example of the many paths from evil to good, or good to evil, that you can chart for your characters in the Going Rogue expansion pack for City of Heroes. As lead systems designer Matt “Positron” Miller explains: “City of Heroes has always been, at its core, a comic book simulation. If you’ve seen it in the comics, we try to get it into the game in some form.”
He adds: “Going rogue is something that many heroes and villains have done over the years, and there are no specific storylines that we were looking to emulate. We were simply inspired by the entire concept of redemption or falling from grace.”
Not a Simple Exchange
Your existing characters gain an alignment system that lets them slowly shift from one side to the other, enabling access to both the good guys’ Paragon City and the baddies’ Rogue Isles before making a permanent switch. “We could have implemented a push-button transaction that switched a character’s alignment,” says senior producer Jesse Caceres, “but we weren’t happy with that idea.”
“City of Heroes has always been, at its core, a comic book simulation. If you’ve seen it in the comics, we try to get it into the game in some form.”
- Matt “Positron” Miller, lead systems designer
Miller adds: “We focused on creating a system that was compelling, offered rewards throughout the experience, and provided a story told in the lively and vibrant social context of an MMORPG. It was important that the process was organic and fit within the scope of comic book lore. In fact, when I originally outlined the system, only Vigilante existed between Hero and Villain. We soon realized that a redemption path from Villain to Hero doesn’t go into a Vigilante phase, and the Rogue alignment was born.”
Shades of Gray
Fresh characters begin the game in Praetoria, a newly-added alternate utopian Earth. (Existing characters can travel there too.) They’re neutral, but they can align themselves with the Resistance (hero) or Loyalist (villain) elements in the city. They have plenty of opportunities to shift back and forth between the two, and when they reach the intermediate step of Vigilante or Rogue, they can visit the Rogue Isles or Paragon City, respectively.
“It’s all just shades of gray in Praetoria, which is totally cool from a role-playing perspective,” Miller observes. “You are constantly making tough moral choices that change the course of your character’s story.”
“This is an opportunity to introduce ourselves to new players with a shiny new universe as well as provide a clean slate for veteran players,” lead designer Melissa Bianco says. “Veterans may know our lore from Paragon City or Rogue Isles, but this is an entirely new adventure for them and an opportunity for us to impress and challenge them in new and interesting ways. It’s a completely original game experience, a new world, and a fresh way to experience it.”
Game Hardware
Check out our systems for your best gaming experience.
A Hair-Raising Experience. Electric control, another new power set, puts a charge in your enemies.
Viva La Revolucion. Resistance forces take on the Praetorian Police Department.
Not of This Earth. The new demon summoning power set lets you bring in reinforcements any time you need them.
City of Heroes
Learn more about City of Heroes by reading our previous feature which covers the original version of the game. Create a unique character and travel to Paragon City, where superheroes battle villains and keep the remnants of an alien invasion at bay.
If you liked these games, check out:
- Freedom Force
- Legion Arena
- Legion Arena: Cult of Mithras
- Second Life
- Spider-Man 2
- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
- World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
- X2: Wolverine’s Revenge
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X version 10.6.3
- Intel Core 2 Duo processor
- 1GB of RAM (3GB recommended)
- Video card: ATI X1600, Nvidia 7300 GT, or Intel X3100 or better graphics chipset (Intel GMA950 chipset not supported)
- 5GB hard disk space
Excelsior!
That’s the word Stan Lee often ended his Marvel Bullpen Bulletin columns with in the old days. It’s also a word you might find yourself muttering as you take advantage of City of Heroes’ Mission Architect feature, which was previously added to the game through one of the regular free “issues” that offer fresh content. Developer Paragon Studios asked authors Austin Grossman, Mercedes Lackey, and Troy Hickman to create their own missions, which are available, like all user-created missions, at the in-game Architect Entertainment Building.
“It just made sense for some incredibly well-respected artists in their field to participate in telling their own stories with the Mission Architect system,” Bianco explains. She notes that Lackey is a long-time City of Heroes player, as is Hickman, who also wrote some City of Heroes comic books. Grossman has experience working in the videogame industry, and he wrote the superhero/super-villain novel “Soon I Will Be Invincible.”
Bianco adds: “The Mission Architect system lets anyone create content for our game, and that’s something no other MMORPG can offer, on the level that we do. It’s exciting — and slightly surreal — to see well-known authors showcase their creativity to the world. We’re always on the hunt for new talent to showcase within Mission Architect.”
Alternate Earths
Long-time comic book fans may remember “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” the 1985-86 DC Comics limited series that sought to resolve the problems stemming from five decades of using alternate Earths. It was a concept that had originally been used to explain why superheroes and villains had changed over the years. (For example, the original Superman could only leap very far, not fly, and his powers were a result of Krypton having stronger gravity than Earth, not from it having a red sun versus our yellow one.) A similar idea lies behind Praetoria, which is ruled by Emperor Cole, also known as Tyrant; he’s the alternate timeline counterpart to Statesman, who was Paragon City’s first superhero.
Like his parallel self, Emperor Cole was Marcus Cole, a World War I veteran who was mysteriously imbued with super powers. However, this version of Cole found his fate irrevocably changed when General Douglas MacArthur used nuclear weapons to stop North Korean troops and their superheroes in the 1950s. Cole was assumed to be among the dead American soldiers and superheroes, but he had actually gone into hiding, disgusted by MacArthur’s decision. He spent years in the Australian outback, emerging when MacArthur, now President of the United States, nuked Shroud City, which is Praetoria’s version of Paragon City.
Cole confronted MacArthur, who explained that he made such a self-destructive move because the hordes of monsters known as the Devouring Earth had invaded and could be stopped no other way. Cole, who had been rendered invincible by the nuclear attack in Korea, led the counter-assault against the Devouring Earth, which eventually killed MacArthur and other leaders in Washington, DC. However, Cole and fellow superheroes known as Super Corps beat back the Devouring Earth, which had also invaded other nations, who resorted to nuclear attacks against it too.
The long war against the Devouring Earth ended with Cole named Emperor of the world, simply because so much of the planet had been destroyed and Cole had proven that only he could handle such a menace. The next twenty-five years saw him overseeing not only a rejuvenation of the nuclear wastelands but also the creation of a worldwide robotic workforce.
However, while the people of the world are well-fed and educated, some resent living under the rule of a dictator-for-life who may not be as benevolent as he seems. A Resistance is growing — new and existing characters may undertake missions for them or for the loyalists known as the Praetorian Guard. Other factions in Praetoria include: the Seers, a network of psychics who monitor the population for inappropriate behavior; the Syndicate, an organized crime group; the Praetorian Police Department, which is aligned with the Praetorian Guard; the Praetorian Clockwork robot force; and former humans that are now cannibalistic subterranean dwellers known as Ghouls.