City of Villains E3 2005 Impressions

We had a chance to sit in on a demonstration for City of Villains, the next superhero game from publisher NCSoft and developer Cryptic Studios, at E3 2005. The new game, as its title suggests, will let you play as a supervillain (rather than a superhero) in a persistent online world. Unlike City of Heroes, which begins your characters' lives in the virtuous town of Paragon City, City of Villains will start your new villain characters in the Rogue Isles, an archipelago where supervillains generally keep to themselves (for now). According to NCSoft designer (and Dungeons & Dragons emeritus) Dave "Zeb" Cook, the studio has four primary goals for the game: to make players feel like bonafide villains; to encourage players to engage in generalized player-versus-player battles; to engage supergroups with all-new base-building gameplay; and to add new graphical features, like light blooming and enhanced particle effects.

As we saw, supervillains will be able to take on similar challenges to the heroes of City of Heroes, but will go about them in entirely different ways. For instance, the streets of Rogue Isles will have pedestrians, but you won't necessarily rescue them from wandering thugs (as the heroes of Paragon City would). However, the pedestrians may be targets for roaming gangs with which you can start gang wars. Essentially, everyone in Rogue Isles is a villain to some degree, so you won't need to feel much remorse or worry about abiding by too many laws as you take on various missions as well as gain experience levels and rank in the islands' criminal hierarchy.

Missions will be improved will all-new graphical effects, such as improved particle effects provided by the Ageia PhysX engine, including showers of sparks from explosions that race along walls and floors before burning out. Missions will also be interjected by brief cinematic cutscenes that provide clues on how to complete them.

City of Villains will also include an all-new base-building aspect that will let supergroups (persistent groups of players known as "guilds" in other such games) build a custom base of operations for themselves. According to Cook, NCSoft is hoping that base-building will be as accessible, and as enjoyable, as City of Heroes' powerful character-creation system. To that end, base-building will let you elevate and lower terrain within your base, spray paint the walls with different textures, and add a huge variety of items, including decorative furniture and items of actual use, such as your own player hospitals, teleporters, and even static defenses. You'll need these defenses to fend off raids from rival supergroups, who will have good reason to attack your demesnes beyond bragging rights (the new game will also add beneficial "power crystal" items that can be acquired from supergroup-only quests--crystals that can be seized in raids). If you wish, you'll also be able to participate on raids on Paragon City by taking part in what NCSoft calls "generalized PVP"; that is, player-versus-player battles outside of the game's designated arenas.

The game will also add a set of all-new character "archetypes," which are character types that focus on specific power sets (similar to the blasters, tankers, and scrappers of City of Heroes). There will also be similar sorts of superpowers like those featured in the original game, including some combination of a few basic powers from the first game and a set of all-new abilities based on these existing powers. City of Villains sounds like it will offer fans of highly accessible and highly addictive online role-playing games a great reason to revisit Paragon City, perhaps this time as an enemy of the state. The game is scheduled for release later this year.