Stretching the Genre: Creating Cimerora in City of Heroes

[Cody Bye]

Every so often, a game development company needs to take a calculated risk and step out of their normal comfort zone to create a batch of content that is beyond their normal scope. Recently, NCsoft Nor-Cal made this decision when they opted to take on the Greek and Roman inspired zone of Cimerora. In Ten Ton Hammer's exclusive developer diary, Senior Art Lead Ken Morse discusses what it took to create Cimerora and why players should be excited for the latest batch of upcoming content!

Creating Greek and Roman inspired mission content was something that we wanted to do with Issue 11: A Stitch in Time. It was always a goal of ours for that Issue to really make you feel like a time traveler by going back to ancient times and interacting with the locals there. Unfortunately, when all the art tasks for Issue 11 were estimated, it became apparent that we would not be able to complete it for that Issue. We did, however, start work on several assets that we knew we would need once we got the content underway.

Check out the whole CoH dev diary by clicking here!

[Cody Bye]

Should a Greek and Roman inspired culture be included in a super hero game? Where can (or should) the CoH team go from here?

[Ravenschild]

Originally Posted by Cody Bye

Should a Greek and Roman inspired culture be included in a super hero game? Where can (or should) the CoH team go from here?

If marvel can toss the F4 into 1600's england or create a planet for its heroes and villians to fight on or DC can have many different infinite earths that all have different timlines yet can atg some points relate to eachother then yes they can. As to whats next? Id like to see the Celts or the Far East personally...or the Rikti home or Atlantis. If Statesman is the re-incarnation of Zeus then other gods should be coming out soon,or atleast their avatars (like statesman) and it would be interesting to see some of the evil gods from babylon or such step in. After all most of what they have done storyline do far is all technical or such,why have a magic origin if it doesnt play into the game in any way really?

[GlobalTaxi]

I think with the introduction of time travel, any place in time is welcome. I've always loved the Roman theme and look forward to what i12 offers.
For future issues, I'd love to see missions that take place off world. Why cant we attack the Rikti where they live or meet them on some distant troubled world that need our help. Besides, the Rikti are really human anyway right...lol? Not only would off world missions be cool, it'd give an oportunity to think of and develope other types of villains or creatures.

[Voradams]

Originally Posted by Cody Bye

Should a Greek and Roman inspired culture be included in a super hero game? Where can (or should) the CoH team go from here?

Hellenistic and Romans in a super hero game....the background in CoX does lend itself to these Horeric impulses, especially given the origin of Statesman and Lord Recluse.

However, i would love to see in a time travel arc.....

Fighting Nazi's (not 5th column, not council) during the 1940's.
Fighting Commies in the 1960's
Olympus...if you are going homeric on us, why stop at mortals.....
A retro space zone....think Dan Dare or Perry Rhodan...or Tommy Tomorrow..

Time travel opens um a can of worms that allows the game to go beyond Paragon City/Rouge Isles.....

Darryl

[GoldenBullet]

Yep. Nazi's are good foes-very effective.

But how about some Ouroboros content that features fighting on the Rikti Home planet? Let's take the fight to them!

Either Vanguard has a very closely guarded secret Rikti portal that they have been trying to harness and finally use...

-Or-

The Menders take a chance to go to the time when the Heroes were sent to the Rikti home world on the suicide mission to eliminate the portal and stop that from happening...

-Or-

Earth finally has had enough of the Rikti and decides to start invading their planet by means of one of the above mentioned...

-Or-

...the options are endless. The content could be offered as a special badge mission (with accolade powers AND special costume pieces or other big time rewards) either after completing the Ouroboros TF's or after completing all of the story lines or both.

Just my two cents . I've been playing about 4 1/2 months now and I love all the content on both sides. Unbelievable game-keep up the great work, devs!

[mncd2008]

Perhaps the next focus of the CoX should be to create a 3rd option of play. Rikti perhaps? Then you could be a hero, villain or Rikti. This would open up the opportunity to make Rikti world zones for Rikti players, as well as create a need for a new PVP map. Just a thought...

[QWNZU]

Originally Posted by mncd2008

Perhaps the next focus of the CoX should be to create a 3rd option of play. Rikti perhaps? Then you could be a hero, villain or Rikti. This would open up the opportunity to make Rikti world zones for Rikti players, as well as create a need for a new PVP map. Just a thought...

WOW that would be sweet. the movie (yes, they are making a movie of city of heroes) is going to be about supers vs aliens, so why wouldnt we be able to PLAY as em? that would be SWEEEET! and the rikti warzone could become a PVP zone, too!