City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Signature Rogues

Avatea

By Avatea,
Posted on: 2009-07-15 21:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

By: Matt “Positron” Miller, Senior Lead Designer, Paragon Studios

When Going Rogue was in the planning stages, we knew that we would need a couple “poster-children” to encompass what “Going Rogue” meant. We needed a Hero and a Villain to cross over to the other side and show to the world, and our players, that yes, this can and will be possible for your character too.

We originally thought that we would take existing Signature characters and migrate them to the other side, but since we did the “Trading Places” storyline in the comic (where Manticore joins up with Arachnos), it seemed we couldn’t do that without someone tying it back to that comic storyline where (spoilers ahead!) Manticore was only faking and was actually a Hero the entire time.

So that meant we needed a Hero-gone-bad and a Villain-gone-good. Looking back into my stable of old RPG super-heroes I remembered a gun wielding vigilante I used to play called Maelstrom. Since we really wanted to get a dual pistols Powerset into Going Rogue I thought that he would be a great guy to dust off and bring to life in the City of Heroes universe. Like all creations, he went through many iterations before the final look and style was settled for him. The Going Rogue version and the RPG version from years ago are pretty much two distinct entities now, and I just love what our concept team was able to do to modernize him.

That took care of our vigilante Hero, but I still needed a redeeming Villain. I looked to the other powerset we wanted to put into Going Rogue, Demon Summoning. This was a Mastermind set, so it was already exclusive to villains, making it obvious that whoever we came up with was going to be a demon summoner.

Desdemona was the hardest to nail down a name for. We had gone through many iterations of her name, everything from Pandora to Eve to Demonatrix to Parable. We were never happy with any of them, until Melissa Bianco (War Witch, our Senior world designer) came up with Desdemona. It fit the character perfectly and instantly became her name in the story bible. We loved that she had such an “evil” powerset, but found herself in a situation where she wanted to use her powers for good.

Personally I love the way both characters turned out. During the concepting phase Desdemona had a lot of skin showing around the neck so we were trying out various jewelry and collars to break things up. Then I realized if this girl was summoning demons, she’d probably want something mystical to keep them from controlling her. That’s when I came up with the idea of a tattooed “circle of protection” encompassing her mind, that demons couldn’t penetrate and was permanently part of her body.

Maelstrom’s power source was also a great idea. Ken Morse, the Lead Artist, wanted something that evoked “Maelstrom” more than just the name, and so his idea was to having this glowing, swirling, energy source in his chest. I think the end result was awesome.

Sharp-eyed fans will note that we’ve been working on these two characters for a while, as they had their “birthdays” listed in the online calendar we released for the fourth anniversary of City of Heroes, over a year ago. Although Desdemona was listed as Pandora on that calendar, it just shows how fluid, and long, some of these ideas take to come to fruition.

For the next Dev Diary, Joe “Hero 1” Morrissey will detail new information on Tyrant, err, I mean Emperor Cole, and the world of Praetoria where he and his Praetorian Guard hail from.

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Posted

Interesting read. liked that nobody caught up on you lot mentioning them over a year ago, very nice and just shows how long you all been working on this

That said, have you just confirmed that the two new powersets will indeed be in GR now?

Well done on the characters though, both are very very nice in all shapes and form.

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Posted

Maelstrom comes from another game basically..
Wonder if it had anything to do with AO mayhaps..

Nah

Still though, nice little article!

 

Posted

Like the article, and the fact that it was pointed out that there were hints a year ago.
After looking at site a li'l more, I've a fortunata who really wants Desdemona's boots.

 

Posted

Sounds good. I want to summon demons! And also, where can I see these characters?

I know for a fact my Warshade and illusion/kin controller will be taking a ride on the wild side when they turn evil.

And I look forward to going rogue x)

 

Posted

I think the characters' Bios are wicked and like my new wallpaper

He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

 

Posted

Although I've spotted an error already - you've listed Betty Page's eye colour as hazel, when they're amber in the illustration.

You FOOLS!

 

Posted

considering orius' concept i'm a bit miffed with the similarities with maelstrom then again i did write his concept prior to the bios being put on the site

all in all i'm impressed and it was a nice teaser

 

Posted

Ha.. I have almost the same prob... I have a fire/fire dominator demoness called Lilith Desdemonia. She is over a year old... but I will have to live with reactions that I stole got it from this chick now

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Posted

and i just remembered i have a widow called operative maelstrom aswell........oh joy *rolls eyes*

 

Posted

WTB Maelstrom's chest detail (or something similar)

 

Posted

lol how come Posi couldnt post this himself lol

 

Posted

Dose it really matter who posted it?

 

Posted

Erm as great as the new website is how come the cinematic is now in half the quality it originally was. Major whoopsie for anyone who see's it for the first time and feels let down :/

Nice to read a bit more and finally get some tad bits of info on the expansion