8th Anniversary: Original Demo Content Left Out

I'm reading the 8 year anniversary article and watching the video back from when CoH was still in demo, and I start noticing things that never made it into the final game. The two ones that stand out, besides an energy blaster throwing a roundhouse that catches multiple dudes (heck, I still want that) were the listings of powers and enemy groups.

With powers, I see things like the demo guy picking Air Control, Cold Control, Core Powers, and Fire Control, with room for a bunch more. Listed on the menu are powers that we got, or eventually did (like Plant Control and Poisons), but also things like Super Personality, Super Willpower, and Density Control.

Then when it's showing the enemy groups, I see familiar names but also ones we've never seen like Revelation, Killing Crew, Fear Factor, Twilight Men and Seraphim.

This isn't a criticism by any means, as given the technology available at the time and simply limited available resources it's understandable why some ideas were cut or found to be impractical. I remember reading the preview articles of CoH back in 2003 and thinking "This sounds awfully ambitious."

But I'm really curious as to some of the stuff there. Like who were Revelation? Or the Twilight Men? And what the heck was Super Personality?

The 'pick your pool of powers' thing got ditched because the devs had no way of making it balanced, testers complained that either you made a tankmage or something hideously gimped.

Origin had quite a large affect on it too, I remember Mutant meant you could take a wider selection of powers but each individual power wouldn't be as effective as they normally would, while Natural could only take a limited selection of powers but those powers would be more effective than normal.

Killing Crew and Fear Factor got merged to form the Freakshow we know and love. Twilight Men I believe either became Crey (Men in Black) or Malta and Revelation IIRC was made to become the 5th Column.

Density control I believe became Kinetic (there is an Increase density power in there) and Gravity, Super Willpower was probably another name for the Fitness pool...super Personality...no bloody idea on that one

My guess is that Super Personality = Leadership, Super Willpower = Willpower, and Density Control = Gravity.

Super Personality is probably the presence/leadership pools, density control probably kinetics.

Super willpower might have evolved into a variety of things, including fitness, willpower, and maybe some of invulnerability.

It's also worth pointing out that probably not all of the powers listed had actually been created at the time of the demo reels, and many likely don't have analogues within the current power system. While there was something called "Super Willpower", the Willpower set as we know it was created by Castle at a much later date.

Going by how early the trailer is, like the zones don't even seem to have war walls, I think that they probably just brainstormed a list of powers from comicbooks, then just coded the selection screen before they'd even worked out exactly what the powers would do

I do vaguely recall reading years ago something mentioning Requiem and saying that his group was Revelation, which was supposed to be top tier big bads. Maybe they merged that in with the 5th Column.

I also remembering a somewhat wider number of origins, like Gadgets and stuff.

Or I'm misremembering.

Still, would be kind of cool if at some point they reused the names or ideas in some way.

Though I admit, Twilight Men makes imagine a cross between MIBs and Slenderman stuff. Creepy tall pale guys in suits that look human... from a distance.

Oh I've seen it, I like those guys. Very creepy.

Re: the 'missing' gangs, I vaguely remember asking about them when making my Retrospective video. One of them became Malta, I think one became the Sky Raiders... I'll have to see if I still have that info around somewhere.

Twilight Men >>> Malta
Killing Crew >>> Sky Raiders

One of the things I wish were still available is that heels-together female pose for the character creator...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

*points down to link to guides*

Have one in there about the original COH video, as well. Some discussion on the groups and such in there, if interested.

As I recall from that - after all, that's more *pre* beta, if I'm remembering the discussion correctly - you can't really point at a power pool and say "That's X now." The pools were described as smaller - more like our power pools now.

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