Coffee Breakfast

My favourite MMO? Well, that would be City of Heroes. So it’s happy news indeed to see the developers, Cryptic Studios, have unveiled details about their next project, Champions Online.

Cryptic were of course, until recently, working with Marvel to create Marvel Universe Online. With this project cancelled, Cryptic have wasted no time in picking up a new license to develop, which they say they’ll self-publish. It’s safe to say it’s at the opposite end of the fame scale. Hero Games’ pen and paper RPG, Champions, began in 1981. Cryptic explain if only you’d superclick.

“Champions was one of the first roleplaying games to forgo the traditional dice-rolling system of character generation in favor of a point-based system. The player would spend character points to determine exactly what kind of character they would be, what superpowers they would possess, the precise personal characteristics of their hero and even what disadvantages their do-gooder alter-ego would be forced to overcome.”

This is the approach they intend to take with Champions Online. The big emphasis is on character customisation – something in fact that City of Heroes still does better than any MMOs that have appeared in the four years since its release. But this time they seem to be taking it much further.

“Choose from hundreds of different costume pieces, colors and body types to create your character’s one-of-a-kind costume and look. There are billions of possible combinations, and in a universe brimming with the fantastic and the unforgettable, you can still be completely unique!”

It doesn’t stop there. The powers are similarly to be tweaked, letting you choose how your powers appear, their colour, their special effects, their design. And being a superhero, you need an archenemy. Which you’ll also being designing during character creation. Cryptic explain, “In Champions Online, you design your character’s supreme adversary, choosing a name, powers and costume for a superpowered foe to bedevil your hero throughout his or her career.”

The other advantage of the license is the location freedom. So while things appear that they will begin in a more familiar setting, skyscraper-filled Millennium City, you’ll be able to visit other dimensions, underwater cities, the Moon, and most excitingly of all, Canada.