City of Heroes: Going Rogue Blurs the Lines Between Good and Evil

Q: Since Praetoria is a parallel dimension will we be seeing evil versions of familiar Heroes and vice-versa with familiar Villains?

Nakayama: The great thing about Praetoria is, since it’s a mirror universe and many players have already played City of Heroes, we got to take minor characters and Praetorianize them. So a particularly small character, like Calvin Scott who is a very small side character, is actually the leader of the Resistance. Ghost Widow is actually Belladonna, also part of the Resistance. So you’ll recognize characters from City of Heroes and City of Villains, but the role that they play in Praetoria is sometimes very different than what you expect from them. It’s great to see what we’ve done with them. It’s a real treat for fans because they know this lore backwards and forwards and, in true comic book fashion, we’ve twisted it on its head and gave it a new perspective.

Bianco: What we also did with Going Rogue was we introduced 4 new powersets, actually 1 new powerset for each of the archtypes. We introduced the demon summoning, electric control, kinetic melee, and dual pistols, which is friggin’ awesome. The coolest thing about Going Rogue, though, is this pick your path stuff, I mean, that is really true to what a Superhero is all about. It’s not just this good or evil binary thing where you’re either a boy scout or a mustache-twisting villain, you really have the ability to have a modern now linear comic book story with your character now and that’s really what sets us apart from the competition. For example, we have this mission where you find out the water supply contains a mind-controlling property, so you have a choice when you get to the refinery where this stuff is made. You can destroy it and free the people, but it’s also the only source of water in the city. So you have a hard decision to make, what’s more important: freedom or having water?