City of Villains

E3 Preview 2005

Sometimes it is good to be bad; sometimes it is hard work.

NCsoft showed off the next step in the Cryptic Studios adventure with City of Villains during the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3) in Los Angeles.

According to David Zeb Cook, the goals of CoV are three-fold:

"We want you to be a villain," he said, "we want to make PvP (player-versus-player) more integrated, and we wanted to introduce base and make base raiding a part of the experience."

The game also sports several new graphical upgrades as well (from the City of Heroes title) including bloom filtering, refraction on the water, bump mapping and armor specularity.

There will be seven PvP zones and four player-versus-environment zones, and there will be new mission technology that will add cutscenes within the missions to add story elements. Cryptic is also adding more destructible elements within the environment.

And, of course, there are the bases. Supergroups will be able to customize bases and create defenses. Why? Because the game will allow for scheduled base raids. Part of the game will involve players and supergroups committing crimes. Some of these may be contractual work, but should they stumble on an artifact, those may give supergroups minor buffs, but will also put them on the map for base raids.

The developers are working to make the bases as customizable as possible. As for the avatars, new looks and new archetypes are in the works. For the raids, if the tests prove it out, it may be possible for teams of up to 75 players each to go head-to-head.

The look at the NCsoft meeting rooms was all too brief, but the game's graphics were "super," and the general gameplay looks do retain the same flair that marks City of Heroes as one of the upper echelon titles in the massively multiplayer market.

City of Villains has yet to enter the beta phase, but even this quick look was entertaining and marks the title as one to keep an eye on in the coming months.