DC Universe Online Preview and Interviews
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In our brief demo, we got to see a Batman-inspired hero in a Waynetech suit trying to take down Harley Quinn. It seems the villain has kidnapped Robin, and Batman would rather we save the Boy Wonder instead of doing it himself. The player must beat up hordes of enemies using his close-combat powers and his nifty bat-gadgets. Blocking and dodging properly play into the game, as opposed to the positioning and stat crunching that you usually see. We eventually reach Harley, who is a boss fight. She starts off functioning like a stronger version of the foes we'd seen thus far, but after taking enough damage, she begins to flip out and chase us around the room, smashing her hammer like Mario in Donkey Kong. We have to keep our distance because getting caught by the hammer means you get pounded painfully into the ground. Defeating Harley lets the player rescue Robin and earns a rare loot drop.
An interesting element is how your costume works. By doing quests in the main game, you'll obtain new pieces of equipment for your character. Doing quests for Batman can make him build you a suit of Bat Power Armor, which you can equip for nice stat boosts. On the other hand, if you beat up Harley Quinn and steal her hat, you can wear it yourself. Seeing a grim dark avenger wearing Harley's hat is pretty silly, even if you can recolor it to look less goofy. The nice part about the game is that what you wear is separate from the stat boosts that you get from equipment. When you find something, you can choose to equip it or just equip the stat effect. If you wanted the effect of Harley's hat while still keeping your current look, it's entirely possible.
And a little something from the Q&A:
TTH: You're talking about a lot of abilities, which is great. What sort of system is in place to prevent something like me creating a character named $uperman with all of Superman's abilities? Or can players do that? Is it encouraged?
Wes Yanagi: Obviously, we don't want a million Batmans running around everywhere. What we do want to do is to let you create a character that is inspired by Batman or some other superhero/supervillain that you have in your mind's eye. The way you go about that is you pick your super power, which I mentioned earlier such as fire, ice, mental, or gadgets. Then you pick your weapon like a rifle, dual pistols, unarmed, maybe a staff, and then your movement mode. So if you wanted to create somebody like Batman, you'd pick gadgets as your power; you'd be unarmed because he's kind of a brawler, and then he'd be an acrobat. If you wanted to do somebody more like Green Arrow, then you'd pick gadgets because he has all of those trick arrows, and you would use a bow as your power source, and then he would also be an acrobat. For somebody like Mister Freeze, you would be ice powered and his power source would be a rifle.
