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Ship Of Heroes: latest attempt to avenge City of Heroes

BUT ON A SPACESHIP

It is an entirely true and 110% accurate fact that everyone who ever played now-dead superheroic MMO City of Heroes is now developing three spiritual sequels of their own. Ship Of Heroes is the latest attempt to resurrect the much-loved NCSoft title, character creator and all, with the twist that it's all set on a giant spaceship.

To get it out the way first - they're planning on a Kickstarter in April, and though I don't know how much bat-cash they already have in the bat-attic, it's probably not entirely inappropriate to say that the fate of Ship of Heroes depends on the outcome of that.

I should also note that it does not currently involve any original COH developers, and that this appears to be the first major game project for its team, Pennsylvania-based Heroic Games Inc, most of whom are big huge COH fans. That hasn't stopped other Kickstarted games from being excellent, but I just wanted to set expectations for a crowd-funded massively multiplayer game at an appropriate level. This project would be an enormous undertaking for any small team.

Take a look at the videos below and you'll see a mix of the extremely recognisable, the subtly or not-so-subtly different and elements, such as UI, that clearly need a ton of work yet. It's Unreal engine-based, by the way.

Environments:

Cover image for YouTube video

Character creator:

Cover image for YouTube video

Combat:

Cover image for YouTube video

I'm reasonably impressed by the character creator and environments - clearly both money and dedication has gone onto this - but the combat video suggests a lot of work is yet to be done. Well, that's what Kickstarter is for, after all.

You might have noticed that, despite apparently being set onboard a spaceship, it looks a whole lot like a city. Paragon City, to be specific. Well, here's the conceit they're going for: "It’s a ship that is going places, so our aspiration is to have the ship dock periodically at new worlds, distant mining colonies, other ships, and perhaps even a space station or two, in a sequence. "In each new location, Players will find new missions, materials to harvest, enemies to defeat, and unique items to acquire."

Here's an intro video to said ship, including the ow-no-please-please-don't revelation that it's powered by made-up mineral Unobtanium, a term that's been around for yonks but which is most known for its use in magic enviro-Smurfs opus Avatar.

Cover image for YouTube video

More details here. Kickstarter's due April 4, with goals not yet revealed, but if it works out then they plan on alphas late this year and through 2018, with a beta to follow.

If it's the original you miss, you should know that, although it's officially been force-fed Kyrptonite, it is still possible to play it, albeit on quieter, third-party servers.

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City of Heroes

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About the Author
Alec Meer avatar

Alec Meer

Co-founder

Ancient co-founder of RPS. Long gone. Now mostly writes for rather than about video games.

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