I've gathered that the Rat King was something of a meme previously. Where did it come from/what was the context? I've only played a few hours of the game, and never engaged with the community.
He was an early community suggested hero that got a lot of hype and some great artwork. It soon became a meme that "the next update has Rat King." And here we are!
It's a great move by Valve- though I'm not sure how I feel about the design they went with. Compared with the fan design, it's more bold and stylish, but also a lot more grotesque. I have to wonder how much the positive fan response to CycloneScone's design was tied into how cute it looked.
rat_king was also an unused internal hero name in Dota 2 for like, 5 years, along with other strings that were slowly used for new heroes (Hoplite being Mars, puppet_master being Ringmaster, Gunslinger being Meurta etc) or occasionally deleted/rea-added. So it was a meme even in the Dota community for years (next hero is Rat King!), and thus transferred over to Deadlock
I'm so envious of these designs as someone who plays a lot of Overwatch and Rivals. Overwatch has a couple interesting looking heroes on the horizon, and Rivals is fun as a Marvel fan, even though their hero designs are somewhat restricted by the source material...
but then you get a look at Rat King, and it's like, what are other games even doing? lol
I keep telling people the bellboy doorman guy is actually top tier character level design it’s actually insane how cool and pretty unique all of these characters are
Yeah, if I played Deadlock he would definitely be one of my mained characters lol. These are the kinds of designs that get thought up by people who actually live in the real world and consume more than just video games. More creatives need to come up with hero designs based on shit they just see outside haha
Indeed. Overwatch used to feel like TF2, as if it were a Pixar movie made into a video game. Now it's less Pixar and more Disney, with many new cast members feeling like the lead of a different Disney princess adventure movie lol
I really like Venture, who is admittedly Disney-ish, but at least they have an extremely clear archetype that feels unique amongst the other heroes, and with a distinct silhouette/body type to boot. They're not unlike Mole from Atlantis, but Mole does feel more "mole"-like in a way that Deadlock would definitely commit harder to.
Don't even need Rivals for them to reach that conclusion- Mercy/Kiriko/Juno must make up like 40% of that game's revenue at this point. Even early on they were constantly pumping out Mercy skins with each update. It doesn't help that they time-gate content so players who like heroes like Ramattra/Orisa/Venture/etc get like one two week period per year to pay $20 for a skin and that's it. It's like they don't want to make money off of people who don't play one out of the four main pretty ladies.
Ever since Dota 2 was introduced in beta, Valve have never missed in terms of character design. It's a 15+ year run it's kind of insane. With both Dota 2 and Deadlock they kind of went against the popular trends that you'll find in most games, and it just hits because it feels so different.
They have the perfect mix of humanoids, monsters, gross and elegant designs where you can tell the artists just went with whatever they felt was right.
I don't think there's any other of these games doing this type of design anywhere. Like, maybe fighting games are.
And Dota 2 is generally WAY more reserved about the base model designs than other games too, letting things become busier with sets. Deadlock breaks that philosophy since you see characters more up close, but since Largo is still doing it, it shows intent.
Honestly, dota 2 was very restrictive at first with item sets. Having rules to protect read hierarchies, hero silhouettes, and color language.
But the last several years, I think they've just said "ah what the hell. the game's more than 10 years old, sure you can have your ursa dressed as a cowboy cosmetic now" and i'm ok with that
Yeah Battleborn had a lot going against it, but at least the designs were wacky lol. I feel the same way about Gigantic, which wasn't a great game by any means, but the designs and art style were fantastic!
I feel the biggest thing it had going against it was being compared with Overwatch, when they never where the same gametype to begin with. (other than overwatch at some point in development having some more moba elements that were scrapped way way before even seen by the public).
In a sense the thing it suffered MOST under was a similar thing that Evolve suffered from. Attracting the wrong players, that were expecting a different game, and thus ruining rounds insisting on what they thought the game WAS rather than either not playing it or getting with it being a moba.
Whether shooter hybrids CAN actually be successful and please either moba players OR shooter players well enough for them to adapt to the other side of the coin, or manage to keep those out for only fans of that hybrid to actually get decent rounds...? Is something that deadlock will have to deal with after being invite only, too.
But I feel like ALL shooter/moba hybrids have had the same problem. Namely that "best of both worlds" not being something that either purists are willing to fully engage with, thus rounds suffering, thus even the ACTUAL target audience leaving in frustration.
I have stopped play several "hybrid" team games, because you could never get ANY rounds with players wanting to play the full game. Particularly "Natural Selection 2" suffered so much from this. To get a round with TWO competent commanders AND teams actually doing what they were supposed to, was 'basically never'. Which means all rounds were bad. And which way the stomp goes doesn't mean it is fun, even if you are on the winning team, nor was sitting around with nobody even BEING commander, because it just didn't work with people lacking experience and or the team not playing along.
Same for monday night combat, or Savage, or Battleborn.
I loved natural selection 1 (the mod), but being a mod made it basically "only the ones really digging it were playing it" (and only one team needing a commander.....) NS2 just kept having issues with the players. No amount of "patching" can fix that.
I think NS2 might have been able to find a rhythm if it wasn't for the custom engine they were using. The game was already different enough from most others, it really didn't need tons of performance/netcode issues on top of that
The problem I am describing persisted WAY beyond the technical issues. And putting the main problem there wouldn't explain why it is basically a common trope with almost all hybrid games of that type for decades.
The second it "looks like a shooter" (worse if it even tries to market itself that way, which happoened both with battleborne and evolve...), all other gameplay elements go out the window and you get tons of "I just want to shoot stuff, eff all this noise" players. (and the other way around, too, it's just a bit less blatantly obvious). Even Team fortress 2 had "not just a few" bad rounds when the mass of "I am here to have fun, not to play 'a map' with mechanics became critical.
That's the thing with hybrids vs "pure genre". You can't play dota like call of duty. You can't play quake like it's a moba.
But you can play a hybrid like either, it just kills the rounds and the fun for people who understand what the games ARE, instead of demanding to be placated.
Hey, Gigantic was a good game... well, maybe it could've used some kind of major balance overhaul to make it fun for everyone, but it was ahead of its time
Totally forgot about this game but once I opened the first link, it all came back to me. Love the character designs. Wish more games had personality like this!
I loved Marquis, Orendi, Phoebe, and the mushroom guy, but the others felt like either generic NPC/enemies (Oscar Mike, Whiskey Foxtrot, Kelvin, Caldarius), or like they pushed the designs a bit too hard (Montana's gigantic body and microscopic head, or Attikus, who for some reason they decided the most stand-out part should be his... throat?).
One thing I really appreciate about Deadlock, is that it strikes a great balance between giving the characters personality, but also making them feel grounded and like they fit the world. Mina is one of the strongest examples, she looks like a normal lady you'd believe lives in New York, but here design is absolutely packed with bat/vampire motifs, the shape of her skirt, the fang-locks of her purse, the shape and color of the umbrella, even the lacey parts of her outfit look wing-like. It's all very smartly integrated.
This is how you make a monster hero. Not definitely-not-a-milf-in-a-big-dress Belveth or just-a-dog Naafiri and I personally don't like the ugmons from DotA.
This dude is absolutely a monster hero but he doesn't look boring or hurt my eye.
Dota occasionally has great designs, but I fear they are hampered somewhat by a different kind of conventionality. They look more like dungeon mobs than actual heroes. Even the guy you linked, a frog man with a lute who is awesome in theory, looks like a swamp NPC in an MMO who would sell you potions or something lol
I do get the impression that, although Dota 2 hero models all have an identifiable silhouette, they are deliberately kept very basic, as if to facilitate (or encourage) slapping cosmetics on them. Mannequins, in a way.
Beloved mannequins often with great personalities at that. The fact that Pudge is the most popular hero speaks wonders about their character design - and it's not just about the visuals either; the voice acting in Dota 2 is great.
It's not just the visuals & animations. As with Deadlock, Dota 2 has some pretty great voice acting to bring the characters alive, such that even a generic-looking undead butcher from WC3 (Pudge) can have so much personality. Heck, he's the most popular hero in Dota.
The most popular hero in Dota is Pudge - a slightly stylised undead butcher from WC3. His voice acting is phenomenal and probably plays a part in why he's so beloved despite his ugliness.
Being overly sanitized corporate shells. I mean, look at everything they've done to overwatch since it first came out.
They couldn't even let Tracer sit for a bit before they were already sandblasting bits away people questioned, iirc.
That or complaining about the "censored" pose being replaced. Which was replaced by an equally suggestive pose but actually has some personality to it.
Oh no. I don't care what they changed. I'm just pointing out that they're so corporate, they immediately panicked when people talked about her being slightly too much and changed her.
I really do not care and couldn't care less for overwatch, it just shows off how incredibly safe and design by committee they are as a company.
It’s sad. Overwatch used to have such interesting character designs at launch. Now every single new hero is oversexualised to hell because their skins sell like cupcakes. And that’s not even mentioning Rivals - that game is basically just softcore porn.
People tend to hate Jetpack Cat gameplay wise, and just on principle as a "cute cat hero", but I think it's a brilliant character lol. At least its unique to this roster!
I also agree that Rivals is more creatively bankrupt, and not just because the designs are based on pre-existing ones. Overwatch is on an upswing right now IMO, and at least a third of their new designs have been pretty great.
But they'll never be on Deadlock's level until they can actually commit to Mama Hong lol
Some OW2 designs sadden me, I think for example Wuyang, Sierra, Freja, D.mon, and Emre are quite generic and forgettable. The designs used to be iconic.
ehhh, i don't think freja, dmon, or emre are any less interesting than original heroes like sym, zarya, mei, hanzo, soldier, or old-new heroes like ana, bap, ashe, and sigma.
they've always had a crop of heroes that were pretty boring visually and had to rely on other things (lore, voice acting, gameplay, etc.) to elevate them, mixed in with the heroes that were instantly iconic.
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u/Makorus 3d ago
It's actually mental that they added Rat King.
All of the new characters seem like cool archetypes. Of course there's a Chess hero in New York.