etween the hoopla of E3 and the excitement of San Diego Comic Con, DC Universe Online has amassed a considerable amount of buzz the past month. If you somehow happened to miss the announcement, DC Universe Online – in production through a collaboration between Sony Online Entertainment Austin, Warner Bros Interactive and DC Comics – will allow players to enter a persistent DC themed universe and fight alongside classic heroes and villains from the companies 70 year history. Read on to get detailed information about the upcoming MMO, including insight from DCUO Executive Creative Director and comic book legend Jim Lee.
The Concept
DCUO will bring PlayStation 3 owners and PC gamers together in an action-heavy MMO experience. Currently in development for both systems simultaneously – to ensure that each version is virtually identical – the game let players create their own customized heroes or villains and pull at the strings of fate within the DC Universe.
Based on the iconic artwork of Jim Lee, DCUO will feature dozens of diverse settings and hundreds of characters. Players will get to explore Gotham City and Arkham Asylum, Metropolis and many other environments yet to be announced. The game will span locations both of this world and beyond, with the ultimate goal being to make the most comprehensive vision of the DC Universe possible. Players will be able to work alongside Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. Or, they can choose to create mayhem with The Joker, Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Lex Luthor. With hundreds of unique IP’s to draw from – spanning back to the 1930s – DCUO will undoubtedly appeal to comic fans of every generation. While only a few of the most iconic DC characters have been confirmed for the game at this moment in time, the DCUO team is expecting somewhere around 150 characters to be included at launch. However, they intend to constantly draw from the roster of over a thousand characters as time moves on and the game evolves.
“The rich, storied world of DC Comics has never been available to players like this before,” said John Smedley, president of SOE, when the title was first announced. “For the first time, gamers can actually open the door and step into the vast world of DC Comics and choose their own fate. Who wouldn’t want to infiltrate Batman’s cave or fly over Metropolis as you speed toward a mission to help Superman?”
The Premise
Honestly? There is not much of one yet. The DCUO team has been pushing their roster of killer IP’s and action-based gameplay more than any other details as of now. Not much has been revealed in terms of a story for this massive universe. However, the DCUO team does reassure us that the reason for the large influx of super citizens will make sense within the greater context of the game. We were also informed that the team is working with unnamed DC writers to ensure the plot fits within the DC Universe.
We were able to get one cryptic bit of information out of the DC team. DC acknowledges that secret identities are a huge part of the DC comic experience, and they will be addressing the concept in the game. No details other than that were given. The time frame for the game is no less enigmatic. Because comics are notorious for spin-offs, alternative universes and off-the-wall story arcs, it would be impossible to place the game in one specific period of time in DC’s history. For this reason, DC is focusing on capturing the essence of their properties, and picked character costumes and other details from a variety of sources as a result.
The Art
Jim Lee is synonymous with the art of DC Universe Online. Lee has been involved with the project for some time now – even before Sony Online Entertainment was brought into the equation. As it turns out, DC was interested in licensing their property to create an MMO title. Being a very passionate gamer, Lee asked to be involved and ended up taking the creative point of the project. Being an admitted fan of Everquest, he became even more excited when Sony Online Entertainment picked up the title.
“The style is loosely based on my comic book style,” clarified Lee. “I think we had to make some concessions and changes because there are things that I do in my style that look good 2D and in comic form but don’t look so great in pixels and on the screen – they need different sizes and proportions. I think because the actual characters are fairly small on the screen that we really wanted to emphasize the silhouette on each of the different characters. We wanted to make them very unique looking so that you could tell that they are all different from a glance.”
“There is a lot of stuff that I do in my own personal style that is fairly subtle in terms of proportions and whatnot,” Lee continued, “and what I found is that I would draw these silhouettes and when you would look at it in a 3D model they looked way too similar. As a result we had to really push my normal sense of proportions. Still, the overall look of the eyes and the hair and the eyebrows and the hands, and even the color palette for the cities is very much what I would do if I was drawing this myself.”
Lee and his team have also put much consideration into the environments, as many fans are most excited about being able to explore every inch of the DC universe for the first time.
“We really wanted to make sure that no matter where you are in the city, that you can look just one way and you know that you are in Gotham versus Metropolis. We also wanted every neighborhood to feel unique. They are unique by the type of buildings or the style or architecture or the color palette. A lot of thought went into trying to make the cities feel somewhat like characters themselves.”