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Story wise, does the fact that all of these super heroes and villains exist make sense?
glord
Member UncommonPosts: 338
I am curious about one matter of the story... Realistically, (ingame) are there really that many supers in the CoX universe? Heroes seem to make up quite the fraction of paragon city's population.
Comments
Well, someone has to take care of Aunt May while Spiderman is on the prowl.
Does anything in video games really make realistic sense? How about a respawning boss, make sense? You dying and coming back to life? Go getting 10 donkey asses, for donkey ass soup make sense?
Realistic Comic book...
What?
well.. while I'm at it...
How realistic is it in WoW to have 2 million people at level 70 able to single handedly kill most of the monsters in the game.
For that mater how realistic is it to have people teleport to the hospital after they die?
Realism has very little place in entertainment.
Storyline wise?
Well if you lived in a world full of super heroes and mutants and freaks of nature, wouldn't you try to strengthen yourself to survive against them?
Not all super hero/villains are SUPER, for instance Batman / Ironman.
I'd say its about as realistic as you can get while still being fun... its not like everyones a Jedi or something... oh ZING!
You can read the backstory here: http://www.cityofheroes.com/gameinfo/paragon_city.html
But one quick excerpt:
[By the time world war II broke out] "... Great Britain held on by its fingernails, protected from German invasion by its air force, dwindling navy and dedicated but small bands of heroes such as the Dawn Patrol. The Nazis had just revealed their own team of super powered soldiers called the Storm Korps, thus changing the face of modern warfare forever. In Asia, Japan had already occupied huge swaths of China and Southeast Asia and now threatened American holdings in the Philippines and even the West Coast. It seemed inevitable that the US would eventually get drawn into the war. The American military sluggishly geared up for war and, based on events in Europe, began recruiting heroes into its ranks.
It was almost too little too late. On December 7th, 1941 the US was forcefully brought into the war with simultaneous attacks on each of its potential fronts. In Hawaii the Japanese launched a massive air strike against naval forces at Pearl Harbor. In Paragon City a cadre of Nazi heroes made a similar, equally devastating attack. Paragon City's harbor was the staging ground for America's lend/lease program whereby it transported military equipment to the beleaguered British Isles. The largest convoy ever had assembled at Paragon City, hundreds of cargo ships protected by a fleet of US Navy warships and submarines. In the space of a few hours, Nazi insurgents struck all across the harbor. Super strong soldiers ripped apart ships with their bare hands. Flight pack equipped storm troopers zipped across the water firing high-powered rocket guns into fragile hulls. Blasts of pure energy ripped through the night, leaving death and devastation in their wake.
The Freedom Phalanx roused itself to take on the Nazi attack, but by the time they organized a response the attack was nearly over. The Germans made a fighting retreat as the sea burned with flaming oil and thousands sank to watery graves. In the wake of such disaster, Congress was quick to declare war on both Axis powers. The first into the fight were those very heroes who had been burned during the raid on Paragon City. The Freedom Phalanx, its ranks swelling with new volunteers, made a harrowing journey across the Atlantic to help reinforce the Dawn Patrol in England.
Paragon City became the main recruiting ground for super powered soldiers. The US Army set up a special training facility in the city and amended the recruitment laws to allow costumed and anonymous heroes to enlist in the war effort. Heroes from across the country and throughout the Western Hemisphere came to the city and learned to not only use their powers and abilities but also how to fight as part of an army....."
You can read the backstory here: http://www.cityofheroes.com/gameinfo/paragon_city.html
Personally if I was a super villian I would move to North Dakota, no super hero's there to stop me from setting up my own personal empire.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Thanks for that backstory
If one can suspend disbelief in the existence of superheroes, then yes, it does make sense. The Marvel Universe is a fair comparison.
Marvel Comics focus largely on certain groups: the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers. But have you ever looked at how many X-Men teams there are/have been? And how many students have gone through the Academy but never really been part of the X-Men proper? Just how many Morlocks are there? How many mutants have lived on Genosha? How many mutants are in the Brotherhood?
Why should superheroes be limited in number? A hero is someone who purposely tries to make a positive impact on the world around them. A superhero is simply someone who has "super" abilities and uses those abilities for that same purpose.
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The less you expect, the more you'll be surprised. Hopefully, pleasantly so.
"Defeated", not killed. In fact, the whole point of the emergency teleport system to extract injured heroes (and regular citizens?) to medical facilities for treatment. But don't try that while invading a Council base; they can divert the beam into their own holding cells.
If you compare it to comics which i'm pretty sure it's based off of, then why does anything need to make sense?
Has there ever been an explanation by marvel or d.c. as to why there are 1000 super heroes and super villains?
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies."
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
It's the same with all mmo's. Bioware working on MMO Knights of the Old Repbulic, if they allow jedi's which the first two were all about, sounds like a lot of jedi's strolling around.
Sure, I buy it.
Storywise, it does make sense that the huge number of super heroes and villians exist. With the recently released issue 12, they actually go a little into that, giving some insight directly into the origins of the powers. Also, looking at the backstory between the lead hero and villian characters Statesman and Lord Recluse will tell you much about why there are so many heroes and villians currently in the game world (also why they are the strongest heroes/villians in the CoX world).
There was a novel that explained the origin of Statesman and Lord Recluse. I forget the title, I read it a long time ago.
Basically States got a charm from an old lady that said "would protect him" and went to WWI. He inhaled some mustard gas but didn't die immediately. However he was dying slowly and started looking for a cure, The Well of the Furies. This myth was about the well that if anyone drank from it would be healed and such. To make a long story short both States and Recluse drank from the well. When they "uncorked" it so to speak, it suddenly released a surge of energy and that sparked the birth of heroes all over the world. The Well was now empty of power.
As another lore side note, no mutants appeared til after 1938. Reason? That was when we first split the atom.
There can never be enough super heroes!
I am not even going to talk about City of Heroes in relation to this because it is completely logical. Let's move over to Marvel comics. There are thousands of hostile and heroic people in the Marvel universe who exist on planet Earth alone. A perfect example of this are the mutants in the Marvel universe. Excluding the potential mutant community population(in the millions); ever since the X-Men were introduced there have been thousands of created Mutant characters who have at least appeared in one Marvel comic book. Not to long ago the Mutant population was reduced, leaving over 99% of our favorite mutant heroes(and villains) dead or without their powers. It was called M-Day. Marvel believed that the population was getting to ridiculious. That's excluding the number superhumans who aren't mutants. So far there are only 198(or 199) mutants who are know to the US Government in the Marvel Universe after this incident. Hey; even Jubilee lost her mutant powers.
So is City of Heroes going too far? Oh no. ROFL