Delve into Champions Online's evil lairs trailer

Well look at this, a new Champions Online trailer has been released unto Gametrailers and thus, the world. It opens with an interesting winged angel superhero soaring into an intelligence meeting, but don't be fooled, this trailer's focus is solely on villainous lairs. Some of you would probably be more than happy with a video showcasing all the various wings and how they animate in flight (we spotted some Egyptian style wings in the trailer) but that's not happening today. Maybe there's a wings/flight video in the works, for all we know.

There's some slightly cheesy voice acting and we're almost certain the narrator is attempting a commanding voice in the spirit of Optimus Prime, but the trailer is very enjoyable for what it is: campy superhero goodness. It may not be everyone's preference, but we're digging what we see and can't wait to raid some lairs come this September.

Witness the full trailer embedded after the break.

Video Games | Champions Online | Exclusive Lairs Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Reader Comments (18)

This makes the game look very very cheesy. I am now slightly less interested than i was before... -1 champions

Agreed. This piece made me worry that each zone is just a raid fest working your way to the boss lair. Ugh.

When will someone just develop a super hero vs. super villain sandbox game? Come on, give us some REAL villains to fight. Now pansy raid instanced NPCs. I want villians to come up with vial ways to take over parts of the world and the heroes must constantly save everyone.

I kind of like the corny nature of it, although it might be getting a bit too corny.

What really remains to be seen is if it will have any lasting power. Although CoH had no end game content at launch, was really limited, and it's still around, so who knows.

We'll have to wait and see, but if it's subscription, it's really going to hurt it a lot.

The voice acting in this is almost as bad as the voice acting in Black Prophecy.

Agreed. The game and trailer is fine, the voice acting... not so much. But what do you expect when Bio-ware hired every voice actor on the planet just about?

It's a game trailer, so I am not putting much into the voice acting. I doubt that was in game voice work. I was more interested in the wings and other costume options; than anything else in the clip. Seems pretty accurate to call it CoH 2.

Everything I saw looked absolutely appropriate for a superhero game, even the voice acting. I am tired of MMOG's taking themselves so seriously. I am really looking forward to some good old flying around throwing trucks at stuff kind of fun in a new game.

This. It's a bloody superhero game guys. The game looked rather cheesy and super comic bookish before this trailer even, so you can't tell me this is surprising. :)

I think ScytheNoire has the real issue pegged down over a cheesy trailer and some bad voice acting.

Will it have the depth and staying power that CoH didn't? That's the important question.

Not to mention, it has no bearing on whether the game will be any good or not.

I couldn't agree more! The entire superhero genre is supposed to be about fun and no small amount of goofiness. As soon as they got to the scene with the giant Dr. Destroyer robot sitting on the giant throne I mentally high-fived myself.

Boy, they didn't put any money into upgrading the instance maps, did they? I didn't see anything in there that would have looked out of place in City of Heroes.

Not what I saw. You need your eyes checked.

Wow. The voice acting in these trailers continues to be _painfully_ cheesy.

Would it kill Cryptic to hire some professional voice actors? It sounds like they've just tapped various members of the dev team to do "cheesy Tick -style" voiceovers on their lunch breaks.

Treating superheroes as cheese is always a mistake, because the genre is, by definition, faintly absurd already.

As soon as you embrace the absurdity and consciously point to it, you have turned everything into comedy, at best, and farce at worst.

Spin the camera around some more! Maybe nobody will notice everybody's basically standing still in combat!

You mean like every mob in every zone in CoH? As I recall the giant robot in the ITF doesn't even move. While I'm still not completely sold on the animations(some look more polished than others), I hardly see it as any worse than CoH. And in some cases it blows CoH out of the water. e.g. stances, burrowing, landing from flight. The animation looked fine in the Armadillo video(or whatever his name was), along with the hero and the police. I just don't like the reactions to hits. From what I saw of certain animations the talent is there, they need polish but I look forward to animations that are not rehashed ad infinitum.

Sure it blows CoH out of the water. But CoH is a slow, mediocre half-decade old game. That's a pretty high limbo bar. I'm trying to judge this game in its own right, and I think it's abusing the term "real-time action combat" for how stuttered some of those animation chains look. Like you said, the hit reactions and post-attack animations could really use some work.

The combat needs a flow. CoH might be old and crappy, but at least the attack chains don't seem to stop between each cast. CoH isn't even the game to compare it to, some games like EQ2 have attack chains that really set the bar. I just can't believe we need to reinvent this wheel each game. Here's to hoping they tween those moves, or it's going to be a deal breaker for some folks.

Yeah, I noticed some poor AI tracking in there as well. I mean it really looked like there were on a track. Not smooth or natural looking.

Okay... One big thing to remember:

Champs Online is a game that's still in BETA, and still has several weeks left to refine itself.

Yes there's rough patches. Yes there's little things that could use a coat of paint, a minor tweak here and there, and (Heaven forbid) a major re-tooling. That's what betas are for. :) Feddback from the community to look into seeming issues and fix / tweak / re-work.

Come back to these same scenes after launch, and I'm 99% sure they'll be different and better.

Delve into Champions Online's evil lairs trailer

Reader Comments (18)

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 11:09AM Thac0 said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 2:02PM Anatidae said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 11:42AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Jun 25th 2009 12:30PM Zantom said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 12:10PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 12:36PM Aganazer said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 1:10PM Who Plugged in the Overlord said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 1:26PM Its Utakata stupid said

Posted: Jun 26th 2009 10:06AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 2:11PM J Brad Hicks said

Posted: Jun 26th 2009 7:15PM starka1 said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 2:37PM mysecretid said

Posted: Jun 25th 2009 3:03PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jun 26th 2009 7:23PM starka1 said

Posted: Jun 26th 2009 9:53PM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Jul 14th 2009 12:27PM (Unverified) said

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