When I first heard about City of Heroes, the endless possibilities, being a superhero, the missions, the abilities, the group tasks, the… oh, let’s cut it short: I didn’t care about any of it. “City of Heroes” looked like any other online role-playing game that wanted to stand out from the rest with one or two small ideas, but of course was as identical to the rest of the uniform mush as the mush of a bored unit from any military shooter can be.
I shared this with the unit that had just been stationed with me and was eating really tasty porridge, and was about to pull them back from their post of guarding my self-esteem when one of the Marines suddenly spoke up. He introduced himself as a “Doom” Marine, which I couldn’t care less about, after all, I was a cliché sergeant who addressed all of his subordinates simply as “Marine” because I liked to make everyone around me feel addressed with one call. That was such a tick of mine. As someone who had sat in a class with several Stephans and Stefans at the time, there was nothing funnier to me than hearing several “Huh? “s ring out from different corners after a name was called.
Anyway, the Marine pointed out to me that the editor in City of Heroes was supposed to be phenomenal and offer endless features. And with that, he actually had me. I watched videos about the editor and decided: OK, this is something for me.
I spent an hour or two on my first character. His name was Son Goku. He looked like Son Goku. I worked on every detail. The hair, the clothes, the rest. He looked really, really good. Almost like the original. With him, I entered the world of City of Heroes, did a few missions, and then was teleported by a moderator to some kind of online prison for breaking some law with my character. In “City of Heroes,” you weren’t allowed to recreate pop-culture heroines. So I was forced to redesign my character. Otherwise he would be deleted. Along with my account.
I completely rebuilt my character. In the end, he was a little old man with a long beard. I really wanted to show it to the people behind “City of Heroes” with their outdated ways of thinking, but of course nobody was interested, because who listens to people who rebuild Son Goku in video game editors?
Finally, I had to rename my character. I named him “Flynn Taggart.” Why? In memory of the “Doom” Marine, of course, who had brought me to this game ruled by strict guidelines in the first place. According to the official novel of the game, which of course is in my bookshelf, the “Doom” marine is called Flynn Taggart. That’s why I always scream “Oh, Flynn, really?” when my marine dies in Doom instead of the demons around him, which would be much more logical if you’d watched the movie “The Exorcist” more closely.
In City of Heroes you play a superhero. In Doom as well. City of Heroes is an MMORPG. I don’t know if it’s still online because I’m too lazy to look it up. And I don’t care. Doom is still around for that. On every device with a screen you can imagine.
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