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Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: slickriptide on April 27, 2016, 11:49:31 PM

Title: A Blast From the Past
Post by: slickriptide on April 27, 2016, 11:49:31 PM
Back when the official game forum still existed, I once ran a series of threads dedicated to the history of City of Heroes. Today, I ran across some old promotional screen shots from the concept/alpha days of the game. (I was in the closed beta, so I didn't witness these locations in person; the beta version of Atlas Park was substantially the same as the launch version.)

So, in honor of tomorrow's upcoming anniversary, let me introduce you to fledgling Atlas Park:

Here you'll notice that Ms. Liberty has a rather different costume and she's standing at the front door of City Hall instead of down at the foot of Atlas Plaza. There's a reason for that...

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18795363/CoH/Atlas3_480_inset.jpg)

Atlas originally wasn't attached to City Hall. The reason ought to be obvious if you think about the name of the zone. ;-) Notice anything unusual about  Atlas's globe?

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18795363/CoH/atlas_park_sidewalk_480.jpg)

Here's a close-up of Atlas. This early alpha version is pretty rough-looking compared to the "real" version. Dig that chain-link fence! I guess they were trying to protect him from those Skull graffitos that were defacing City Hall plaza.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18795363/CoH/atlas_foot_480.jpg)

Here's a final shot when Atlas has acquired a solid globe like we see him today. But, where's City Hall?

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18795363/CoH/atlas_park_air_480.jpg)

Do you get it now?

"Atlas Park" is literally the big park at the feet of Atlas. THAT used to be the defining feature of the zone.

Somewhere along the way, they decided to put Atlas near the focal center of the zone and that meant ditching most of the park. They replaced it with Atlas Plaza and attached City Hall to it as the new anchor for the zone. The park became the much smaller park areas across the street from Ms. Liberty, and the small pond/lake off to the west side of City Hall.

Paragon City almost had it's own version of Central Park. That comparison might even be one of the reasons they changed it. We'll never know now, though I'd guess that it was mostly to make the new player experience a bit easier to direct in a kind of spiral from the center outward rather than "top to bottom", as it were.

***edit*** Technically, Perez Park is the Central Park analog in the final version of the game, so I guess that probably didn't have anything to do with it, heh.