The rest of the team agreed, and they started the serious technical work of making Cho’gall happen.
“Dustin was onboard, because he’s always onboard when we want to do something crazy, and John Hodgson, our technical designer, set to work, and made the thing possible, hooking up the scripts to detect your Gall. You don’t actually have a body. We need to find your Cho and attach you to it as soon as the game starts,” Kent-Erik Hagman said.
“It’s really kind of hilarious how it works on the backend, getting those two units to [He makes a pop.] together. Gall’s this invisible unit that’s forever attached to Cho.”
Another funny twist: Instead of riding horses, Cho’gall carries them.
“Two-headed Ogres, they’re a little slow to the uptake, they’re still figuring out how this mount thing works,” Hagman said. “The amazing thing though is that they somehow move 40 percent faster while carrying this thing. [He laughs.] The horse is just sitting there.”
Players, avoid losing your heads
Next up was trying to figure out how to solve all the complexities that come with a two-person character.
“You’re never going to select Cho and hit ready and we’re going to give you a Gall, or vice versa,” Hagman said. In quick matches, you must be in a party with someone to select Cho’gall. “You have to do it with someone you’re forming a connection with. I really, really hope you’re on voice with that person. I think you’ll have a way better experience.”
In Hero League, you can choose Cho’gall, though it takes some work.
“We said all right, you have to pick Cho’Gall together. But then you queue up together and you’re split,” he said.
So they decided to patch in a game change: Duo queues in Heroes will always get pair-picked slots. If the team you’re on is first pick and you’ve duo-queued, neither of you gets the first pick. If your team gets last pick, neither person gets last pick.
“You guys will always do your pair pickings together. That enables it so a party who is duo-queuing for Hero League and are like, we’re good Hero League Cho’gall guys, they can actually pick Cho’gall,” Hagman said.
“This does also mean — and we’re totally OK with this — that you could totally play Cho’gall with a guy you don’t know in your Hero League game, when you’re pair-picking. If you guys can make the coordination to pick Cho’gall, then it’s kind of like the ‘You must be this high to ride the roller coaster’ rule. ‘You must be able to select Cho and Gall and hit ready to play Cho’gall together in the game.’ We will allow that for non-party people to play Cho’gall in a Hero League. Presuming … you’ve just met this person, are you sure you trust them to be your body, if you’re Gall, or your head, if you’re Cho?”
If Cho or Gall go offline during a match, the A.I. will attempt to take over, designers said during a BlizzCon panel. It’s a little better if Gall goes offline, since the A.I. is pretty good at dishing damage and not as perfect at figuring out where the Ogre should be running.
“While I loved, storywise, the idea of the two-headed Ogre fighting itself, I wanted to avoid that for the players. I wanted the players to be happy and enjoying each other,” Hagman said.
“So we did that for the skins and the mounts — the heads are fighting each other for control of the skin and the mount. That’s way fun; that’s just aesthetic. But for gameplay, I want you to appreciate your second head and love what your second head can do for you.”
Above: Standing in Cho’s melee range: a Very Bad Idea.
What your second head can do for you
The abilities each player controls when playing Cho’gall are almost always intertwined.
“When we were making Cho’gall, it was really important to us that we didn’t just make Hero A and Hero B, and oh by the way, Hero B is attached to A,” Hagman said. “We wanted Cho and Gall and deeply integrated.
“Gall has a Z ability called ‘Hurry up, oaf.’ It’s like a Sgt. Hammer-like sprint. It causes Cho to get this vaudevillian speed boost. As Cho, you have a little icon so you know what the cooldown is for Gall’s Z ability, so when it’s up you can say, ‘Sprint me in! Sprint me in!’ You’re constantly coordinating.”
Gall also has some defensive bonuses, he said.
“Gall can get a talent called Shove, which can nudge Cho a short direction on a pretty short cooldown,” he said. “Say a skill shot’s coming and Cho’s not going to be able to dodge it, and you hit [Shove,] you hear this slap sound, like Gall’s slapping Cho out of the way, and it shoves the two-headed Ogre over here. It’s quite a blast.”
One level 20 talent for Cho is The Will of Gall. The Cho player selects the talent, and if he clicks it, nothing happens.
The player who has Gall receives an item in his inventory called The Will of Gall. If he activates it, he makes Cho unstoppable.
“So Cho learns a talent, that Gall can activate, that makes Cho become unstoppable — which is what Gall wants,” Hagman said. “We got to have fun doing these weird things we can’t do with any other heroes. We can’t have you learn a talent that goes to another player — unless, of course, that other player is your second head.”
Many other abilities of the pair work that way, and it helps to build a bond between the two people who play him.
“You really form an emotional connection with that person,” he said. “If you play three games in a row, and then you go play a fourth game without a second head, you’re like [in a little sad voice] awwwww. It’s awesome. It’s so fresh.”
Above: The benefits of a two-player health pool: Cho’gall shrugs off attacks that annihilate other heroes.
How to win with Cho’gall
OK, so enough about how Cho’gall came to be and is supposed to work. How do you best beat up the opposing team?