Cho’gall, a two-headed Ogre, will worm his way through Heroes of the Storm today like a virus, and Blizzard Entertainment designer Kent-Erik Hagman wants you to be ready.
At BlizzCon recently, GamesBeat quizzed him about the new hero, who can be yours for free in the massive online battle arena game — if you’ve got the right friends.
Cho’gall appears during the Buddy Brawl event today for people who have unlocked him with a BlizzCon loot code.
He is the first Heroes of the Storm character that two people control: One player runs Cho, who mostly moves the body around, and the other pilots Gall, the second head, who does most of the damage. It’s a unique mechanic, and it was ridiculous goofy fun in my short playtest. (“No! We’re going over there! Shoot that thing!”)
But don’t “d’awww” if you didn’t go to BlizzCon or watch the stream. During the Buddy event, which lasts until January 1, you can earn Cho’gall for yourself by winning two games while playing as Cho or Gall with someone who already has him. Or the friend of someone who has him who has unlocked him for themselves. And so on.
Cho’gall should spread like wildfire today.
Two players enter, one hero leaves
Hagman, who works on hero design, said the idea for Cho’gall came after the last BlizzCon.
“We were looking at the Vikings, and we loved one player controlling three heroes, and it seemed like only the next logical step to say what’s the inverse of that. What about two players controlling one hero?” he asked. “We were looking across our cast of characters that we have in the works. We have this large list we’re working through.
“So we looked at Cho’gall, and we’ve been looking at him for the past two years, and we’ve always said to ourselves, we’ve got to do something with that stupid second head. It’s just so derpy, it’s just sitting there. There’s got to be something fun there.”
Above: Don’t call him derpy.
Then the tech to make it work came as part of the development of the game’s Archon Mode, he said, because it allowed characters to be linked together.
“We were looking at the Archon Mode tech, and our engineer’s like, Hey, guys, we could totally do two players controlling a single unit, having to fight themselves for the movement,” Hagman said. “We’re like, that’s awesome! …We don’t actually think that would be a good idea.”
But that tech combined with Cho’gall on the wait list made them take the idea seriously, he said.
“That spurred on a nightmare scenario of how does this even work? Can we have four bodies on the map? From a balance perspective can we pick this hero? Would it be fun to just ride shotgun, because [designer] Dustin [Browder] and I were very adamant from the get-go that hey, let’s not be fighting for movement. We think that would overcomplicate [the game],” Hagman said.
Cho’gall is funny in World of Warcraft because the two heads fight with each other, disagreeing about what to do. But the reality of two players trying to control movement wouldn’t be much fun, he said.
“Suddenly, the barrier to entry rises dramatically,” he said. “Oh, you can’t play this hero unless you’re neural linked, like in Pacific Rim with that guy, because you’re now like, all right, now you take the legs, now you take the legs. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to do [something like Mario Kart] Double Dash someday, because that’s basically what it would be doing. But for the way our game works, we didn’t think that was correct yet.
“So we wanted to restrict one head to riding along. Then there was the question of, Is that going to be fun? That’s not going to be fun, is it?”
Above: Cho’gall in action.
Proving two heads were better than one
The only way to really tell would be to try it out. But they didn’t want to put in huge amounts of development time only to discover that the idea needed to be scrapped.
So they did the next best thing, Hagman said: They set up a match where Abathur, a character that can attach himself to another hero, was permanently attached to the warrior-class Arthas and his damage was boosted.
He couldn’t do any of his normal solo attacks, just the limited abilities he had when joined. But it gave the team a chance to try running around as a pseudo-second head.
“We did it and I loved it. I love co-op games in general,” Hagman said. “I think Jack Johnson was correct when he sang that song ‘Everything is Better Together.’ I was the guy who made his girlfriend ride a tandem bike with him, because I was doing research for this hero. This kind of thing is like, I’m this great paired-up person kind of guy. I had a great time riding shotgun.”
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?
Cho is considered to be a melee warrior, and Gall a ranged assassin, who work best when their massive health pool and damage combos are used in concert.
“The best way to think about Cho’gall is to think of him like a game of chicken in the pool,” Hagman said. “I wanted a game of Chicken, where one person is positioning the other guy, who’s doing all the grappling. Think about it like a driver/gunner relationship in shooters. One guy is driving the jeep, the Warthog, what have you, and the other guy’s got the giant Gatling gun. He’s doing all the damages.”
Cho is all about the movement.
“As Cho, you’re the driver,” he said. “You do have a really hefty autoattack; your right-click does a lot of damage. Your Q doesn’t do too much damage, your W doesn’t do too much damage. Your job is to get Gall, who’s your artillery piece, in place. As Cho, you should be so focused on your positioning. And as Gall, you get to be that guy that’s like [He makes a maniac shriek] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”
So Gall gets to spend almost all his time blowing things up. He doesn’t have a right-click attack at all.
“We put almost all the damage into Gall,” Hagman said. “And so Gall’s job is just to focus on murdering everything that comes into his crosshairs. He’s got a very short cooldown on his Q, 3 seconds, his W has a 6 second cooldown, and neither of them have any mana cost.
“As Gall, your job is to get your damage in whenever Cho presents you with opportunities. You need to capitalize on them.”
In a way, it’s like being a caster with a tank-like health pool. Because Cho’Gall represents two players, he’s intended to be twice as formidable as a single-player hero. That’s a plus for percent-of-health heals over time, for example — and a drawback for percent-of-health attacks.
“Cho has the most health of any hero in the game, and his right-click is one of the meatiest, because we put a lot of what would be Gall’s basic attack power into Cho,” Hagman said. “We had to scale him down a little bit — he was one-shotting heroes too easily. But it’s 2v1.”
Still, he expects that players will have a ton of fun playing the beefy two-player hero.
“You are the raid boss as Cho’gall.”
Here’s rundown of Cho’gall’s specific abilities: