Heroes of the Storm’s next hero is going to be a giant ogre named Cho’gall, game director Dustin Browder said today at Blizzcon. In a unique twist, he’ll be played by two separate people at the same time. Holy crap. Blizzard really meant it when they said they’re breaking all the MOBA rules!
Browder also clarified that you’ll be able to play as the second Cho’gall person even if you don’t own him—as long as your fellow Cho’gall player owns him. I imagine this also means that Cho’gall will take up two spots on a HOTS team.
This is absolutely bonkers. There is nothing like this in Dota 2 or League of Legends.
I still don’t know much of anything about how this two-play Cho’gall will work, honestly, though Blizzard did say that they really wanted to evoke a sense of actually playing as a gigantic, several-thousand-pound ogre. He’s going to be playable this weekend at Blizzcon, where my colleague Nathan Grayson is in attendance. I’m planning to symbiote him so he can play Cho’gall through me for more detailed impressions ASAP.
UPDATE (5:50 pm EDT): Blizzard posted Cho’Gall’s hero page on the HOTS website, and it confirms how the guy’s control scheme will work. Basically each player is in control of one of his two heads—Cho and Gall. Cho controls his movement, and the two can combo together:
Cho’gall is a unique two-headed Hero for two players. Each head is controlled by a single player and has its own set of abilities. The Cho head controls Cho’gall’s movement; wherever Cho goes, Gall follows. When Cho and Gall stop arguing and work together, they can set up powerful combos. If you or your friend owns Cho’gall, you’ll both select a head then queue up to terrorize the Nexus together!
Cho’Gall takes up two slots. Blizzard’s offering some huge in-game rewards for him:
UPDATE 2 (6:30 pm EDT): The HOTS devs gave some more details about how Cho’gall will work in their “deep dive” presentation. The two characters/players each have their own separate talent trees and heroic abilities, but they’re designed to synergize with one another. For example, Cho has a spell called “Rune Bomb.” It lets him throw out a big molten rock that roles forward, damaging stuff caught within its path. Gall complements rune bomb with an ability called “Runic Charge.” When activated, he’ll detonate the bomb, dealing “massive area damage” like so:
Understandably, Cho and Gall require constant communication and collaboration to be at their best in-match. Here are the other key facts about Cho’Gall that they dropped in during the presentation:
- Cho’Gall won’t be able to be first or last-picked in rank games. Both people playing as him have to select the hero, otherwise they can’t queue up for a game (in QM) or will be auto-assigned another hero in Hero League.
- If the Cho player disconnects, the Gall player is stuck with an AI bot controller his or her movements until Cho (hopefully) reconnects. Blizzard devs said that this is a worst case nightmare scenario that they’ve tried to improve by giving the Gall player more of an ability to control Cho with pings.
- If Gall disconnects, meanwhile, Cho will just have an extra champion stuck to him.
- Only one player needs to own Cho’Gall for two people to be able to queue up with him or pick him in a ranked game.
A final fun fact that was brought to my attention by Twitter user @Reetesh: Blizzard actually joked about having Cho’Gall be a two-player character eleven years ago. It was an April Fool’s joke in 2004 for World of Warcraft.