Blizzard’s obsession with making two players coordinate as a single unit continues with the announcement of a new character in Heroes of the Storm. Cho’Gall requires two players to share a single body, with one player controlling movement and normal melee attacks; and the other acting as a purely ranged support hero that is stapled to him.
Both players will have to cooperate like never before in order to play Cho’Gall, considering that Gall’s role is to purely buff Cho. Their hero talents are largely unknown, but reports out of Blizzcon indicate that Cho is capable of hurling a a boulder as a ranged attack; while Gall has the ability to make that boulder explode on command. This essentially means that voice chat is critical for making the hero work.
Cho’Gall counts as two characters during Hero selection, meaning that one team could potentially be playing with only 4 bodies on the map. It sounds a little unbalanced, but Blizzard is apparently making up for this by giving the two-headed ogre some extra buffs to make his selection worth while.
Unfortunately, Blizzard is still working on what happens in the event that one player disconnects from the game. At the moment, the fix involves an AI taking over for whichever half is missing. This isn’t so bad if it’s Gall’s support that vanishes, but it could infuriating if a player ends up strapped to an AI controlling all his movement.
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To further break from the regular MOBA mold, Blizzard is supposedly introducing a different way of distributing the new hero. Instead, BlizzCon 2015 attendees will be gifted a code that gives them access to Cho’Gall. From there, he will spread by winning games as one of the two heads; provided that the player running the other head does not have access to the hero. Those who cannot wait can do the boring thing and buy him from the store.
This isn’t exactly the first time that Blizzard has announced a two-player-one-body type of game. Heroes of the Storm already has Abathur, which has the ability to latch on to another hero and buff him through some sort of parasitic interface. Starcraft II will also be seeing something similar with Archon mode in multiplayer, where two players take control of a single base.
[Source: Polygon]
