City of Villains Interviews

Both GameSpot and GameSpy have published interviews with different different members of the City of Villains development team. The interview at GameSpot talks with Cryptic's Jack Emmert:
Q: Are there obvious differences in tone between Paragon City, where all the superheroes hang out, and Port Oaks, where the villains are? For example, how do the missions differentiate? Obviously you're going to be doing more "evil" stuff, but will they be along the same themes of what you pursued as a hero in Paragon City?

A: Players will be stealing, kidnapping, sabotaging, and eliminating--virtually anything you can imagine a criminal doing, a player will be doing on the streets of the Rogue Isles! The islands are a "no-man's land" of criminals looking to make their way up the villainous ladder, so players need to be on their toes. The missions themselves are instanced, so only a player and his teammates can enter.

While the interview at GameSpy talks with Cryptic's David "Zeb" Cook:
"Setting the game on the Rogue Isles solved so many problems for us," Cook said. "For one thing, it really freed the game's artists and zone designers to go wild." According to Cook, since they weren't restricted to the architecture and patterns of Paragon City, they were able to introduce a more Gothic feel and random haphazard architecture to the game, with narrow, crooked streets, and a lot more variation on individual areas ranging from an old pirate fort to toxic industrial wastelands. "Arachnos isn't really big on zoning restrictions," Cook laughed, "so people build wherever they can and don't worry about stuff like OSHA regulations and EPA requirements." The result is a chaotic city that contains a little bit of everything, although the dev team was careful to make sure that every zone has an individual character based on its unique history.