Smolder gets her red hair back, Paul Hellquist on Insider Access

Good news for all the fans of Smolder’s previous red head look. The Orcs Must Die! Unchained! Twitter account recently revealed that she will be returning back to her original red hair look. For those who might not know Smolder had her hair colour changed to red to blonde post alpha. Here she is with her fiery red hair ready for phase 2 of the closed beta.

Community artist Moltenink celebrated the return of red hair Smolder with his own awesome fan art:

I HAD to do some hasty fanart cause of the news that smolder is getting her red hair back!! @OrcsMustDie

— Moltenink (@moltenink) February 7, 2015

Paul Hellquist on Insider Access

Last weeks Insider Access was not to be missed. If you havnt seen it already be sure to catch up with it via the link below.

Justin “SixOkay” Korthof introduces us to Paul Hellquist who recently joined Robot Entertainment as Lead Designer. Paul has previously worked on games such as Bioshock and Borderlands 2. Having had an opportunity to delve into Orcs Must Die! Unchained we hear about some of the changes that we can expect to see in phase 2 of the closed beta.

Slowing things down

One of the interesting things we find out is that Robot is trying to slow down the overall gameplay of OMDU by doing things such as adding cast times. This has been done to help players better understand what is happening in the gameplay and not feel too overwhelmed by all the things going on at once.

Bigging things up

Paul and the team of designers have also been working closely with Robot’s art department to look at making things like effects such as hero powers bigger to pack a bigger punch on screen than what they did before. For instance here is a screenshot of Ivy’s root ability which now has alot more presence.

Because hero abilities now also have a cast time players will be able see heroes like Ivy power up her root and the area of effect it will be targeting, giving players a chance to get out of the way and avoid the root.

Here we can see Smolder trying out her new visual effects for her Phoenix ability.

Another hero ability that was well in need of being amplified was of course, Hogarth’s flying hatchet “E ability”. This has often come up in conversation as the somewhat invisible attack as often it would be very difficult to see this hatchet being thrown on screen in the midst of battle with everything else going on. Now however, this has been re-worked and Hogarth will now freeze his full size axe, throw that and then re-form his axe from ice. This results in a much bigger visual display as below, which is an excellent improvement.

War Mage is having his abilities re-worked. As the main face of Orcs Must Die! it is reasonable to assume that players may well pick the War Mage when starting playing OMDU as a familiar face. However his current abilities are a little confusing, especially for new players and these were in-need of being simplified. Thus both abilities have now been changed. One of his new abilities allows him to shoot his crossbow and then the arrow will shatter into many arrows affecting a wider area.

If you check the Insider Access stream there is some video footage of these new effects for the Ivy and the War Mage around 22 minutes in.

These are of course just some of the changes coming in phase 2. It will sure be interesting to see what else we see on Insider Access over the next few weeks to see more exciting changes for Phase 2.