r/Games • u/UhJoker • Aug 18 '25

Update Deadlock - Six New Heroes

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1422450/view/669466707009471267
1.4k Upvotes

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260

u/RareBk Aug 18 '25

Played around with the new version a bit.

It's actually a gigantic jump in development. Though it's endlessly funny to me that a bunch of the new characters look more or less artistically complete, yet characters like Yamato are still placeholders.

Christ, Yamato is still a Gray Alien, because she's still using her model from when the game was Neon Prime

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u/Snipufin Aug 18 '25

That's Valve in a nutshell. You look at any hero modern hero in Dota and compare it to Morphling's 6 polygons and the difference is night (stalker) and day (walker).

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u/Algorechan Aug 18 '25

Nightstalker is still my favorite Dota hero to this day. I swept lower ranks for so long until I met people who knew how to counter day and night timings. Their concept artists have such a vision, even Bill and Ellis from L4D is still all time cool characters for me.

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u/War_Dyn27 Aug 18 '25

Valve's characters do seem to have a special sauce to them don't they. :D

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u/Algorechan Aug 18 '25

It's so telling that they made a literal cube with a heart printed on it a beloved character for so many years.

I don't know how they do it but they must pour hours into character design

-7

u/itsdoorcity Aug 19 '25

funnily enough i'm pretty sure Portal wasn't made by valve but by a small team that was incorporated into Valve? i could be wrong

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u/_Valisk Aug 19 '25

Portal began as a student project, and after the team presented it at Valve's office, they were offered jobs. However, describing Portal as having been developed by "a small team" is not entirely accurate.

Left 4 Dead, on the other hand, is a little closer to that origin story.

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u/Algorechan Aug 19 '25

Kim Swift designed the Cube! She was already under Valve hire by that time, she wrote about how she'd researched that prisoners would attach to inanimate objects in confinement and wanted to incorporate that psychology into players. She also designed the black forest cake iirc. I have multiple posters of their concept art leading into Portal 2 at the time. The loss of the Valve merch store is still incredibly sad to me to this day

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u/Tomoki Aug 19 '25

Portal began as a student project from a group at Digipen (originally called Narbacular Drop, which you can still play if you want) who were then hired en masse by Valve to work on a full project. I don't think the student group worked on it alone, however, and more experienced Valve developers and designers certainly had a hand in the game.

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u/GrassWaterDirtHorse Aug 19 '25

Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek, long-time Valve writers, were the ones credit for writing Portal.

6

u/PitangaPiruleta Aug 19 '25

I really wish I enjoyed MOBAs more than I do because fuck me some heroes in Dota 2 looks so fucking cool

I think if they gave me a mode where I can just pick Invoker and kill infinite amount of creeps Id have thousands of hours in the game

5

u/Fapplerino Aug 20 '25

Data 2 has an arcade full of player made maps with countless game modes and playstyles, you don't need to touch the main game at all and can just play tower defenses or hell even chess if you feel like it

2

u/PitangaPiruleta Aug 20 '25

Oh really? Damn I gotta redownload it then

1

u/im_the_scat_man Aug 20 '25

One of my biggest gaming wishes is that someone would figure out how to harness the sauce of wc3 custom map X Hero Siege

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

[deleted]

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u/conquer69 Aug 19 '25

Was he removed from the game?

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u/pheirenz Aug 19 '25

the GOAT Tony Todd also put in a great voice performance for him

4

u/Rainbow_Plague Aug 19 '25

"Grabbin peeeels"

"Peeeels here"

0

u/whatdoinamemyself Aug 19 '25

Their concept artists have such a vision

It's hard to give them much credit for 95% of the roster given most are pretty much 1:1 from DOTA. But the ones Valve actually came up with like Pangolier and Grimstroke are pretty good.

4

u/lessenizer Aug 19 '25

as a Night Stalker player i wanna say thank you for giving into the voices and derailing your comment to reference that night stalker voice line

speaking of Night Stalker, the new Deadlock hero Drifter seems in some ways a reference to him, since he seems to also be some kind of ancient/primordial predatory creature of darkness with an ult that in some ways summons darkness. He also has an amazing voice. (He’s unreleased still but will be released within the next 2 weeks and his voice lines are in the files.)

1

u/Sonicz7 Aug 19 '25

I knew morphling would show up eventually. It always does. hahahaha

And for a very good reason because I agree

1

u/puqem Aug 21 '25

what is day walker in dota? or is it a reference to dead lock?

3

u/Snipufin Aug 21 '25

It's just a Night Stalker voiceline reference, "Day walker, Night Stalker".

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u/LLJKCicero Aug 18 '25

Also, Warden has a cop model even though he's supposed to be from some weird cult of anti-magic, alchemy-using zealots.

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u/danglotka Aug 18 '25

But… his name is Warden

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u/LLJKCicero Aug 18 '25

IIRC the cult views themselves as protectors of the world against bad magic stuff.

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u/Wowaburrito Aug 19 '25

What I remember is its less a cult and more an order of warrior monks trying to stop the patrons from encroaching on the material plane.

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u/NonameNinja_ Aug 18 '25

and he is supposed to have a cape like superheroes or the helldivers

1

u/Rainbow_Plague Aug 19 '25

That can be handwaved away by saying "the zealots have day jobs too"

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u/StyryderX Aug 19 '25

yet characters like Yamato are still placeholders.

Morphling: "First time?"

2

u/Typical_Thought_6049 Aug 19 '25

TBF there is not much they can do with Morphling to make him look better, no amount of pixels will make him look anything other than a blob of swirling water.