RuneScape Forums

Hi!

We've added a dev blog explaining a new set of characters we're planning to use in future quests: the RuneScape Signature Heroes.

To read the blog, click your mouse pointer on this text.

Mod John A
Senior Content Developer


Q&A

Will we just be seeing them in Quests or will they feature outside of Quests too?
I'm hoping to have them appear outside of quests as wandering NPCs, like Zanik does after The Chosen Commander. We haven't absolutely decided if that will happen, though, so it may not.

'a master smith named Linza' Does this mean Thurgo is going to lose his smithing skillcape?
Nope. Linza might be good enough to wear a skillcape, but she's an adventurer--she's not going to settle down and become a skillcape seller!

Interesting, are they all friendly towards us, or could one be a repeating boss/enemy?
All the signature heroes will be your allies rather than enemies. Some stories might involve conflict between you and your allies, but in general the signature heroes are on your side.

I'm interested to see how this will be used in dungeoneering
We've got no plans for these heroes to appear in Dungeoneering, sorry. We've put them in the Dungeoneering image because part of their role is to 'model' new equipment and situations in artwork, but that doesn't mean you'll be meeting them in Daemonheim in-game.

Will one of them feature in the next Myreque quest?
Probably not. Where we've got an existing quest storyline with an established cast of characters, we'll continue to use those characters rather than the Signature Heroes. These new heroes aren't meant to replace or overshadow any existing characters.

Will there be some quest requirement to see them similar to the blood pact?
The quests in which the heroes feature will have different requirements, just like regular quests. Some of them might require The Blood Pact, if only because then the hero can say, "Hey, you're the one Xenia told me about."

will these heroes appear in already existing quests or not?
No, we will not be going back and adding these heroes to existing quests.

are they going to help you only in quests or can they help you outside of quests sort of like mercenaries
They'll only appear in certain quests. We're not planning to make them available as companion NPCs generally.

How strong are these guys?
We're being vague about the skill levels of the heroes, because we want to be able to use them throughout the game rather than only in certain levels of content.

When you meet them in quests, the heroes will be of an appropriate level for the quest. Eventually, once we've released several quests with a particular hero at different levels, you'll be able to see them growing in power with you over the course of the quests.

In artwork and so forth, we'll depict the heroes at an appropriate power level for the content they're showing off. If we make a picture of the heroes fighting goblins in Lumbridge (for example) then they might be wearing iron-level equipment; if they're going up against the God Wars Dungeon bosses then they'd be wearing something a bit more impressive. You can imagine the higher-level depictions to take place later in their careers than the low-level ones.

I don't think of a 'hero' or 'adventurer' as someone with particular skill levels. Even a low-level player character can be a hero in their own way. The same applies to the Signature Heroes.

are the heroes only going to be in separate quest or will they all meet at the same time in 1 super long grandmaster quest
What I'm hoping will happen is that each hero will get their own introductory quest, but then we'll start releasing quests involving more than one hero. Eventually, we'd release a quest featuring all of the heroes...but that quest would be a *long* way off, and I'm not promising it will happen.

Will they worship the different Runescapian gods?
The heroes have different attitudes to religion, but it's not a case of one of them worshipping each of the big three gods.

Out of the heroes in the image, Sir Ewain is a very devout Saradominist, and the other two are basically not very religious.

Do they know eachother?
Yes, the implication will be that the heroes have crossed paths and worked together on occasion.

Are they able to respawn in Lumbridge, Falador, Camelot or Soul Wars?
Respawning is a game mechanic that we don't really try to fit into the story. As far as NPCs are concerned, when someone dies they're dead, and someone coming back from the dead would be a big deal, not something that happens every day.

Will you be the only developer using these characters?
No. In fact, that's an important part of the Signature Heroes idea, so I'm glad you asked.

In the past, we've mostly had individual developers 'own' the characters and stories that they create. No one got to write Zanik quests except me, for example. That's still what we're doing for most characters, but the Signature Heroes are different: they're a common cast of characters that any developer can write content for.

I was in charge of creating the heroes (although a lot of other people had input), and I'll be working with the quest developers to make sure that the heroes stay true to the original vision and don't change personality between quests. The actual work of writing the quests could go to any developer, though.

Are these characters based off of some of the people who work at JaGex?
No, the Signature Heroes are not based on Jagex staff members, or any other real-life people. Any resemblance is coincidental!

Will the quests be available for f2p?
Most new quests are members-only, and that includes Signature Hero quests. It's possible that we'll release a F2P Signature Hero quest, but they'll mostly be members-only.


New questions answered 05 July:

Are you still working on the next two dwarf quests as well? Or has that project been delayed/passed off to someone else?
I am still working on the next dwarf quest. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

How dynamic will the interaction be between the player and these "heroes"? Will they approve or disapprove of your choices in the quests featuring them?
I'm hoping that there can be some kind of dynamic relationship, but I'm not sure how far we can go with it.

In the Dungeoneering Trailer, was that 5 of the signature heros that appeared?
That's Ewain, Ozan and Ariane you can see in the Dungeoneering trailer. (The final in-game appearance of the heroes hasn't been created yet, so they might end up looking a little different from the versions in the trailer.) I think the rest of the characters in the trailer are random extras, not specific characters.

Wait there's a guy called Raptor. Are there dinosaurs in Runescape?
'Raptor' means 'bird of prey'. It's not just a type of dinosaur.

Can you bring Zanik / the Wise Old Man back as a signarute hero?
We thought about this, but in the end we decided to create all-new Signature Heroes rather than using existing characters. As much as I'd like to write new Zanik content, she's quite heavily tied to the goblin storyline, and we wanted the Signature Heroes to appear in lots of otherwise unrelated quests rather than be tied to a particular quest series. The Wise Old Man has similar issues with his quests, and he's also pretty much a comedy character, whereas we wanted the Signature Heroes to be suited to more serious stories.

But them being shown modelling stuff seems weird to me...is it canon? Have they been dungeoneering or is it just for show?
Interesting question. I'd really like to say 'yes', but I think I'll have to say 'sort of'.

It would be really nice to consider all pictures of the Signature Heroes to be canon, but I want artists to be able to make new pictures without worrying about where they fit into the Signature Heroes' stories.

So, for now, let's say the Signature Heroes dungeoneering image is canon, but if we later release a quest where one of the heroes says "I've never been do Daemonheim!" then the image will become non-canon. I hope that makes sense!

Do you think its possible our characters could marry or have a love interest with one of the heros?
Probably not. We're not absolutely ruling out the possibility, but it's not something we're planning at the moment.

If we did include romance, I'd want to make it optional, and give you a choice of which hero to pursue. The trouble is that then we'd be writing content that only some players would experience, i.e. we might write romance plots for four heroes, but each player only plays one. Effectively we'd have spent four times as long writing the same amount of content, which isn't a good use of our time.

What I'd like to do is see how popular the idea of player/hero romance is once we've introduced the heroes to the game.

For now--sorry guys, Ariane isn't interested at the moment.

what will be the names of the upcoming quests with the heroes, and what will be the requirments
I'm not giving out that kind of information at this point. Sorry!

Why don't you create quests with multiple outcomes / quests where the player character is the villain?
This is similar to the answer about player-NPC romance. We don't want to make quests where you *have* to be evil, so we'd have to make it optional, but that would mean writing two pieces of content but only letting each player experience one. So, we'd effectively have spent twice as long writing the same amount of content, which isn't the best use of our time.

Are there any plans for any of the heroes from the Betrayal at Falador book eventually becoming Signature Heroes?
No.


Questions answered on 06 July:

I was just wondering whether you have any plans to release the voiced characters to the real game anytime soon?
This isn't to do with the Signature Heroes specifically so I can't comment on this, sorry.

When it says Ozan has travelled to every corner of the known world does it also include the Eastern lands?
"Every corner of the known world" was a bit of hyperbole; Ozan is very widely traveled, but there are still some places he hasn't been. Exactly where he has and hasn't been remains to be revealed.

Are the signature heroes known to belong to a triumvirate group?
The Triumvirate is a player community thing rather than an in-game story thing, so the Signature Heroes aren't involved. If I had to put them in groups, though...hmm...Sir Ewain would pretty definitely be a Lord, but I could imagine Ariane fitting in with either the Lords or the Judges, and Ozan is like a Reaver in certain ways but not others.

So, if you wanted to, you could say that Sir Ewain would be a Lord, Ariane would be a Judge, and Ozan would be a Reaver. They're all on the same side, though, and they're all good rather than neutral or evil. Alternatively, if you want to put them all in the same group, it would have to be the Lords.

Anyway, that's just random speculation about what groups they would be in. They're not actually part of the Triumvirate since it's a community thing rather than part of RuneScape's storyline.

As raptor is another name for a bird of prey is there a possibility that Raptor is in someway linked to the aviantese or armadyl?
I want to keep the Raptor mysterious for now, so no comment.

Could we have some clues to the origins of Linza and Raptor and are either of them linked to the eastern lands.
Again, no comment.

Will any of the Signature heroes be high levelled summoners, as there seems to be shortage of summoning interested npcs.
I'm imagining Ariane and Xenia to be pretty good summoners, although I'm not sure exactly how good.

Will the signature heroes be involved in a dungeoneering quest? As they are dipicted in a dungeon scene.
They're depicted in a dungeoneering scene just in order to show off dungeoneering; the picture isn't any kind of hint about future content.


Questions answered on 08 July:

I'd quite like to see the heroes each have a different definition of good and evil, and also each having different approaches and reasons for their good deeds, as being good for goodness' sake can be quite boring.
I totally agree with this, and that's what I'm trying to go for with the Signature Heroes.

I only wrote one-paragraph bios of the heroes in the dev blog, but I've written a lot more about them that we're not showing you at the moment. They each have their own personalities and sets of values, and their own approaches to the idea of good and evil.

How come our character is almost always good? Our character shouldn't be forced to always be the good guy
I covered this in a previous question. We can sometimes provide moral choices in quests (e.g. in The Blood Pact you can kill the enemies or let them go), but putting in a totally different set of 'evil' quests wouldn't be a good use of our time.

Is the knight (Sir Ewain or something like that) going to be part of the new series of quests about the Void Knights?
I don't want to get into which quests the heroes will or won't appear in, but in general these heroes will appear in their own stand-alone quests and stay out of existing quest series. The Void Knight series has some strong characters of its own and we don't want Ewain to steal the spotlight from them.

First i would like to say would it be ruled out as to choose to play one of the seven heroes in game so an example would be instead of being yourself you can play as one of the heroes youve created and play out there life experiences etc...
We wouldn't let you just turn into Sir Ewain whenever you liked and run around the game world as him.

We might add a limited sequence in a quest where you play as the signature hero, like you do briefly as Zanik in The Chosen Commander. It's a device that I don't want to over-use, though, so don't expect it to happen in every Signature Hero quest.

Second i do like the idea of relationships but you should bear in mind that everyones "place on the field" isnt the same so would you allow same gender relationships or would this be a one way thing.
We still don't know whether we're going to put in romantic relationships between the player and the signature heroes, and it's quite likely that we won't. If we did, though, then we would definitely put in the option of same-sex relationships.

Also there should be some sort of way of having an idea or knowing where your relationship stands with one of the signature characters, this is of course all hyperthetical talk.
And yes, if we added relationships then obviously there'd be a way of knowing how the signature heroes feel about you. But that's probably enough talk on a totally hypothetical subject.