Cosmetics are the biggest financial drivers of the game of Dota 2. Sets, HUDs, weather effects, effigies; almost everything in the game can be customised to make the game more to your liking. One of my favourite cosmetics though that you can choose to change has to be the announcer. Replacing the standard voice with a character you love makes the game a lot more personal. Whether it is just to a standard hero from the game, or hearing the narrator from the Stanley Parable or the gravelly tones of the old man from Bastion, the game brings in other games, characters and celebrities to taunt or encourage you. Even Square Enix realized this and collaborated with Valve on some Dota 2 items. Recently, the TV series Rick and Morty got chosen to be made into an announcer, and the script has been released with some very interesting voice lines.
Over the history or Dota 2, new heroes have been made available at various intervals away from the original Dota mod. At present, there are just 2 more heroes that need to be ported over, namely Pit Lord and Arc Warden. Pit Lord's trademark is that he is able to pick up a full allied team and teleport them anywhere on the map, an incredibly powerful ability that makes the other team think twice about venturing out alone. Arc Warden is an electric hero whose ultimate creates a perfect clone of himself that can use all his spells and nearly all of the items in the game independently from the original for a short time, effectively making any team fight a 5v6 affair. There has been a lot of speculation as to when these heroes would be released, with people even saying that Pit Lord would be released during the All Stars match at this years international. So far though, Erik Johnson, Market Director of Operations for Valve, has only confirmed that Arc Warden and Pit Lord will be added by next years International, but won't give dates.
The release of the heroes can't be too far off, as the announcer script mentions both of these heroes though. Under the list of responses the following lines can be found and this further raises speculation:
arc_warden_01.mp3
Hey Rick, this guy'd be pretty great if our electricity went out and we could hang out with him.
You're an idiot Morty.arc_warden_02.mp3
Oh boy, looks like we got ourselves somebody with dissociative personality disorder.pit_lord_01.mp3
Morty this is what happens when people that don't know what they're doing start messing around with portal guns.pit_lord_02.mp3
Hey Morty, check this guy out. Thinks he knows what he's doing messing with portals and stuff."
The fact that the Reborn update also has a lot of focus towards helping new people learn Dota 2, with extended tutorials and guided bot matches to help you understand what you are doing in a game, makes it seem like another added feature may soon be coming to the game. This feature being Easy Mode, in which the towers are weaker, you get more gold every second and dying doesn't cause you to lose gold. All these changes are welcome and would certainly help a new player get the hang of how to play the game. The following lines can be found in the Rick and Morty announcer pack, in specific response to selecting Easy Mode as a playable game mode in the same way that you would pick All Random or Captain's Mode. And this just hints further at an Easy Mode being implemented sooner rather than later.
easy_mode_01.mp3
Ohh! Easy mode.easy_mode_02.mp3
Oh, little baby picked Easy Mode.easy_mode_03.mp3
Oh boy, Easy Mode. This is gonna be exciting.
Further confirmation of the upcoming Easy Mode is in the Bristleback announcer which was released in July 2015. You can hear him say "Easy Mode" in this video as he goes through the various games modes. Some other interesting lines included in the announcer pack mention "Reverse Captain's Mode", where captains select 5 heroes as normal but players then have to select their heroes from the other captain's choices rather than their own. Additionally, a mention to an unknown game mode is also made. If you would like to check out the full script, you can find it here.
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