The real reason Kallisti Wharf has no enemies.

[BasiliskXVIII]

It's a well-known Easter egg that most of the detectives in the game are references to famous and law enforcement in media:

Freitags and Becktrees are Friday and Streebeck from Dragnet (1987)
Martins and Rogers and Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series
Sluggitt and Westbrush are Frank Bullitt (Bullitt) and Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry)
Kowaccio and Frasenbacker are Vecchio/Kowalski and Fraser/Diefenbaker from Due South

Basinns and Coquette are Tubbs and Crockett from Miami Vice
Davids and Hutchinson are David Starsky and Ken Hutchinson from "Starsky and Hutch"
Junkers and Murwell are Rick Deckard (Blade Runner) Alex Murphy (RoboCop)
McLord and Selnum are Steve McGarret (played by Jack Lord in Hawaii 5-0) and Thomas Magnum (Played by Tom Selleck in Magnum PI)

(Detectives Fish and Miller are named for Sean Fish and Matt Miller, former devs for City of Heroes)

I like to believe that somewhere in Kallisti Wharf there isn't a police station, but just a little detective's office. And there, if you could get inside, you'd find two men, eager for work. An older, rumpled-looking man, slumped lazily in his chair, beige trench coat hanging loose over his shoulders like he has been wearing it for decades. His expression is casual, even absentminded, as he stirs sugar into a chipped coffee mug.

Beside him, another man sits, perfectly poised—immaculate three-piece suit, gloves still on, a glass of bourbon untouched at his desk. He leans back in his chair, watching you enter with an amused glint in his eye.

You see, you've found the office of Detective Falk and Detective Craig. Their methods might be unorthodox, but the streets of Kallisti are kept clear, because they know what's going to happen before it even starts.

[El D]

This is a NPC tradition I would love to see continued and this particular pairing is a perfect odd couple. 1000% here for this.

 

"Just one more thing."

"It's never just one more thing!"

"It is for the criminals, Craig."

"Falk, you manage to perplex even me."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. Wanna go get some chili?"

"... Sure. That sounds lovely."

[Go0gleplex]

Funny... I had thought that Fish and Miller from the Barney Miller series I watched back in 1975 based in a NYC PD station on East 6th St in Greenwich Village. Hal Linden as Barney Miller and Abe Vigoda as Phil Fish. 

 

I recognized Freitag as Joe Friday (Jack Webb) from Dragnet...only the original 1954 black and white version / 1967 color re-make I remember watching rather than the '87 comedy. Guess that explains why I couldn't place Becktree... lol  

[Techwright]

I'd be down for a Columbo reference.

 

By the way, Westbrush is a play on Eastwood, Dirty Harry's actor.  I think you might have gotten it a bit muddled when typing it up.

 

There's so many possibilities:

 

Jo "Lolly" Kak  - Bald guy with a lollipop  (and I understand KAK is a gun parts manufacturer.  Double the fun)

Heracles Pear - a little gendarme with a waxed mustache.  (the family name Poirot is apparently derived from the French for "pear")

Castle - wait.  No, not Castle

Carnaby Bones - Barnaby Jones

Dan O. Bookem

E.V.E. 13 a prototype police robot - pun on Adam 12

Officers Martin Mallory and Reed McCord - Adam 12 characters Pete Malloy (actor Martin Milner), Jim Reed (actor Ken McCord)

Officers Pancho Franks and Jonathan Boulanger - CHiPs characters Frank Pancherello and Jon Baker

etc.

 

I'd like to see this play out in other ways too.  Could we get TV pun names on doctors and nurses hanging out in or near hospitals?  Could we maybe get a Gage or a Mantooth with EMT equipment standing with the Fire Chief in the Steel Canyon fire events?

[Go0gleplex]

Given how futuristic Kallisti looks...maybe a good fit would be based off Scully and Mulder from X-files. Dealing with super cryptids is just another Tuesday for them. lol

 

Or Francisco and Sikes from Alien Nation...especially fits given the presence of the Rikti and other alien types.

 

 

Edited February 13 by Go0gleplex

[TalKaline]

On 2/12/2025 at 3:00 PM, El D said:

This is a NPC tradition I would love to see continued.

Something else people don't know - all the level-up Arbiters are hockey players.

[Marine X]

On 2/12/2025 at 4:46 PM, BasiliskXVIII said:

(Detectives Fish and Miller are named for Sean Fish and Matt Miller, former devs for City of Heroes)

I thought they were all named for TV Detectives, these 2 for Barney Miller and Detective Fish ( Abe Vigota ) from Barney Miller, but works either way.

[TheMoneyMaker]

16 hours ago, Marine X said:

I thought they were all named for TV Detectives, these 2 for Barney Miller and Detective Fish ( Abe Vigota ) from Barney Miller, but works either way.

Can't it be both?

[Stormwalker]

21 hours ago, TalKaline said:

Something else people don't know - all the level-up Arbiters are hockey players.

 

Yeah, I realized this one when I saw Arbiter Orr and Arbiter Howe in the same zone, and then remembered Arbiter Richard and said, "Wait a minute..."

 

I'm not sure what an Arbiter Howe hat trick would be, but it would certainly involve a fight.

[Clave Dark 5]

1 hour ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

Can't it be both?

Sure, but following the pattern the police reference was probably the starting point; the secondary layer was, well, secondary.  Probably.  We should ask some Devs!

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Sure, but following the pattern the police reference was probably the starting point; the secondary layer was, well, secondary.  Probably.  We should ask some Devs!

I can't point to chapter and verse, but I do seem to recall comments made that the Miller/Fish bit was supposed to be a double reference.  I've not gone looking for the NPC for a while, but if I recall correctly, the in-game Miller looks more like Matt Miller than it does Hal Lindon.

[TheMoneyMaker]

Is Kallisti Wharf part of Paragon City or an adjacent city? The reason I ask is because the Paragon Transit Authority is present there with the tram, but the PPD drones are replaced by a different drone. Instead of the familiar red and blue police lights, the KW drones have 2 blue lights and they have a black shell and different lettering. Not to mention the architecture looks noticeably different from the rest of Paragon City.

[El D]

38 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

Is Kallisti Wharf part of Paragon City or an adjacent city? The reason I ask is because the Paragon Transit Authority is present there with the tram, but the PPD drones are replaced by a different drone. Instead of the familiar red and blue police lights, the KW drones have 2 blue lights and they have a black shell and different lettering. Not to mention the architecture looks noticeably different from the rest of Paragon City.

 

Kallisti Wharf is part of Paragon, yeah. On the official map it's marked as #24, between Independence Port and Steel Canyon. The new drones are probably linked to whatever story content the HC devs are going to introduce for the zone (only reason I can imagine for a change both that minor and that deliberate) and the architecture was a 'Hey, we made all these new assets for Preatoria and we're making a new zone, why not use the new, fancy stuff?' rather than use a bunch of old textures and map assets they'd have to phase out/replace later anyway.

 

If the Live game had kept going, I imagine most of the major Blueside zones would have been upscaled with newer assets by now to be like Kallisti - similar to what was done with the Atlas Park revamp.

Edited Tuesday at 09:09 PM by El D

[Doc_Scorpion]

54 minutes ago, El D said:

If the Live game had kept going, I imagine most of the major Blueside zones would have been upscaled with newer assets by now to be like Kallisti - similar to what was done with the Atlas Park revamp.

Though I wish the game hadn't died...  I'm very glad we were spared that nightmare coming to life.

[Forager]

Rich folk live in KW. The cops try harder.

[Scarlet Shocker]

 

Henry Mancini wrote some bloody good stuff

[Andreah]

20 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Though I wish the game hadn't died...  I'm very glad we were spared that nightmare coming to life.

It was a good idea in theory, it just dropped something in implementation.

 

I would have liked to see the city redone to make more sense from a roads, traffic, and buildings perspective. But it wouldn't be the same game anymore.

 

Kallisti should follow the design patterns already established by the existing zones, even if its assets are more up to date. And it might be cool to have newspaper red-side sorts of missions AND police radio missions. So who/where would the newspaper contacts be?

[Scarlet Shocker]

On 2/18/2025 at 10:03 PM, Doc_Scorpion said:

Though I wish the game hadn't died...  I'm very glad we were spared that nightmare coming to life.

 

I understand your sentiment, but I disagree with it.

 

The Devs did a pretty good job of keeping what by shutdown was a very old game even then updated. They constantly introduced new environmental graphical tech (Faultline for example) that impacted the game very positively.

 

I was quite a vocal critic of the devs on live in terms of content. I think there were areas that they lost coherent direction in terms of the story - but in terms of actually keeping the game relevant and not looking dated, I think they did an excellent job.

 

I'm ok with you having a different opinion but you might be giving them a bit of a disservice.