Dr. Rogero Stadig

**Dr. Rogero Stadig** is one of the 16 playable characters in *Choice*.

Codenamed **ICARUS**, he is an employee of HEAT Industries, initially working as a member of Research & Development on hardlight boot technology known as the Stairway to Heaven or Project: HIPPOGRIFF. When it comes to test the boots in the field, Dr. Stadig comes to discover that the "owners" of the company are corrupt and that there are plans to use the HIPPOGRIFFs on a soon-to-be-developed supersoldier with the intent on using it as a weapon against their enemies, including other supersoldier companies located in Big City such as COG Incorporated and Dr. BadGuy's Mutates. It is then up to him whether he wants to volunteer for the supersoldier program and continue his work for HEAT Industries or to steal the boots for himself and work as a vigilante. His choice will determine who his initial allies and foes are.

Should he choose to betray HEAT Industries (which he can do at any time) he can either battle against all supersoldier groups or choose to sell their blueprints or even hire himself out to either COG, Dr. BadGuy, the military, the S.C.U.M. of the Earth, or even to the SKULLS and galactic space pirates, should he discover them. At the same time he can keep them for himself and either work for the forces of good as a vigilante or act selfishly and become a villain, himself. Police and the military can become hostile to him if he acts out in public where his presence will be revealed, but HEAT themselves will not report their device stolen as it is labeled TOP SECRET and will instead send supersoldiers to deal with him, as will the other groups. The police will turn hostile whether he acts as a vigilante or a villain, while the military will only step in after his potential villainous actions have become a serious problem for the city. Instead of the periodic enhancements received under HEAT, he will need to steal equipment to upgrade himself to better deal with the ever-increasing threat of foes.

Should he remain loyal to HEAT, his mission instead will be to first test the equipment first on their usefulness in environmental situations and then on civilians themselves to determine their worthiness as weaponized equipment (this can either be done against the innocent or against gangs, which will affect purity and corruption levels, respectively). Once the HIPPOGRIFFs are properly field tested, he will begin his attacks on their rivals, working towards controlling all of Big City. He will also receive periodic enhancements as time goes on while working under HEAT. This same storyline follows how it works under other companies should he instead defect, with some changes due to other companies' policies and certain levels of distrust towards him until he fully proves himself to them.

## Gameplay

Gameplay differs somewhat depending on Dr. Stadig's personal choices in becoming the supersoldier ICARUS or simply operating as a vigilante. As it is Stadig's choice to call himself ICARUS, this name will follow him wherever he goes and whatever he chooses.

* Should he become a regular human vigilante (or join the military or SKULLs), he will only be able to perform typical human stunts with the addition of creating hardlight platforms with his boots, allowing him to either create bridges between places or even slowly create stairs to let him climb to the tops of buildings when necessary. The boots also have shock absorbers to allow him to survive a fall, although he will still be injured as he will not have proper safety devices on the rest of his body. Eventually he can upgrade the boots with stolen technology to allow for weapon systems or even to allow him to create angled hardlight platforms to effectively build slides to very swiftly move around the city (though one must keep in mind that your speed will very much come into effect while doing this similar to a roller coaster, and moving up for too long can lead to stalling out and sliding backwards).

* Should he become a HEAT supersoldier, he will gain superhuman reflexes that will allow him to run up buildings and jump significant distances. He will still take damage from extremely high falls such as off of skyscrapers, although shorter building falls can be mitigated, and he can use his hardlight boots to stop him short of dying in a fall, turn the boots off and set out another hardlight platform to safely but swiftly descend. He will receive occasional upgrades where he will need to return to HEAT Industries to have his boots enhanced. His physical prowess will not enhance naturally but he can perform tasks to be given security clearance to obtain upgrades to enhance his other skills.

* Should he defect to COG, his supersoldier enhancements will be primarily cybernetic in nature. This will allow various and major boosts to his skill set, although each skill must be upgraded in turn once he receives clearance or purchases clearance. While initial enhancements are not quite as powerful as HEAT's supersoldier, later upgrades enhance his abilities on greater levels with larger increases per upgrade. However, this is equalized by cybernetics heating up as they see use, requiring cooldown periods similar to machine guns if any technique is used for too long. This can be used to one's advantage, however -- should the user enhance both arms and legs and overheat all of them together, they can use a powerful steam release attack to seriously damage organic opponents.

* Should he defect to the Mutates, he will be given the option to become a Mutate himself or simply perform operations for Dr. BadGuy as a regular human; should he choose the former option, he gets the choice to choose what animal or animals to enhance himself with. He can then capture one or two animals before returning to Dr. BadGuy and cementing his decision permanently. He can either roam the city and find various lifeforms such as cats, dogs, rats, pigeons, falcons and insects, or he can break into pet stores for easier access to cats and dogs and more exotic creatures to choose from such as chameleons, snakes, and hedgehogs, to name only a few; each pet shop has different animals however. He can even slip into the sewers to find the hidden easter egg animals, the crocodiles or sewer turtles and use these, although he will need to subdue them first. If he has two animals selected and wants to discard one, he can do so in order to claim another or remain with only one animal. He can then return to BadGuy to be transformed. During this transformation process the player can choose to upgrade different body parts for different abilities based upon what he has collected. He will have no physical changes initially, but if the game progresses beyond another 9 months from after his transformation (as there is a 3 month period of recovery that will lapse first), he will experience the first mutation, transforming him into a half man, half animal hybrid. What appears will depend on what he chose and what was directly chosen to enhance with those animals' parts. This will also greatly enhance his ability skill levels for his chosen abilities but will also mean that he cannot move about freely in the daylight without proper covering such as large hoods and the like. If the game progresses for another year the final mutation will occur, transforming him into an anthropomorphic hybrid. At this point his abilities will be at their strongest but he will also become unable to go out safely in the daylight.

* The S.C.U.M. of the Earth will take him as-is. However, he can forcibly upgrade himself by brutally removing equipment from foes and attaching them to himself, which the SCUM will heavily encourage.

The player must remember that any rival group will send their soldiers after the doctor on a basis dependent upon how big of a threat he is to that faction directly. This leaves Dr. Stadig as a unique individual in this unique game, as he gets to directly interact with a large number of already existing characters from the Lunatic Entertainment license, such as HEAT Industries and Mutate characters, such as Cyborn, Raccoon, Lightning and even Dr. BadGuy himself. These opponents will not wait for other villains and will try to triangulate and attack him; generally speaking, they will simply move about seemingly at random, trying to spot him but if they do spot him will radio in and other villains will begin moving towards him from across the map -- this is assuming he has become a top priority target, however.