So I apologize if any of this sounds just too derivative; I've tried to be playful with many standard comic book tropes in Infamous. Think of these supervillains as archetypes; representations of our collective unconscious, brought to life by Rob Guillory's expert pen.
Empress Ishii doesn't want to freeze the world or watch it burn or eradicate humanity. She just wants to make lots and lots of money. Oh, and be really really powerful. Simple. To that end, she and her side-kick, Ninja Girl, train an army of geisha-assassins within the bowels of Mount Fuji, using them to expand her vast criminal network across the globe.
Ishii's unique strength is, in fact, "Criminal Network." She can automatically trade time for money (e.g., spend 1 week to gain $200,000), which can be incredibly useful if your contracts aren't paying out as much cash as you'd like.
Her unique weakness is "Perfectionism." Attempting hard contracts costs an additional week of time, while legendary contracts cost +2 weeks. Ishii does not tolerate failure and likes to plan out every variable before hatching a new scheme. As such, when you play Empress Ishii with all the fixins', you'll need to be heavily conscious of time as a resource to manage carefully.
Rob's original pitch for Ishii was "Akira-like Neo-Tokyo Yakuza Queenpin" and the first sketch was pretty amazing. I somewhat regret us moving away from that original idea. But we decided we wanted Ishii to be a bit more "empress-like" - more formal and intimidating and traditional? All I know is I wouldn't want to get on her bad side. That smile is vicious.
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