SPARTAN-458

Spartan-458 (a.k.a - Nicole) is a fictional character from the Halo universe, and a secret character from Dead or Alive 4. She is a Petty Officer Second Class, codenamed "Spartan-458". Her stage in the game is the Nassau Station.

Dead or Alive 4
In this character's fictional history, she was born in the year 2531 in the city of New Legaspi on Mars. At six years of age, she was abducted by agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence and conscripted into the SPARTAN-II program. The SPARTAN-II program was the UNSC's highly successful military project to augment and hone perfect soldiers. Spartan-458's unit was preparing for a classified mission on Nassau Station when the ONI stealth ship Apocalypso tumbled into real-space – being carried along in the wake of a freak slipspace anomaly. The anomaly intersected Nassau Station; creating a semi-stable "bubble" in the space/time continuum on its way back to the 21st century. With respect to both the Dead or Alive and Halo continuities, Nicole remains in the 21st century; guarding Nassau Station's secrets with all but lethal force (she realizes killing someone in the past could have dire consequences for the present), waiting for the "bubble" to collapse and hopefully returning her to the year 2552.

Gameplay
Nicole's fighting style is very quick and powerful, a variation of standard military close quarters combat, her move list contains moves from other characters in the game such as Leon and Bayman. It is a style meant to incapacitate an armed opponent in a matter of seconds and take advantage of the Spartan's enhanced strength, as well as exploit any environmental advantages. Many of her moves have names alluding to the Halo universe such as "The Great Journey" and "The Grunt Punt", the former of which is a powerful move to send an opponent down stairs or off a ledge. Several technologies from Halo also appear in Nicole's repertoire including active camouflage (can activated and deactivated by taunting) and the plasma grenade. She cannot backface her opponent on her own and doesn't have any "special" backfacing attacks.

Development
Nicole is the result of a collaboration between Tecmo's Team Ninja, and Microsoft's Bungie Studios. Team Ninja originally approached Bungie asking to use the Master Chief, which proved impossible due to storyline restrictions. But the staff at Bungie were intrigued with the idea and wanted to go forward with something similar. As a result, Bungie developed the concept of a Spartan not entirely connected to the Halo storyline that could conveniently (and somewhat plausibly) be inserted into the DOA universe. This concept evolved into the character of Nicole. Nearly all of the resources for her design came straight from the Halo 2 game data. The data was modified to work in the DOA game engine as a female combatant but keeping with the traditional Spartan design, as a feminine figure would not be very plausible for such a heavily armored individual pushed well beyond normal human limitations in regards to fitness and power.