Blizzard's: Overwatch

Overwatch first look: Blizzard takes on Team Fortress 2






- 3 hours ago

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VIDEO-CLick to Watch!: Blizzard gave a detailed outline of their upcoming team shooter Overwatch at Blizzcon today, delving into specifics about classes, maps, modes, and the philosophy they're bringing to their first FPS. It's a six vs. six team shooter set 60 years in the future in a world of cartoon heroes and villains with wildly different abilities. You can play as a genius ape called Winston, or a teleporting rogue called Tracer, a sniper with a grappling hook, a samurai with a deadly bow. Overwatch derives its complexity from the interaction between these varied skillsets. Abilities are designed to be satisfying and useful when used individually, but can be game-winning when used in combination by a coordinated team. Every map is objective-focused, so you'll be fighting to seize capture points and escort payloads (hello, Team Fortress 2). The maps are designed to be easily parsed to allow players to focus clearly on the heroes they're facing rather than shifting level geometry. Environments are based in vivid futuristic visions of real-world locations, and Blizzard want them to be relatable and lighthearted futuristic facsimiles of real world locations. A payload map set in London has attackers escorting a bomb to the base of Big Ben, and along the way you pass a big red bus with hover jets for wheels. There's an Egyptian map with a theme park arrangement of sphinxes and statues. There's a gorgeous map set around a Japanese temple, covered in bring pink blossom. It's cute, and ideal for a game designed to be approachable to players that don't see themselves as shooter fans. As Blizzard projected in all caps onto the Blizzcon main stage screen, there is "NO DEATHMATCH". Philosophically, Metzen and Kaplan frame Overwatch as is a reaction against twitch-based modern military shooters. Metzen: "We have a long legacy of developing multiplayer games, and it came down to 'is it even possible to build a shooter that doesn't feel cynical, that doesn't feel cruel, that doesn't feel nasty. Can you build one that really promotes teamwork and relationship and having fun with your friends, and not getting killed with a thrown knife from halfway across the map as soon as you jump in." A cast of characters that look like they've just blasted their way out of a Saturday morning cartoon certainly helps. Aside from a cockney accent that causes this British reporter physical pain, they're brilliantly realised. The art style was devised by one of Blizzard's star designers, Geoff Goodman, who created the Lich King and many other famous Blizzard characters. The aforementioned cockney, Tracer, is a spiky-haired waif who can teleport, throw sticky grenades and—brilliantly—deploy a time-reverse move that teleports her to her exact state three second in the past. A resource called Energy ticks up rapidly after you've used an ability, and series of ticks near the reticule let you know when you can use your abilities again. Abilities can chain together in impressive ways. In one video, Blizzard showed Tracer teleporting from a ledge down to a payload, sticking a grenade to its defender, and then reversing time to put her back on the ledge as the grenade exploded. There's even greater potential for cross-character skill combos among the twelve existing heroes (with many more to come, Blizzard suggest). In a video of a full match shown at the end of today's presentation, the buildy dwarf character, Torbjorn, deployed his ultimate ability to resist incoming damage and increase his build speed, leapt on top of the payload and successfully built a turret on top of the moving objective. Another character threw a bubble shield onto the payload and the turret moved through the level, blasting defenders as they charged. Internally, Blizzard refer to this tactic as the "killdozer". VIDEO-CLick to Watch!: Comparisons to Team Fortress 2 are justified, but it's about time someone took on Valve's brilliant team shooter, and the sheer quantity and variety of Overwatch's characters is exciting. Kaplan and Metzen wouldn't talk about pricing, but it would seem mad to distribute Overwatch as a self-contained priced product with such a direct free competitor around, and there's obvious capacity for Overwatch to offer players an endless stream of new heroes and hero skins. There are hints that Blizzard will emulate TF2's approach to narrative by telling Overwatch's story outside of the game. In-game, you can field characters that are technically mortal enemies on the same team, and field multiple instances of the same hero on a single team. In fact, you can technically field a team of six angry apes if you like, though Blizz don't want this to be tactically effective. Metzen suggests that the story could be advanced by more cinematics, not unlike the one Blizzard used to introduce the game today at Blizzcon. Players can absorb as much of the story as they like outside of the game, and then toy with those personalities in-game, as a kid might with action figures of their favourite cartoon series. I've yet to play - check out Evan's upcoming hands-on for detailed impressions - but Overwatch is an instantly appealing prospect. Its light, earnest demeanour really plays to Blizzard's strengths, and it's a brave leap for Blizz, not into their first new universe for 17 years, but into a whole new genre. It goes into beta sometime next year.

Lastly here's the in Engine trailer of what the game play will be like

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:

source: PC gamer