• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Blizzard announces Overwatch. Team based MP Shooter [Up: Trailers, Screens, More]

Mobius and pet octopus said:
top-10-superdata.jpg


edit:
oops, top chart was wrong one
Click to expand...

Crazy to imagine they took that spot with a subscription based MMO.
 
Have they talked about direct counters yet? That's a recurring theme in some mobas, and one of the things that really kept teams in tf2 in balance with it's rock paper scissors nature. If they don't have those either built in with balance or by accident because of a poor monetary model, the game could quickly devolve into a server full of everyone playing the "best" character or whatever and just being a normal arena shooter.
JesseZao said:
I'm not in the mood to keep playing this cheeky game.

I probably won't invest much time in HotS, but Overwatch seems to be unique enough to hold my interest.
Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WchnQOa2oO8
 
All these characters, levels and art style in general look crazy good.
Too bad it's a first person online game so basically my nemesis.

Had it been at least third person, i would've considered it.
 
Panel

Chris Metzen is the lead creative director on Overwatch.
Bill Petras is the Art Director of Overwatch. He was the Art Director for World of Warcraft in the past.
Jeff Chamberlain is the VFX supervisor on Overwatch. He worked on the Heart of the Swarm, Wrath of the Lich King, Mists of Pandaria, Diablo III: RoS, and other Blizzard cinematics.
The art in the game is high quality but still has the Blizzard style.
The art should be vibrant, edgy, with silhouettes, as well as feeling handcrafted and detailed. Readability of the art is important.
Overwatch uses a new engine with new technology.
There was a partnership from day 1 between the cinematic team and the game artists.
Torbjörn was the first character that they modeled.
Pharah came from the idea of having a hero with a jetpack and rocket launcher. The original nickname was Rocket Dude. Exploring the story and personality of the character helped to refine the concept to what we see today. The team then worked on finding the right voice actor for the character.
Creating these heroes was a very team based process.
Warcraft started out very simple and then added in new characters, story, and art over time. Overwatch is starting from the same place, a simple beginning and lots of potential for the future in terms of story and characters.
The team wanted Tracer to be the centerpiece hero, as everyone on the team loved her.
The cinematic and in game art team both worked on Tracer at the same time, working together to refine her art.
The new engine and development process allowed both teams to work together to have Tracer's model in the cinematic and game be very similar.
Winston was a challenging model to work on, as he has a lot of movements and a rage mode that changes his movements. The model may not be complete yet.
Winston was also challenging to work on for the cinematics team, as there is a lot of clipping with his armor and how he moves, so the team just hid parts of the armor that aren't facing the camera to avoid clipping.
Widowmake was the one of the easier characters to model.
The Overwatch poster is a important part of uniting the team during the development process. They started earlier in the development process, trying different layouts and less heroes, but the final product felt like it worked right the comic book style of the game. There is enough space to add more and more heroes to the poster as they are added to the game.
There are a few heroes on the poster that aren't part of the 12 that are playable at Blizzcon.
The child in the cinematic made Chris Metzen's inner six year old do cartwheels. He hopes everyone loves the game, but almost doesn't care.
Blizzard is used to working on huge epic stories in other games, so this is a new direction for them and it is exciting. A bright, fun, heroic world that reaches for everyone's inner six year old!
Jeff Chamberlain claimed the project as soon as he heard the pitch.
The original cinematic just had the 12 boards in the image below and the story today is very similar.
After seeing the story pitch, Metzen said "If we don't make this story, I don't want to work here". Everyone was excited for Overwatch.
The team was working late one night and needed a full match to test some features. They ended up playing for hours after they started, which made them realize how much fun it was. The team was making the game because they enjoyed it, not because anyone assigned them the project.


Q&A

There will be plenty of diversity of hero types. They are aware people want to feel represented in game.
There might be Overwatch characters in Heroes of the Storm in the future.
The team has been working on Overwatch for roughly a year and a half, starting on the idea after the Titan team was reallocated to other games. Normally you have to spend some time pitching a game to developers, but most were in very quickly for Overwatch.
No real answer to if there will be collectable hats.
Skins sound like a good idea, but nothing to announce.
The actual gameplay doesn't have a big bad villain so that players can have heroes fight heroes rather than having specific villains that restrict gameplay. The deep and rich story will take place outside of the game.
There aren't any immediate plans to add an adventure mode to the game to play each hero and explore their story, but it is something they are interested in doing.
The game has some similarities to TF2, but it is still a very different game. TF2 has a limited number of roles with some more customization through weapon choices. Overwatch also has some more mobility, with some heroes that can fly or use grapple hooks. Overwatch is more about hero abilities than it is about putting a crosshair over the other heroes.
Click to expand...

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4491-Overwatch-Origins#_
 
If they do tf2 style meet the team videos i would lose my shit. Blizzard's cinematic team is just on another level.

Also is there a way to watch the blizzcon panel without a virtual ticket?
 
JesseZao said:
Free Dota is a steam trojan horse. It's not a model that every company should or can follow.
Click to expand...

I don't think that is the case at all. Dota is wildly profitable for Valve(and they knew that it would be given what they learned on TF2), and I think they've pretty much proven that you can be F2P and consumer friendly at the same time.
 
My initial reaction to the announcement was "meh", but looking at the artstyle some more I'm warming up a bit more to it now. It looks like it'll be quite the quirky game, I'll probably enjoy it.
 
Sn4ke_911 said:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4491-Overwatch-Origins#_
Click to expand...

This

Overwatch is more about hero abilities than it is about putting a crosshair over the other heroes.
Click to expand...

would indicate that the idea that this is inspired a lot by MOBAs is credible. People seem to think the important part of MOBAs is the creeps, towers, lanes structure, and whilst that is what defines it as that genre, the actual depth and fun of the genre comes from the focus on the characters abilities and how they interact. It's cool to see that design philosophy bleed into new projects.
 
Razzer said:
This



would indicate that the idea that this is inspired a lot by MOBAs is credible. People seem to think the important part of MOBAs is the creeps, towers, lanes structure, and whilst that is what defines it as that genre, the actual depth and fun of the genre comes from the focus on the characters abilities and how they interact. It's cool to see that design philosophy bleed into new projects.
Click to expand...

Yep. This is basically what I wanted Destiny to be when I originally heard of the classes it would have. I want a bigger emphasis on unique abilities and spells instead of just having a gun.
 
JesseZao said:
It's not a situation that can be applied to other developers. Name others with the same model that are anywhere near as successful.
Click to expand...

Why would I need to? Almost no one has attempted that model. Loadout did decently afaik, and Path of Exile is doing pretty damn great even if it isn't a breakaway success. Blizzard is in such a good position financially that it would be worth it for goodwill alone. The Blizzard brand holds great value in and of itself and imo they have more to win by treating their customers right than nickel and diming them. Cosmetics clearly sell, and in a game with as powerful an artstyle as this one I doubt it would be an exception.
 
Razzer said:
This



would indicate that the idea that this is inspired a lot by MOBAs is credible. People seem to think the important part of MOBAs is the creeps, towers, lanes structure, and whilst that is what defines it as that genre, the actual depth and fun of the genre comes from the focus on the characters abilities and how they interact. It's cool to see that design philosophy bleed into new projects.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is basically what Dirty Bomb is aiming to accomplish too. They have a character, instead of class, focus for a FPS. And this is markedly different than TF2 as well.

The MOBA approach is definitely about character focused instead of class focused. And abilities set the characters apart the most.
 
Looking great. Here's hoping for a worthy rival to TF2.

The only annoying thing is how utterly goofy Widowmaker is.
"Look at me boys. I'm a poorly-dressed hitwoman femme fatale who's never heard of Sniper Wolf."
 
I almost don't want cosmetics do be a thing in this game. All the character designs are soo damn good but if they add a bunch of costumes it will muddy up the overall style the game has going for it. Again drawing a comparison to TF2 which now looks like an absolute mess with the all the hats and trinkets.
 
SPE said:
That doesn't stop it from being a stereotypical name for blacks in the UK.
Click to expand...


Blizzard is a US developer not a UK developer. Why would you think a common name in the UK would be recognized from a developer in the US is beyond me. I understand being alert to racism but this was one hell of a reach. You are going to need more evidence than this for me to raise an eyebrow.
 
I guess I'm just used to the graphics my 4 year old computer has but the graphics look fine in my opinion. I think we've gotten to the point where games can still look great even if they aren't using all the latest graphical bells and whistles.
 
ISOM said:
Blizzard is a US developer not a UK developer. Why would you think a common name in the UK would be recognized from a developer in the US is beyond me. I understand being alert to racism but this was one hell of a reach. You are going to need more evidence than this for me to raise an eyebrow.
Click to expand...

I've never heard it being used in that manner, just asked three people from england, one from wales, one from scotland and myself and have never heard it used as a stereotypical name for a black person.

The only reply other than 'nope' i got was 'nope, chubby white men'.
 
This looks like it could be a lot of fun.

I'm wondering though, given its pedigree, if the larger overworld envisioned in Titan couldn't be built around this if it becomes successful enough to justify it.
 
JesseZao said:
Yep. This is basically what I wanted Destiny to be when I originally heard of the classes it would have. I want a bigger emphasis on unique abilities and spells instead of just having a gun.
Click to expand...

Agreed, one of the early disappointing things for me personally about Destiny was how limited the abilities of the three classes were in terms of variety, which basically boils down to only one actual unique ability.

Here, Overwatch looks to have vastly different abilities and playstyle.

(Admittedly, this kind of variety with so many classes/heroes probably wouldn't have worked in Destiny which is about leveling and looting)
 
Arion said:
I almost don't want cosmetics do be a thing in this game. All the character designs are soo damn good but if they add a bunch of costumes it will muddy up the overall style the game has going for it. Again drawing a comparison to TF2 which now looks like an absolute mess with the all the hats and trinkets.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I hope Blizzard goes the route of League/DOTA and just keeps adding classes over time. Cosmetics killed TF2 for me.

Just signed up for the beta, btw. This looks amazing.
 
Sponge said:
Agreed. I hope Blizzard goes the route of League/DOTA and just keeps adding classes over time. Cosmetics killed TF2 for me.

Just signed up for the beta, btw. This looks amazing.
Click to expand...

League and dota both have a lot of skins/cosmetics.
 
I have watched the gameplay trailer 10+ times already

I'm enjoying Reaper and his laugh and move set

God I hope this comes to PS4, willing to pay $40 just like Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare

I just love the quirkiness of this game, wish I had an awesome PC so I could play Team Fortress 2 ; ;
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blizzard Announces Overwatch 2 Collaboration with Persona 5 Featuring Character Model Skins from P5
20
501
adamsapple replied
Blizzard insists its Overwatch rebrand isn't "us trying to admit there was a failure."
Game Dev 
33
371
Icymanipulator replied
Team Reptile announces Hyperfunk.
16
600
BennyBlanco replied
Overwatch Rush | Early Development Gameplay Preview
Trailer 
28
160
phant0m replied
Darkhaven announced. New ARPG from ex Blizzard devs.
2
86
896
March Climber replied
Top Bottom