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Blizzard’s new IP mixes the elements of an FPS and a MOBA – and it’s baby’s first shooter.
When Overwatch was unveiled at this year’s BlizzCon in Anaheim, the audience initially didn’t know what to make of it. Blizzard founder and chief lore scribe Chris Metzen announced Overwatch with the sort of reverence and gravitas one would usually reserve for the birth of a child. In a way, perhaps his tone was fitting; after all, Overwatch is the first game that Blizzard has created that isn’t tied into one of its three established franchises in around 17 years.
Still, for a developer renowned for the Gothic grandeur of Diablo, the steampunk high fantasy of World of Warcraft and the Space Western grit of Starcraft, Overwatch seemed a bit of a head-scratcher. At first, those in attendance could be forgiven for thinking that Overwatch was aimed squarely at children.
Its visuals were closer to the stylized cartoons of Pixar than the detailed sci-fi and fantasy veneers Blizzard usually trucks in and the characters in the trailer – while they were using what looked like a combination of magic and firearms – came across as light-hearted and positively bubbly. It was a long way from the dark world of Azeroth.
Once the reveal cinematic was out of the way, however, Metzen and Overwatch’s Game Designer, Jeff Kaplan, were able to lay some fears to rest. Overwatch, they said, was a tactical team-based shooter in which players controlled one of a huge array of heroes in run-and-gun online battles. Furthermore, they pointed out that Overwatch was designed to be as accessible and easy to play as possible.
Having had a spin at its controls, we can report that this is at least partially true. That’s to say that shooter fans who live for the twitch and snap shot approach to their preferred genre needn’t worry because Overwatch accommodates them perfectly. It’s just that if you happen to be not very skilled at shooters – you know, the whole aiming and firing thing – then Overwatch allows you to have fun too.
The first reason for this is that teamwork is paramount. There are no Free-For-All or Team Deathmatch modes in the game and in match types are objective based affairs. In the build we played a match called Capture Point – an attack/defend match in the vein of Domination. We were told that Blizzard has a second match type called Payload, in which one side has to deliver and arm and EMP bomb to a point on the map and the other team has to stop them, although we didn’t get a chance to play that. On the evidence of what we saw in Capture Point, however, we can report that lone wolves won’t like Overwatch, but that’s fine because they’d likely cause their team to lose anyway.
The second aspect that makes Overwatch so accessible is that every player has a something to do because Blizzard’s new shooter is a class-based affair – very similar in certain respects to Valve’s online multiplayer shooter Team Fortress. Every player has a role in his or her team, be it Offense, Support, Tank or Defense. Seasoned FPS veterans will likely be more comfortable on Offense, while if you’re rubbish at playing games like this the Tank, Support and Defense classes give you plenty to do. Can’t aim for toffee? Well, then take on a Support character and plant remote turrets in strategic areas of the map. You can rack up kills by turning chokepoints into deathtraps.
Every single character, incidentally, has a unique set of powers that differentiate them from every other protagonist in the game. They may share classes with each other, but no one character can replicate the abilities of another specifically. For example, Reaper, a thin dual-shotgun wielding apparition in a Darth Vader mask is able to reduce himself to shadows – turning briefly invulnerable but unable to attack – and teleport over rather significant distances. This makes him similar – although not the same as – Tracer, a lithe pistol packing firecracker who has the ability to briefly speed up time and ‘Blink’ making her near impossible to draw a bead on over short distances.
Players also aren’t locked into one character for the duration of any match. If you pick an Attacker and find you don’t like how they handle, you can switch out to a different class between respawning. If the teleporting, yet rather sluggish Reaper isn’t for you, you can switch to Widowmaker, a sniper armed with a grappling hook who can zipline up to raised platforms and, depending on where she’s positioned, can turn entire streets into killzones.
Not every character is armed with a gun; there’s an oversized Mech called Rheinhardt who carries a massive hammer and can deploy a shield – although his shockwave attack with his oversized home tool does count as a distance attack. For our money the most interesting of the bunch is Bastion, a Support class robot who can transform into a gun turret; he may sacrifice all his movement when he does this but he can cut pretty much any character to ribbons.
Given that every single character in the game is unique, Overwatch looks like it’ll be an absolute pig to balance on the way to release. This may be why Blizzard is tossing out a beta next year. So far BlizzCon 2014 is the only time the general public and press has been able to get their mitts on it and while the feedback from that event will prove invaluable to developers, they probably want to cast their net a little wider. Twelve characters were available in the BlizzCon build and Blizzard say more are on the way, so Lord alone knows how long the in-house and public Q&A process will take.
While Overwatch is most certainly an FPS, the fact that the gameplay revolves a collection of different characters with varied strengths and weaknesses lends it a little in common with a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena MOBA. This makes sense since Blizzard was instrumental in midwifing this genre with its Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and has a MOBA of its own in Heroes Of The Storm ready to release in closed beta next year. On top of that, Overwatch, we’ve been told, will have a rich and deep backstory to ground players in its world and since storytelling is a massive part of Blizzard’s DNA, we think we can take this on trust.
First Impressions
Overwatch may have been an unexpected move on Blizzard’s part, but the more one plays it, the more it seems to gel with the strengths the developer is known for. In the matches we played, we noticed every player came away with a story to tell whether it was about their triumphs or ineptitudes. Like every Blizzard game, Overwatch’s main appeal seems wrapped up moments that players create for themselves. It may be Blizzard’s first attempt at an FPS, but it seems this apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all.
Blizzard’s new IP mixes the elements of an FPS and a MOBA – and it’s baby’s first shooter.
When Overwatch was unveiled at this year’s BlizzCon in Anaheim, the audience initially didn’t know what to make of it. Blizzard founder and chief lore scribe Chris Metzen announced Overwatch with the sort of reverence and gravitas one would usually reserve for the birth of a child. In a way, perhaps his tone was fitting; after all, Overwatch is the first game that Blizzard has created that isn’t tied into one of its three established franchises in around 17 years.
Still, for a developer renowned for the Gothic grandeur of Diablo, the steampunk high fantasy of World of Warcraft and the Space Western grit of Starcraft, Overwatch seemed a bit of a head-scratcher. At first, those in attendance could be forgiven for thinking that Overwatch was aimed squarely at children.
Its visuals were closer to the stylized cartoons of Pixar than the detailed sci-fi and fantasy veneers Blizzard usually trucks in and the characters in the trailer – while they were using what looked like a combination of magic and firearms – came across as light-hearted and positively bubbly. It was a long way from the dark world of Azeroth.
Once the reveal cinematic was out of the way, however, Metzen and Overwatch’s Game Designer, Jeff Kaplan, were able to lay some fears to rest. Overwatch, they said, was a tactical team-based shooter in which players controlled one of a huge array of heroes in run-and-gun online battles. Furthermore, they pointed out that Overwatch was designed to be as accessible and easy to play as possible.
Having had a spin at its controls, we can report that this is at least partially true. That’s to say that shooter fans who live for the twitch and snap shot approach to their preferred genre needn’t worry because Overwatch accommodates them perfectly. It’s just that if you happen to be not very skilled at shooters – you know, the whole aiming and firing thing – then Overwatch allows you to have fun too.
The first reason for this is that teamwork is paramount. There are no Free-For-All or Team Deathmatch modes in the game and in match types are objective based affairs. In the build we played a match called Capture Point – an attack/defend match in the vein of Domination. We were told that Blizzard has a second match type called Payload, in which one side has to deliver and arm and EMP bomb to a point on the map and the other team has to stop them, although we didn’t get a chance to play that. On the evidence of what we saw in Capture Point, however, we can report that lone wolves won’t like Overwatch, but that’s fine because they’d likely cause their team to lose anyway.
The second aspect that makes Overwatch so accessible is that every player has a something to do because Blizzard’s new shooter is a class-based affair – very similar in certain respects to Valve’s online multiplayer shooter Team Fortress. Every player has a role in his or her team, be it Offense, Support, Tank or Defense. Seasoned FPS veterans will likely be more comfortable on Offense, while if you’re rubbish at playing games like this the Tank, Support and Defense classes give you plenty to do. Can’t aim for toffee? Well, then take on a Support character and plant remote turrets in strategic areas of the map. You can rack up kills by turning chokepoints into deathtraps.
Every single character, incidentally, has a unique set of powers that differentiate them from every other protagonist in the game. They may share classes with each other, but no one character can replicate the abilities of another specifically. For example, Reaper, a thin dual-shotgun wielding apparition in a Darth Vader mask is able to reduce himself to shadows – turning briefly invulnerable but unable to attack – and teleport over rather significant distances. This makes him similar – although not the same as – Tracer, a lithe pistol packing firecracker who has the ability to briefly speed up time and ‘Blink’ making her near impossible to draw a bead on over short distances.
Players also aren’t locked into one character for the duration of any match. If you pick an Attacker and find you don’t like how they handle, you can switch out to a different class between respawning. If the teleporting, yet rather sluggish Reaper isn’t for you, you can switch to Widowmaker, a sniper armed with a grappling hook who can zipline up to raised platforms and, depending on where she’s positioned, can turn entire streets into killzones.
Not every character is armed with a gun; there’s an oversized Mech called Rheinhardt who carries a massive hammer and can deploy a shield – although his shockwave attack with his oversized home tool does count as a distance attack. For our money the most interesting of the bunch is Bastion, a Support class robot who can transform into a gun turret; he may sacrifice all his movement when he does this but he can cut pretty much any character to ribbons.
Given that every single character in the game is unique, Overwatch looks like it’ll be an absolute pig to balance on the way to release. This may be why Blizzard is tossing out a beta next year. So far BlizzCon 2014 is the only time the general public and press has been able to get their mitts on it and while the feedback from that event will prove invaluable to developers, they probably want to cast their net a little wider. Twelve characters were available in the BlizzCon build and Blizzard say more are on the way, so Lord alone knows how long the in-house and public Q&A process will take.
While Overwatch is most certainly an FPS, the fact that the gameplay revolves a collection of different characters with varied strengths and weaknesses lends it a little in common with a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena MOBA. This makes sense since Blizzard was instrumental in midwifing this genre with its Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and has a MOBA of its own in Heroes Of The Storm ready to release in closed beta next year. On top of that, Overwatch, we’ve been told, will have a rich and deep backstory to ground players in its world and since storytelling is a massive part of Blizzard’s DNA, we think we can take this on trust.
First Impressions
Overwatch may have been an unexpected move on Blizzard’s part, but the more one plays it, the more it seems to gel with the strengths the developer is known for. In the matches we played, we noticed every player came away with a story to tell whether it was about their triumphs or ineptitudes. Like every Blizzard game, Overwatch’s main appeal seems wrapped up moments that players create for themselves. It may be Blizzard’s first attempt at an FPS, but it seems this apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all.
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