OverWatch
Platform: PC
Release Date: N/A
Developer: Activision Blizzard
Author: G.P.
Blizzard brings their penchant for refinement to the FPS market.
When Overwatch was first announced, people were surprised. Bewildered, even. Here was a company that had never made anything resembling a first-person shooter and had not crafted an entirely new universe since 1998’s Starcraft.
This is not to say that Blizzard was or has ever slacked when it came to expanding the lore of their pillar franchises (Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft) and all three are supported by a daunting number of novels and comics to fill in the few blanks left by the games.
But it’s this aggressive commitment to their franchises that made the prospect of a new IP so implausible. After all, World of Warcraft is on its eleventh year and fifth expansion, Hearthstone pumps $20 million a month into Blizzard’s pocket using the same lore, Starcraft II was split into three games, and Diablo III has made it to almost every console (sorry, Nintendo). What made Blizzard change their treaded course of continuously expanding and polishing their babies, choosing instead to venture boldly into new territory as game developers and storytellers?
The answer is, probably, Esports.
Video games as spectator sports are on the upswing and MOBAs are its driving force, with League of Legends’ Riot World Championships pulling in 27 million viewers over the course of the 2014 season and boasting a peak of 11.2 million during the final. The Prize pool? A cool $2.1 million.
Blizzard responded to the MOBA fan fervor by offering their own game, Heroes of the Storm, and now look set to compete in another popular Esports genre with Overwatch, an online two-team shooter with two game modes: Payload and Point Capture.
Payload involves one team escorting a vehicle from point A to B within a time limit, only moving when a friendly character is next to it. The defending team is tasked with preventing said vehicle’s arrival by killing everyone on the other team until time runs out.
Point Capture offers a unique twist on the classic Domination game mode made famous by Unreal Tournament. Instead of objectives on the map remaining neutral until captured by either side, matches in Overwatch begin with one team in control of all the capture points and are tasked with defending them from the attacking team until time expires.
This all sounds simple enough, until you get into the details of the characters you control in Overwatch. There are currently 16 playable characters (with the possibility for more upon the game’s launch) and are sorted into one of four categories: Offense, Defense, Support, and Tank. Overwatch takes inspiration from MOBAs by giving each character has four unique abilities and one ultimate move to help turn the tide of a desperate looking battle.
Blizzard has been kind enough to release in-depth profiles of most characters on their Overwatch YouTube page and it seems as though they have, once again, struck that sacred chord between accessibility and depth in a game. Overwatch looks like the kind of game you can jump into and immediately start having fun. Pick Soldier: 76, a mysterious vigilante, and start shooting your enemies to bits with his auto-aim ability or go with Winston, a massive gorilla with armor full of gadgets, and take those bullets for your teammates.
Suffice to say, there are options here for every kind of player and it’s that welcoming brand of gameplay that has made Blizzard the gaming juggernaut that it is today. Hearthstone built it’s massive user base of 30 million with the mantra of ‘Deceptively Simple. Insanely Fun.’ Judging from what we’ve seen so far, it seems as though Blizzard has taken that same approach with Overwatch.
The running joke in the already growing Overwatch community is that the game’s beta rolls out on ‘The 10th of Fall.’
Sigh. Okay, Blizzard. We’ll keep waiting. In the mean time, sign up for the beta here.
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