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Overwatch - That time Blizzard made a non-Diablocraft game.

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I guess this looks pretty good? I don't think I really like the character designs though. I mean, it's cool that they aren't all white dudes, but they still seem kind of boring and generic to me. The giant monkey dude in SMNC at least had a cool suit and quoted Shakespeare.

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The thing that appeals to the most about that trailer is the emphasis on verticality. TF2 allowed for a fair bit of vertical movement, but this seems to emphasize that a lot more, what with grappling hooks and characters who can fly and stuff.

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I enjoyed TF2, but when my friends stopped playing it, that was it for me. Unless I can find a handful of friends to play this with me, I'll prbably skip it. It looks fun though.

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As someone who's big 2 online games over the last 7 years have been TF2 and Dota 2, I'm very interested to see where this goes. Watching the character videos Singlespace posted above showed me how the characters will have more unique powers like Dota, and how those potentially can be chained (Tracer dashing forward, sticking someone with a mine, and then time-warping back).

 

I'm glad they have tried to be diverse with the characters, and while I don't mind the art style, I agree that they have overdesigned a bit. Though with the diversification, there's still some unecessary stereotyping. =/

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Wow wow wow. They're so clever, a melting pot of dota, team fortress, pro competitive gaming, the avengers. It's tapping into to so many things that are popular and current right now. This is going to be huge, hopefully it'll come to consoles.

I can see destiny 2 borrowing heavily from this... Or they should do

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I am generally not a fan of shooters and didn't really like TF2, but this seems like something I might play. The characters and their skills are diverse, which I like. But if the game modes will be the same as usual, I'm not sure if it'll hold my interest.

[edit] hmm after watching that video of the match I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be playing this. Too similar to TF2

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Watching those character videos made me think that with only four skills for each character, they've clearly tried to make the game as accessible as possible for new people to jump in. They must be bringing this to consoles.

 

With this, and also Battleborn from Gearbox, Battlecry from Bethesda (jeez, those names are both too boring and too similar) and Gigantic from Motiga, it looks like character-based arena shooters are going to be the next big thing. TF2 + Dota, I guess. 

 

I like the colourful style and varied range of characters, and I'm sure the Blizzard polish will be very appealing, but who knows what it will actually play like. I'm signed up for the beta and look forward to more news in the future. 

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I hate to give Blizzard shit for releasing the first new IP (ugh) in 17 motherloving years, but it's, eh. There's a dwarf with a 'hammer time' joke. The lady characters seem at first glance to have really similar faces (what was that called again?). On a personal note, I don't like this type of game, or rather it doesn't do much for me, so I'll just stick to the cinematic.

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Can we talk about character design and diversity at least? I'm with a lot of people on "oh okay it's just a Super Tuftoo," but the diversity of the cast has me pretty amped right now. Like, TF2's playable cast is what, 7 white guys, a black guy, and the Pyro (who was never given an explicit identity, iirc? I am not up on my teefs lore).

 

Contrast this to Overwatch, which leads off with a cast of a white british woman, a (presumed?) French woman whose skin has been turned blue, a male gorilla, and a male Death Reaper Being.

 

That's a pretty goddamn strong start, even if the rest of the trailer is built around two white kids.

 

I did appreciate that, it's pretty cool of them to make an indian woman the engineer, buuut

The lady characters seem at first glance to have really similar faces (what was that called again?).

I've mostly heard this called sameface, and it's pretty rampant here.

 

Even the non gendered kind, everyone's design is just... blandly similar. I thought the setting looked great but then a bunch of fps protagonists beamed in and I was less enthused about it. And this also matters for gameplay cause TF2 made a very strong effort to differentiate the shapes of every class so you could easily tell whether it was a scout or a heavy running around the corner in the distance. I'm not seeing that in this. Of course it's hard to do this well when you're planning for a buttload of characters, but you can definitely do better than all the ladies being skinny with some boobs and butt.

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Yeah, I appreciate that they included f.ex. an Indian woman, but did they really need to give her design a diamond on her forehead? And if you read her backstory, she does "light architecture" based on "weaving her constructs in the motions of the traditional dance of her homeland."

 

Same thing with the arab character. It's cool that they took steps to include her, and that her design isn't sexual at all, but then she's an Egyptian with an Eye of Horus tattoo and Cleopatra-style briads. Her helmet is also bird-shaped, aluding to Horus again. In both cases, and with the Japanese Samurai guy ("Hanzo", of course), I feel they lean too heavily on stereotypes.

 

 

Compared that to the Indian character in Dreamfall: Chapters. She has a pitch-perfect Indian accent and brown skin, but nothing else we connect with (stereo)typical Indian culture.

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This game looks pretty good to me. The art style is fine, after playing for a decent length of time it will fade away to just being collection of game mechanics like any multiplayer game. I'll take this over the typical Blizzard art direction which personally I find ugly. This doesn't seem to have a strong identity beyond clean sci-fi with rounded edge metal and lots of colours, but I think it will grow on me. Yes it is still dumb that with a variety of archetypes and silhouettes the women still have the same lean skinny body types with form fitting clothing. Widowmaker and Symmetra border on fetish models. Progress comes in stages I guess.

 

The gameplay is right up my alley though. Fast arena FPS like Team Fortress or Unreal Tournament, but with a variety of active abilities seemingly inspired by DOTA heroes. I wonder if they ever considered a more direct first-person DOTA.

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