It’s a truthful moment that touches the crowd, and I’m reminded of another in that surgically targeted intro movie. The troubled and reluctant older brother lands a hit on the villain with a mechanical fist stolen from the exhibit. “Y’know, the world could always use more heroes,” says Tracer as she takes back the glove, and the boy slowly forms an awed, hopeful smile. Maybe Overwatch isn’t a kraken after all.
The game epitomises Blizzard’s approach to making entertainment. They take interesting ideas, sand off their edges, expertly pluck away anything that might seem too weird or alienating or needlessly complex, and then repackage the concept to have some humour, colour and the broadest possible appeal. It’s the same process they applied to Magic: The Gathering to create Hearthstone, but a shooter is a more daunting prospect, and an entirely new challenge for Blizzard. Hearthstone intersects with the world of physical card games, but the shooter has a weighty heritage dear to the hearts of PC gamers.
A shooter is a more daunting prospect, and an entirely new challenge for Blizzard.
“It’s a very revered genre, we know,” says Mercer. “We’re going into this very humble. There’s a lot of work to be done from a technical standpoint. We’ve been making multiplayer PvP games for a long time. This is just our first shooter. There are challenges, we’re conscious of them, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Network latency and responsiveness have been the big technical hurdles so far. Overwatch certainly ran well on Blizzcon’s LAN, though the shooting did lack feedback. I spent some time getting behind enemies as Reaper, firing into their unflinching backs with his huge twin shotguns. They look as though they ought to mince an enemy in seconds, but they felt like toys. Tracer’s burst-fire energy pistols are a great idea, but pumping bolts into enemies to whittle health bars was a little too unsatisfying. There’s lots of tuning to be done, and plenty still to be added to this early alpha build before Overwatch is ready for its 2015 beta.
I am excited about playing another Blizzard game that demands only short bursts of interaction. Hearthstone, Diablo III’s Adventure Mode and Overwatch are moving away from World of Warcraft’s huge time demands, and Overwatch will encourage investment in its universe through stories told outside of the game. It’s a pragmatic decision as much as anything. “I can tell you, trying to fit story into computer games for 20 years, it’s really hard,” says Metzen. “In terms of the flow of play, making sure you’re balancing game dynamics and making sure the themes are playing out, you don’t want either discipline to overcomplicate the other.”
Separating the story from the game gives Blizzard essential freedom. Players can field multiple Winstons on the same team, and have mortal enemies fight alongside one another. The stories Blizzard will tell around the game is the hook designed to draw you in; Overwatch lets you play with the beautiful interactive action figures.
Metzen didn’t want to give away specific plans for how the story will be told, but he suggested that Blizzard’s talented cinematics team may find themselves with a lot more to do in the coming years. “I imagine we’ll use various transmedia. What we hope for is a lot of animation and stuff. We had a really fun time putting together that trailer. We want to do more of that, so that’s where we’re leaning.”
Will Overwatch be a self-contained boxed product, or a free-to-play shooter? Blizzard hasn’t decided on any specifics yet, but Mercer says there’s a lot more planned than the 12 heroes shown at Blizzcon this year. “Are we going to be able to get lots more heroes from this game? Is this just the start? Will you see more, especially as we get to that beta in 2015? Absolutely. This is all just the beginning.”
