Overwatch

The Connection Between Overwatch and Blizzard's Cancelled Project Titan

BlizzCon 2014: Blizzard on the Making of Overwatch

By Mitch DyerFor the past 18 months, following the cancelation of Titan, Blizzard has been building and iterating on Overwatch, something the team expects to continue in earnest throughout 2015. Built in a new, proprietary engine, the 6v6 competitive shooter enters beta next year — but, in typical Blizzard fashion, Overwatch will release “when it’s ready.”

But it’s reassuring that Overwatch is as far along as it is. The debut demo features 12 heroes, each with a distinct set of skills, fighting in a diverse group of iconic real-world settings. Egyptian temples, a garden near Mt. Fuji, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris are a few we’ve seen in gameplay and trailers. The challenge is making those pieces fit in a fun, near-future Earth setting, where robot armies rip Russian soldiers to shreds, a moon ape needs glasses to see better, and a monk features cybernetic upgrades.

Art Director Bill Petras, who also worked as Art Director on FireFall and the original World of Warcraft, told IGN, “We want to have a world of diversity, so that’s something we’re really excited about. Looking at all the heroes, there is a lot of iteration back and forth when I work with the heroes.” Petras is fascinated by the near-future setting and team’s willingness to let almost anything fly in its mishmash of colliding worlds. It gives the team “limitless diversity,” which is a concept Blizzard’s Overwatch team keeps coming back to.

Abilities for every hero had to “broaden the diversity of the characters” to avoid crossover. Blizzard essentially tried for every Overwatch member to feel like a character in a completely different game, and so far it’s succeeded pretty well. Tracer’s teleportation feels and operates in a unique way — Widowmaker’s grappling hook and Pharah’s straight-up-propulsion serve separate purposes, and factor into their skills. Each hero’s gun has a particular effectiveness that drives where you’ll end up, and how you’ll engage in combat. In the case of Torbjörn, Blizzard opted against giving a character a proper weapon altogether.

Torbjörn presented a problem, “and not just because of the umlaut…although there was a bug because of the umlaut,” explained Principle Designer Scott Mercer. “We wanted to make a character that didn’t rely on you precisely aiming a reticle on top of someone’s head. We wanted one about building.”

Early in development, Torbjörn didn’t have a resource like he does now, which is one of many small improvements Blizzard made to the character. Later on, once the team gave him sentry turrets as the primary means of dealing damage, it became about “how hard do they hit, and making sure people know they’re being hit by a turret,” Mercer continued. “One of the things with all of our characters is that readability if super important. You’re looking at the kill cam and wondering what happened. You should never have to learn from the kill cam.”

Titan was "ambitious" and "six games in one," but Blizzard couldn't quite figure it out. Overwatch helped them "unleash this tidal

Overwatch was the surprise, team-based shooter announced at this year's Blizzcon. But coming so soon on the heels of official word that the rumored MMO project Titan was cancelled, it's only natural to assume that some portions of that game live on within Blizzard's new title.

Earlier today, during the game's reveal, Blizzard senior vice president of story and franchise development Chris Metzen had said that Overwatch shares a "spiritual continuity," but that they are "pretty different." He also described Titan as "kooky and ambitious."

 

During a press conference for Overwatch later that same day, Metzen elaborated on those comments further. After answering a question about the connection between Titan and Overwatch, Metzen replied, "I'm not going to get into what [Titan] was going to be or what we wanted it to be. I can tell you what it was, in a way, it was frustrating. It was a big, giant idea; it was almost like six video games in one. It was the most ambitious game ever. It was fun to try to tackle it, and boy did we tackle it. We wrestled with it for a long time. And it sucked; we couldn't figure it out. It makes you just [clenches his fist], we couldn't crack it.

"Imagine this amazing team just frustrated. 'Why can't we do this?' It's trying to fret a chord and write the song. 'We can't write the song, why can't it just sound awesome?' Can't find the harmony, whatever. And when we decided to go another way, like Jeff was saying, we've got this hook, 'Why aren't we doing that? We love that.' And we decided to do it and, suddenly, 'Boom!' The music just exploded. And we started looking at [Overwatch] for what it was, and it unleashed this tidal wave of passion and certainty and distilled, clear ideas. And this world idea. It was just this monstrous thing of energy.

"It's been the funnest year, getting our feet back under us, getting our surety back. That magnetic north thing, we found it again, and it feels good. It was part of that emotionality on the stage this morning. To some degree, we needed to get it back, and we found it. And I hope the people look at Overwatch as a very clever game. But I'll tell you, under the hood, we needed this, just as developers to feel that lightning coursing through it again."

Whatever Titan was, it's clear that Overwatch took any potential, remnant ideas from that project in a new direction. And from what we've played so far Blizzard may be on to something with their first foray into the shooter genre. We took a deeper dive into the gameplay and offered up our initial impressions earlier today.

What do you think of Overwatch so far? Is this the kind of project you were hoping/expecting to see from Blizzard? Let us know in the comments.

Via:IGN

Via:GameSpot