How Overwatch Animation Conveys Character in First Person - Extra Frames - General

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52403253]Reaper is absolutely being played for laughs, you cannot play the game and actually think reaper is supposed to be taken seriously.[/QUOTE] Knowing Blizzard and seeing how nearly all of their recent stuff was written, we absolutely cannot make that call.

[QUOTE=DinoJesus;52403003]May just be personal preference but the spies line feels way more savage because it's personally directed at the scouts insecurities. Say aaah could literally be said to anyone. [/QUOTE] I was being a bit ironic. It's more a cutesy insult than the brutality TF2 characters use.

[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52402575]But that's exactly what blizz has been trying to achieve with comics and cinematics and voicelines... It's not just that they're bland and one dimensional, it's that they're aggressively bland and one dimensional. Tracer's VA is an actual brit, but because that wasn't stereotypical enough they made her do a ridiculously over the top accent and spout nonsense pseudo british phrases. Reaper is so absurdly edgy there's no way he would exist in any semi serious universe, so people assumed it was played up for laughs. But no they're actually playing it straight. On top of that, the dialogue is lifeless and unnatural. Every character is a collection of bland and ~inspirational~ one liners that look like they came off someones facebook feed, and talk in a way that sounds like a robot trying to approximate how humans communicate. [url]https://spuf.org/2016/05/17/overwatch-writing-on-writing/[/url] This post here sums it up pretty good. tldr; Blizzard is trying to ape TF2 in the writing and world building department but fails at the very basics of writing.[/QUOTE] I really like how that article talked about the writing for Bioshock 2's Multiplayer, because I think Digital Extremes has worked wonders with how little they've got. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81EJOZy_5Xw]Naledi Atkins[/url] is an ace pilot who came to Rapture to beat all limits set by people on the surface, and has gotten so obsessed with her achievements that she's convinced herself she is literally unkillable. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VSIO2RAXCk]Suresh Sheti[/url] is a pompous stage magician whose overuse of Gene Tonics has convinced him he really can read other people's minds, and is fighting mythical golems and sacrificing people to the Great Brass Eye instead of shooting Big Daddies and dragging Little Sisters to his faction's control point. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJW7z8gKEDs]Jacob Norris[/url] the welder is terrified of losing his job at Hephaestus, obsesses over how quickly and efficiently he can do his work, and treats anyone he's up against as a lousy scab trying to steal his income. You get a character model, some flavored responses to basic in-round occurrences, and a three-act character arc divided up into audio files of of 30 seconds each. And that's more than enough to get you familiar with the character and understand what they're doing and why, because [I]they put effort into the writing.[/I] Blizzard doesn't need to make big huge-budget videos or one-time-only events to flesh out their characters, they just need to hire on some writers who are as invested in writing their characters as the rest of the devteam is in animating them.

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52403253]Reaper is absolutely being played for laughs, you cannot play the game and actually think reaper is supposed to be taken seriously.[/QUOTE] lets be honest here. reaper, in his current state, is an existing character in the lore. he's incredibly cheesy and edgy but it doesnt change the fact he's canon. makes it all the worse lol

[QUOTE=Jarokwa;52404339]people keep praising TF2 for its ''amazing'' lore and characters but conveniently forget about how long it took for valve to even start making it that way, before that all the characters were pretty one dimensional(and for the most part still are tbh) and things like class-specific domination lines were barely a thing, things like the melee 1v1 lines also didnt even exist in-game. OW, not counting the beta, has been out for about a year and a month now and has made some valid efforts at worldbuilding and character building, it just seems like a very unfair comparison to make seeing as TF2 has had a shitton of years to build up their little world and story.[/QUOTE] TF2's writing is (or used to be, in my opinion) definitely a mite wittier, but I think that also has something to do with the mood of the game they're going for. Overwatch is a colorful superhero shooter with all the optimism that entails, while TF2 is an ultra-violent slapstick shooter with a cast of crazy people that probably hate each other. Overwatch is trying to have a fairly serious compelling plot behind the scenes, that was never the goal of TF2 at any point - I'm not really sure it's fair to compare the two. Yeah, we don't have a whole lot to go off of for some characters beyond 'nice person' but we're only a year in, right? [QUOTE=Keychain;52403738]lets be honest here. reaper, in his current state, is an existing character in the lore. he's incredibly cheesy and edgy but it doesnt change the fact he's canon. makes it all the worse lol[/QUOTE] I actually kind of love Reaper, he's a dangerously edgy joke and I have a feeling they aren't going to play him as a straight bad guy for the entirety of the game's run - he's just too corny.

Reaper is someone who started out as played for laughs but now they are trying to make him a bit more compelling. I mean Winston said Reaper doesn't even scare kids, not to mention the other heroes take the complete piss out of him.

[QUOTE=Keychain;52403738]lets be honest here. reaper, in his current state, is an existing character in the lore. he's incredibly cheesy and edgy but it doesnt change the fact he's canon. makes it all the worse lol[/QUOTE] How so? Its pretty obvious that the world that OW is set in is pretty comic book style stuff. With Overwatch being a pretty obvious SHIELD of said universe. An edgy over the top angry ghost man (who works with a steriotipical feme fatale and a snarky super-hacker chick) fits rather neatly in such a place.

[QUOTE=Jarokwa;52404339] OW, not counting the beta, has been out for about a year and a month now and has made some valid efforts at worldbuilding and character building, it just seems like a very unfair comparison to make seeing as TF2 has had a shitton of years to build up their little world and story.[/QUOTE] Compare the "Meet the Team" promo videos released within a year of TF2s release (these being Meet the Engineer, Heavy, Demo, Sniper, Soldier, Scout AND Sandwich) to the animated shorts for Overwatch thus far. The characterization within the "Meet the Team" shorts alone are LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than any of the Overwatch shorts, despite being a significantly shorter length. This carries into the games small throwaway lines, item descriptions, maps etc.

Blizzard had more time to prepare a good world, but they decided being more lazy about it. I'm sure they could have done a better job with the resources they have. Valve probably had less resources at TF2 development than Blizzard did during OW pre-release developmemt, but I'm not sure that's true. I'm just guessing. I am rather sad that they didn't invest so much into characters like they should have, a missed opportunity that maybe will get better. Animations for sure are done incredibly, though!

[QUOTE=Catscratch;52401945] [I]"Zenyatta just gently hovers. His clasped hands drifting up and down."...Orisa's robo-bosom[/I][/QUOTE] Mei just daintily turns the knob... I find it interesting that TF2, perhaps because the limited resources to do animations, uses more voicework and voicelines to characterize the characters. Overwatch, with the flashier animation seems like it has many throw-away voicelines added almost as an afterthought. I would not argue that the TF2 movies are better at characterization than the Overwatch ones. They are different types of movies. Overwatch aims for a more cinematic feel while TF2 are more or less "here is character X".