Blizzard announces new Overwatch character. It's a hamster. In a ball.
59 replies, posted
I think Blizzard established that they don't give a shit from day one with Legendary skins.
Hamtaro reboot sure is grittier than I figured it would be.
Overwatch was a patchwork project cobbled together with resources from an MMO that fell through, and debuted with a talking gorilla scientist from the moon.
In contrast, TF2 did not allow the color green to exist at launch because that broke it's rigidly defined artstyle. Now I can literally turn the Scout into an official Xenomorph from the Aliens franchise.
I don't know about OW, but TF's cosmetics are an actual serious problem in the visual aspect of the game-play and very much fuck with the silhouette and coloring of characters
Things change. While I love the original artstyle it had, I think they kinda had to start stretching the limits. Sure, it's a bit of a mess, but introducing paint was a great choice if you ignore the more gaudy colors.
I just find it interesting how the people who shit on TF2 for abandoning its artstyle and becoming too silly are the exact same people who are applauding Overwatch for adding a hamster in a ball and a skin that turns a hardened military dude into a BBQ dad because memes are funny.
I mean, at least it's he's based around an entirely new gameplay concept. The two characters before him were just bland remixes of things that had mostly been done before.
Overwatch is more guilty of this in my experience. With relatively few skins available, everyone flocks to the rare ones that alter the appearance completely. The red outlines don't help up close, and when a considerable chunk of the 20+ characters are slim women with skins that are all over the place thematically, it's a bit of an issue. As someone who played quite a bit at launch and plays casually sometimes because this is the only game some of my friends seem to enjoy, I'm having a hard time because with all these characters and skins I have to spend 1-2 seconds making out who it is in the middle of a firefight.
Compare that to TF2's 9 characters with fundamentally distinct silhouettes. There's aren't a lot of cosmetics that change a character's overall silhouette, let alone change an entire character beyond recognition, and the outrageous loadouts people like to bring up when talking about how TF2 has fallen are cherrypicked to show the absolute worst offenders (that you will likely never see in a game)
Believe me, they don't. Posted the reveal in our Discord chat. Immediately, one of the most competitive players from our group said that the game was going downhill with the style.
(I love it though. The stylization of Overwatch is light hearted in the first place, so them retreating a while from the edgy main backstory makes me happy)
I can't speak for everyone, but I've never had any real problem with identifying different classes in TF2 just by looking at their basic silhouettes and stances.
Also I know basically nothing about Overwatch but the idea of playing as a giant hamster wrecking ball is really tempting me to buy it. That's the kind of dumb fun I need in my life.
I love him
Like I said, cherry picked. It's hideous, yes, but the only place you're really going to see shit like this is on trade servers.
I think you're mixing up style with tone.
Cause the Hamster Robot Death Ball is inline with Overwatch's artstyle. Tone...not so much.
I have over 1600 hours in TF2. I see at least one scout loaded with ill-fitting lime green cosmetics almost every time I play casual. This shit is in no way restricted to just trade servers.
The only thing I'm upset about is I'm gonna have to wait a month or so for the hype to die down.
Really overwatch kind of has a comic book superhero artstyle, which allows it for a LOT of freedom without breaking the style.
This hamster is right in-line for coming from the moonbase and landing in australia.
Ok i thought this was dumb, until I saw this
They've actually said that there was a lot less reused from Titan than people think.
People seem to think they actually reused character models, environments, etc when in reality they kept concepts and environment idea, but they had to build a lot back up from scratch. They even built a brand new engine for the game. MMO assets aren't high enough quality to be used as anything besides placeholders.
After Project Titan was cancelled, the development team had just six weeks to pitch new game ideas to the studio. If it failed to come up with something that got the green light, the team would end up working on other projects, such as World of Warcraft and Diablo 3.
Blizzard concept artist Arnold Tsang had drawn pictures of a number of characters, and lead designer Geoff Goodman had pitched class ideas for a class-based MMO. Kaplan said the team merged these concepts into what eventually became Overwatch.
"Tracer had elements of the Jumper," Kaplan revealed. "Reaper was Reaper (he did have a crossbow at one point in Titan). Widowmaker evolved from a class called the Ranger. Bastion also evolved from the Ranger. Soldier 76 evolved from the Ranger. Symmetra and Torbjorn evolved from the Architect. Reinhardt evolved from the Juggernaut, although he is completely different... just the idea of 'big guy with shield' is all that stuck. Genji/Hanzo evolved from the Assassin."
Since they only had six weeks for the pitch, they did pull a lot of inspiration from Titan. This is the concept art they used when pitching the maps.
https://dotesports-cdn-prod-tqgiyve.stackpathdns.com/thumbor/TIhFwirbNivsDxcYYfIT5sYc-k0=/1920x0/filters:no_upscale()/https://dotesports-cdn-prod-tqgiyve.stackpathdns.com/article/ddcdf161-adfc-41d4-933e-f0f924a03f33.jpg
They said these locations were lifted from Titan to an extent, but just the environmental design more than anything.
At full price, you really shouldn't.
The game is stale as hell and the balance patches don't do much. You'll still see the same composition nearly every game with little variation.
Also even if you think this hero looks fun, you need to think about how it feels to play against him. There's way too many moves in overwatch which just take control away from you. There's nothing fun about being stunlocked to death or being killed by one hit during a stun. By the looks of it this hero won't be any different in terms of annoyance.
I disagree with this. I bought it at release and still have plenty of fun. It's a great filler game, and depending on which mode you play, you can also have a variety of compositions. Stuns might not be fun for everyone, but they allow for unique and diverse hero abilities, roles and designs that wouldn't be possible without.
Hammond Titan
Stuns are a big fat fuck no for me in fps games They're not fun when I stun people because it denies me a fun fight and not fun for the other guy for the same reason.
