I just realised I never wrote a really long post about Overwatch....
Overwatch is a relatively-new game from Blizzard, an online multiplayer shooter with no in-game plot. You have 2 teams competing against each other in different modes of play, but usually it's 6 versus 6, and based on controlling some area (fixed or mobile if it's represented by a vehicle), and in most modes there's an attacking team and a defending team. You have a number of characters to choose from (at the moment it's 23 but it may increase every few months), each one with a very particular playstyle, but dividen broadly between attack, defence, tanks and support. Depending on the mode you can repeat characters on your team or not (but it's moving towards not repeating caracteres outside "fun" modes). The matches are short (10-15 minutes max, usually, can be much shorter), and it's fast paced and a bit chaotic.
Since it's a Blizzard game, there's a big and rich story around it, with a science-fiction world where self-conscious AIs have appeared and technological advances are miraculous, but where there is still war and factions. In this setting we have our "heroes" (or villains), most of them belonging to "Overwatch", a type of "world police" or military that especially helped in a war against AIs. That's the general setting. Then, each character has a personal story and motivation, with complex interactions and still plenty of things we do not know about them, this world and the secret societies and factions. Blizzard has released several movies and webcomics about all this, with really high quality.
The thing is, this is not shown at all during game-play. During game-play, it's just a 6 vs 6 mayhem bullet/explosion fest, where enemies play together in the same team without hesitation, and where objectives are very bland and unoriginal, and stakes seem pretty low.
While the story is pretty awesome, when the game is defined like this it seems rather boring. The thing is, it's not. At all. It is really really fun to play as one of these characters. Matches are a exciting and dramatic and fast, while being a bit cartoonish to lower tension (when you die, your characters makes some funny comment afterwards like "hope no one saw that" and such). Each character is very unique, and it's quite a different experience to play one or the other.
To elaborate a bit, attackers are usually fast-moving and/or quite deadly in a close space, and have abilities that usually deal plenty of damage. Defenders are more specialised, and their skillset is usually good to clear areas from a static point (snipers, turrets). Sometimes the lines between both are a bit blurry, since you can have defenders with very high damage output or attackers that are better at a distance.
Tanks are more straightforward, they are big, have a lot of health and have skills to either create shields or recover the health fast. The idea here is to attract fire while not dying, but they can also be pretty deadly if left unchecked. Finally support characters are mostly healers or providers of bonuses/perks, and sadly they're a bit underutilised, although they can also be really interesting and rewarding.
Personally my 2 favourite characters to play are Junkrat and Mercy. Junkrat is a defender with a hilariously high damage output, and I love his playstyle of littering everything with grenades and explosives. The chaos that ensues is usually quite fun, even if sometimes you don't really know if a grenade will hit the enemy or bounce back and hit you, but any direct hit you score is going to cripple the opponent considerably, and even if you die you drop some extra grenades that may finish your rival as well. Mercy is the healer per definition, the only character able to revive others and with the higher healing output. Playing Mercy feels a bit like you're the team's "Mom", making sure everyone is healthy and fine, and jumping around the battlefield. Also, killing someone with Mercy is a bit of a waste (because you're more useful focusing on healing or powering up other people), but it's really rewarding. The only problem is that, as the local healer, the other team will make you a priority target, so if your team ignores you you will die a lot and you always feel you have a big bulls-eye in your head....
I would recommend Overwatch without a doubt, if you enjoy shooters. However, I insist on the fact that the game itself has no plot...
I have said it before, but I love plots. I love fiction in all its variants and enjoy a good setting and a well-thought world. When playing games I think the same, and sometimes I enjoy games that may not have the best mechanics but their story is great. For example, recently I started playing Pillars Of Eternity. This is an Obsidian game, similar to Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, but with a system not based on D&D, they created their own. This is a pure Role-Playing game, story-heavy and full of nice little details.
For example, one thing I really love in Pillars of Eternity is that sometimes actions that cannot be done with the current game engine (like, for example, climbing down a hole, pulling a party member from a precipice, launching a weapon so someone else can use it, etc..) are instead narrated next to beautiful illustrations, with you choosing from some available options and using your game stats (like your knowledge or your strength and reflexes) to decide the outcome. I find this really immersive and amazing, a way to involve you in an "action" scene that would be fully scripted otherwise and in this way you can affect and participate in it. This opens a world of possibilities, and allows interactive storytelling while maintaining a different core game and not having to develop costly or even impossible game mechanics to represent this during the normal play.
Another thing that is really immersive and nice is that there's no alignment, you have reputation and your actions and choices guides you towards a certain type of RPG personality, something more greyish and not so black and white as most computer RPGs have.
I also heavily recommend Pillars Of Eternity, it is gorgeous and interesting and compelling. Having said that, it's like a complete opposite of Overwatch,
In Pillars of Eternity, you feel you have advanced and achieved something new if you play for a while. Overwatch, instead, is just mindless fun, and you can "waste" hours in it without really anything to show or gain (apart from an arbitrary level that you keep progressing). However, Overwatch is so well-designed that it can get away with no plot and be just fun, which is something to respect too of course....
Nevertheless, I would like a bit more correspondence between story and gameplay. Overwatch has defined in it's backstory at least 2 clear factions, so I think it would be eventually possible to divide characters in 2 groups at least, and in this way have a more asymmetric competition while keeping things interesting and establishing a better relationship with the plot part...
Of course, this would require a lot more characters, to make sure both groups get enough of all types. However, Blizzard has time to develop that...
Overwatch is a relatively-new game from Blizzard, an online multiplayer shooter with no in-game plot. You have 2 teams competing against each other in different modes of play, but usually it's 6 versus 6, and based on controlling some area (fixed or mobile if it's represented by a vehicle), and in most modes there's an attacking team and a defending team. You have a number of characters to choose from (at the moment it's 23 but it may increase every few months), each one with a very particular playstyle, but dividen broadly between attack, defence, tanks and support. Depending on the mode you can repeat characters on your team or not (but it's moving towards not repeating caracteres outside "fun" modes). The matches are short (10-15 minutes max, usually, can be much shorter), and it's fast paced and a bit chaotic.
Since it's a Blizzard game, there's a big and rich story around it, with a science-fiction world where self-conscious AIs have appeared and technological advances are miraculous, but where there is still war and factions. In this setting we have our "heroes" (or villains), most of them belonging to "Overwatch", a type of "world police" or military that especially helped in a war against AIs. That's the general setting. Then, each character has a personal story and motivation, with complex interactions and still plenty of things we do not know about them, this world and the secret societies and factions. Blizzard has released several movies and webcomics about all this, with really high quality.
The thing is, this is not shown at all during game-play. During game-play, it's just a 6 vs 6 mayhem bullet/explosion fest, where enemies play together in the same team without hesitation, and where objectives are very bland and unoriginal, and stakes seem pretty low.
While the story is pretty awesome, when the game is defined like this it seems rather boring. The thing is, it's not. At all. It is really really fun to play as one of these characters. Matches are a exciting and dramatic and fast, while being a bit cartoonish to lower tension (when you die, your characters makes some funny comment afterwards like "hope no one saw that" and such). Each character is very unique, and it's quite a different experience to play one or the other.
To elaborate a bit, attackers are usually fast-moving and/or quite deadly in a close space, and have abilities that usually deal plenty of damage. Defenders are more specialised, and their skillset is usually good to clear areas from a static point (snipers, turrets). Sometimes the lines between both are a bit blurry, since you can have defenders with very high damage output or attackers that are better at a distance.
Tanks are more straightforward, they are big, have a lot of health and have skills to either create shields or recover the health fast. The idea here is to attract fire while not dying, but they can also be pretty deadly if left unchecked. Finally support characters are mostly healers or providers of bonuses/perks, and sadly they're a bit underutilised, although they can also be really interesting and rewarding.
Personally my 2 favourite characters to play are Junkrat and Mercy. Junkrat is a defender with a hilariously high damage output, and I love his playstyle of littering everything with grenades and explosives. The chaos that ensues is usually quite fun, even if sometimes you don't really know if a grenade will hit the enemy or bounce back and hit you, but any direct hit you score is going to cripple the opponent considerably, and even if you die you drop some extra grenades that may finish your rival as well. Mercy is the healer per definition, the only character able to revive others and with the higher healing output. Playing Mercy feels a bit like you're the team's "Mom", making sure everyone is healthy and fine, and jumping around the battlefield. Also, killing someone with Mercy is a bit of a waste (because you're more useful focusing on healing or powering up other people), but it's really rewarding. The only problem is that, as the local healer, the other team will make you a priority target, so if your team ignores you you will die a lot and you always feel you have a big bulls-eye in your head....
I would recommend Overwatch without a doubt, if you enjoy shooters. However, I insist on the fact that the game itself has no plot...
I have said it before, but I love plots. I love fiction in all its variants and enjoy a good setting and a well-thought world. When playing games I think the same, and sometimes I enjoy games that may not have the best mechanics but their story is great. For example, recently I started playing Pillars Of Eternity. This is an Obsidian game, similar to Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, but with a system not based on D&D, they created their own. This is a pure Role-Playing game, story-heavy and full of nice little details.
For example, one thing I really love in Pillars of Eternity is that sometimes actions that cannot be done with the current game engine (like, for example, climbing down a hole, pulling a party member from a precipice, launching a weapon so someone else can use it, etc..) are instead narrated next to beautiful illustrations, with you choosing from some available options and using your game stats (like your knowledge or your strength and reflexes) to decide the outcome. I find this really immersive and amazing, a way to involve you in an "action" scene that would be fully scripted otherwise and in this way you can affect and participate in it. This opens a world of possibilities, and allows interactive storytelling while maintaining a different core game and not having to develop costly or even impossible game mechanics to represent this during the normal play.
Another thing that is really immersive and nice is that there's no alignment, you have reputation and your actions and choices guides you towards a certain type of RPG personality, something more greyish and not so black and white as most computer RPGs have.
I also heavily recommend Pillars Of Eternity, it is gorgeous and interesting and compelling. Having said that, it's like a complete opposite of Overwatch,
In Pillars of Eternity, you feel you have advanced and achieved something new if you play for a while. Overwatch, instead, is just mindless fun, and you can "waste" hours in it without really anything to show or gain (apart from an arbitrary level that you keep progressing). However, Overwatch is so well-designed that it can get away with no plot and be just fun, which is something to respect too of course....
Nevertheless, I would like a bit more correspondence between story and gameplay. Overwatch has defined in it's backstory at least 2 clear factions, so I think it would be eventually possible to divide characters in 2 groups at least, and in this way have a more asymmetric competition while keeping things interesting and establishing a better relationship with the plot part...
Of course, this would require a lot more characters, to make sure both groups get enough of all types. However, Blizzard has time to develop that...
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