STACK #139 May 2016

GAMES FEATURE

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Every man and their Bronze Drake has kept a finger on the pulse of Overwatch , the latest IP from Blizzard Entertainment, the wonderful minds behindWorld ofWarcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft. After brewing in beta on PC for a few months, the company are now ready to release their proprietary first-person shooter to the world.We were privileged enough to head over to the States and check out the game on console, as well as chat to a few of the developers. By Alesha Kolbe. Fight FUTURE for the

O verwatch is Blizzard’s inaugural venture into the FPS market, and as

you can imagine, it’s quite an ambitious project. The game launches this month with a roster of 21 vastly different heroes, each of which has a

different role to play in game. Don’t let the word ‘hero’ deter you – this is by no means a MOBA of League of Legends or DOTA furore. Blizzard already has Heroes of the Storm – this is something entirely new. “I think it’s a really unique experience”, says Aaron Keller, assistant game director. “We were committed to making the best team-based, first-person shooter we could." The team required to craft such an astounding game needed to be motivated. “A lot of the Overwatch team came from the cancelled Titan project”, notes Keller. “It was kind of a

GAMES

devastating moment in our lives to go through something like that. All of these people came together and started throwing ideas around, and it was weird how quickly it coalesced into this idea for a hero-based, team-based shooter, set a short time into Earth’s future. Everybody rallied around it”. Many of Overwatch ’s maps are based around real-world locations – King's Row in London, Hanamura in Japan, or even the map flat-out called Hollywood. Keller himself was heavily involved with the video game actualisation of these real- world locations. “We got in a lot of nit-picking arguments like, ‘Do we ever want to call something by its real name in a world?’. We did a lot of research, but at the end of the day, we’re not trying to completely mimic a real world location – we’re trying to give you the tourist’s fantasy." We appreciate his shout-out to Down Under, as demeaning as it may be.

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