Blizzcon 2014: World Premiere of “Overwatch”

Blizzard, as is their want, opened up BlizzCon 2014 with a rousing, crowd-pleasing announcement: a new, team-based, pick-up-and-play, first person shooter called Overwatch.

Set in a near future earth, Overwatch follows a variety of characters (12 were available to play at Blizzcon, with vague promises of more to come), each with their own special ability, as they battle in groups of six on battlegrounds with multiple levels, allowing players to go from alley to roof to interior quickly and easily, across maps which showcase familiar but highly-stylized future locations (like a London with a hoverbus. Forget hoverboards, when are we going to get a double-decker hoverbus?).

Overwatch follows disparate heroes who have found themselves without a home when the super-special-secret force known as Overwatch gets disbanded (this seems to becoming a popular backstory…see .Agents of Shield, or Watchman, or The Incredibles…well, the list goes on). Each character has strengths and weakness, which when combined into a team can ‘accomplish the incredible.’

“Overwatch is our take on a vibrant, near-future universe with amped-up characters and action-packed team-based gameplay,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “With every new Blizzard game, we look at our favorite aspects of a genre and put our own spin on things. Our goal with Overwatch is to create an awesome FPS experience that’s more accessible to a much wider audience while delivering the action and depth that shooter fans love.”

Each character has a distinct backstory, which explains both their abilities and motivation, and defines how they interact with each other and other characters in the game.

“Overwatch has a lot of story in it…about a metric ton.” Overwatch developers said at the panel after the announcement “but ultimately the narrative aspect of Overwatch is not connected to the game play. We’re trying to experiment with Overwatch, to try to make the story happen outside of the gameplay.”

While it wasn’t exactly clear how party balance will be maintained (players will be able to choose any character to play, even if that character is already being played on the same team…which leads to the ‘what if there’s six of one character?’ question), but developers were confident that issue would be resolved to allow players great freedom of choice and party balance.

An achievement system and the price point of the game are also unknowns at this time, but that doesn’t seem to be dampening interest, as the line for the demo–which is already hours long–proves.

Stay tuned for a deep dive into the 12 characters we know about, as well as review of the gameplay here at BlizzCon.

Interested? You can sign up for Beta access and follow all Overwatch news and info at www.playoverwatch.com.