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For the first time in many years, Blizzard announced a new franchise today: Overwatch, a team-based multiplayer shooter with Pixar-like graphics.
The game looks great. It’s a PvP shooter with classes, very reminiscent of Team Fortress 2. Here’s the cinematic trailer:
And, more importantly, here’s gameplay footage from the newly-christened Overwatch, which really does look fantastic:
Here’s Blizzard describing the game in a press release:
The action of Overwatch takes place in a technologically advanced, highly stylized future earth. In a time of global crisis, an international task force of soldiers, scientists, adventurers, and oddities known as Overwatch had come together to restore peace to a war-torn world. After many years, the group’s influence waned, and it was eventually disbanded. Overwatch might be gone now . . . but the world still needs heroes.
With an emphasis on accessibility and pure fun, Overwatch brings Blizzard’s signature easy-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay to the FPS genre. Harnessing the power of their hero of choice, players will join forces in teams of six and battle each other across a range of futuristic global locations, from the hologram-lit streets of London to a bazaar in the shadows of a high-tech Egyptian pyramid. Every battlefield is iconic and built to highlight each character’s unique abilities, and fights can shift from streets to rooftops to open skies within the span of a breath.
“Overwatch is our take on a vibrant, near-future universe with amped-up characters and action-packed team-based gameplay,” saidMike 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.”
The heroes of Overwatch each bring their own distinct weapons and superabilities to bear. Here’s just a glimpse of the numerous heroes that will ultimately fill Overwatch’s rosters:
– Tracer, a former British test pilot who shrugs at danger, can execute impossible acrobatic assaults thanks to her ability to teleport, drop energy bombs, and even reverse time.
– Reinhardt, a hulking German soldier in battle armor, can charge great distances and pin his enemies to a wall or slam the ground with his rocket hammer to knock them off their feet.
– Hanzo, a bow-wielding Japanese mercenary, has the ability to scale walls with his bare hands, fire off a tracking device that illuminates nearby enemies for his team, and unleash a huge spirit dragon that does grievous damage to all enemies in its path.
– Symmetra, an Indian architech, manipulates light and energy to shield her allies and damage her enemies—and she can turn the tide of any battle by building a device that instantly transports her teammates to the front lines.
The beta will be out in 2015 and you can sign up HERE!
Overwatch is a reworked version of the PVP portions of Blizzard’s Titan, the long-in-development MMO that was overhauled in mid-2013. Despite reports earlier this year that Titan had been cancelled, the game was actually turned into Overwatch last year, according to a person familiar with the project.
Blizzard’s legendary MMORPG World of Warcraft will have a 20th anniversary, according to lead developer Ion Hazzikostas. Speaking with CNET, Hazzikostas said he had no doubt that there will be a 20th anniversary for WoW. He also mentioned Blizzard is hard at work planning for future expansions.
“I definitely can’t tell you what our 20th anniversary is going to be. I can tell you there is definitely going to be one. I have no doubt saying that,” he said. “We’re definitely planning into the future, talking about what the next expansion is going to be, and what the one after that is going to be, just in terms of big picture storylines, how can we start setting things up now, where do we want the game to go.”
The game has changed significantly over time. Hazzikostas said the World of Warcraft today isn’t the same game that launched in 2004. He mentioned different graphics, different combat mechanics, and the game’s overall engine is far different.
“It’s clearly not the same game it was 10 years ago, right? The engine is different, all the graphical assets are different, a lot of core combat mechanics have changed,” he said. “It’s hard to pinpoint one turning point when it changed, but we definitely have taken an incremental approach to the pressing problems the game has that we feel we need to solve and what we can add to it that will make it better and deliver the most value to our players.”
World of Warcraft began Nov. 23, 2004. It has gone on to become a cultural phenomenon through board games, books, action figures and plenty more. According to the latest subscriber count, there are 7.4 million paying subscribers for the game at the moment. That count is expected to grow to over 8 million with the release of expansion Warlords of Draenor.
Warlords of Draenor will release for PC and Mac Nov. 13. Temporary world events are currently going on in-game to lead up to the release of the new expansion.
Blizzard announced the cancellation of Project Titan, an MMORPG project that was in development since 2007, back in September. Titan was supposed to be Blizzard’s next big MMORPG to stand beside – or even surpass – World of Warcraft, but the project suffered creative problems.
“We didn’t find the fun,”
Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said.
“We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”
BlizzCon 2014, a convention for all things Blizzard, will be held in Anaheim, Calif. on Nov. 7-8 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The event is expected to reveal additional details concerning Heroes of the Storm, the upcoming Warcraft movie and additional details for Warlords of Draenor.
So what do you think of WoW being around for another ten years?
Planetary Annihilation, the successor of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, was a massive draw on Kickstarter, as you can see above…
But THEN, they released it on STEAM, for… wait for it… £40 ($60) on Early Access, After making $2,229,344 on Kickstarter. Hell, it was £20 for Kickstarter backers, so they actually paid for the game TWICE!
All this and two years down the line, PA is STILL not complete, its only just gotten its offline mode and the game is atrocious
“Today, we busted out a new Kickstarter for a new strategy game called Human Resources. Built on the same engine that you helped us create for Planetary Annihilation, Human Resources expands on the scale and destruction you’ve come to love in exciting and different ways. We realize that some of you might take this news as concerning, so we wanted to come out and say this: work on Planetary Annihilation will not stop if Human Resources funds; both games will have a team dedicated to these separate projects”
So, Human Resources was a second team?
Ok, lets quickly look at the now cancelled Kickstarter for it
Now, I admit, the game looks cool (actually, its looks like the Planetary Annihilation we wanted and mainly thats because it uses the game engine made for it)
But there are two reasons Human Resources failed. GREED and GREED
The loyal fans that would have backed this in a heartbeat didn’t, because of the unfinished game Planetary Annihilation.
The fans with more money than sense though, even most of them saw through the kickstarter rewards this time:
They start off fairly reasonably (ok, I backed it too)
Then it ramps up
Then it starts to get a little crazy…
$125 pledge to get a tshirt and soundtrack? Oh and team colours…
The mini figures and USB stick look fun, but that’s a LOT of money
Ok, this is getting silly now…
Umm… No!
Ok, this is getting stupid
I’ve heard a lot of Indie devs talking about the demise of Kickstarter, even on our own Indie Game Show on a Sunday. And Uber Entertainment prove why this is happening. They aren’t being realistic!
They made $2.2mil just from the KICKSTARTER for Planetary Annihilation. Thats MORE than enough to release a game of the quality PA should have been. But this is hurting the smaller developers more than anything, as backers are starting to lose faith in Kickstarter and what its actually for. Helping small companies bring us good new games and getting going. Its not just Uber Entertainment, 22Cans did the same with Godus last year and there are many others.
So while I am a little disappointed that another potentially good RTS has died, I am laying the blame squarely on the developers this time.
