Orisa, Doomfist and more aren't quite as you remember them...
Some gamers really don’t like change, but that’s what Overwatch 2 is all about: a free-to-play model, 5v5 matches instead of 6v6s ones and, of course, reworked heroes.
We sat down with Lead Hero Designer Geoff Goodman and Lead Narrative Designer Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie to learn how Blizzard managed character change.
“That is something we we talk about all the time,” Goodman said told Stevivor.
“Whenever we’re making even balance changes, it comes up. Do we feel like this part of the character that we’re changing for the balance is something that should be strong because it’s part of their core identity — and what people love to see from the character — or is it something that feels like it’s a powerful part of their kit that we can reduce without changing the character too much, and the way they play? It comes up in so many different aspects, and there are times where we decided to take the hit knowing that it’s going to change significantly.”
Goodman acknowledged that not every change will win over all Overwatch players.
“If we take something like Orisa’s rework, that’s probably the most significant rework we’ve ever done,” he continued. “And if you are a person who loved to put down that shield and hide behind it and try to play real, real safe… certainly that is a bit of a loss to lose that.
“We just have to measure; a lot of game design is give and take, so in this case we had to decide if the game as a whole… would be better.”
When it comes to Overwatch 2, Doomfist has arguably the biggest rework, becoming a tank rather than a damage hero.
“He’s changing roles so that’s pretty significant,” Goodman admitted. “Technically, we’ve done it once before when Symmetra used to be support and we turned her into a damage role, but that was a really long time ago. Going to Doomfist becoming a tank, I think that was maybe the biggest thing that I spent a lot of time talking to the team about and working with everybody and finding the right design.
“Doomfist is, in particular, a hero that has a lot of really dedicated niche audience fans that really love everything about the way he played and he’s like Genji in a way where you learn a lot of techniques and stuff to play him that are very specific to him.”
Goodman said he and his team wanted to keep Doomfist feeling the same, but acknowledged that “we were going to have to probably change at least one of his abilities to make him a little more fair to play against, but also give him more ability to tank in his new role.”
Ultimately, Goodman thinks he and his team succeeded, and initial feedback from Overwatch 2‘s recent beta seems to support this.
“We gained a lot of feedback from Doomfirst players in the community… to try to get at what the core of Doomfist was,” he continued. “Doomfirst has this unique property where all of his abilities can cancel from each other, so you can leap into the air and immediately cancel into to a charge punch. A lot of that was to try to maintain and create this this very fluid movement nature that players really loved about him and the feedback from beta one has been fantastic for him; people really like his rework and everything.”
“In this new version of PvP, narrative really wanted to support the changes that were coming and really make them feel powerful and interesting and fresh,” added Jurgens-Fyhrie. “We started off with this massive PvP refresh pass that was basically going through a lot of common [voiceover] categories and just writing new lines for them. Ability lines, kill lines, respawn lines, targeted at enemy hero lines. There are all these different ways of telling story.
“And then on top of that, of course, we had to support the changes to Doomfist, so we were writing lines there. And then of course with Arisa, we really seized on that one because we felt like it was an exciting opportunity to tell a story about how Orisa changed since the first time we met her. She’s changed from this sort of protective sort of harmless, helpful character to this fearsome guardian… that I think like a lot of players have really given us great feedback on.”
Overwatch 2 goes free-to-play on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Switch on 5 October 2022 here in Australia. We went in-depth on what to expect from it here.
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Overwatch 25 October 2022PC PS4 PS5 Switch Xbox One Xbox Series S & X |
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