Overwatch Preview

Introduction

Overwatch is a first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on coop gameplay, with a group of heroes fighting together using their own abilities. We first heard about Overwatch at BlizzCon 2014, and we know that it is currently in development by Blizzard Entertainment. Right now the game has a scheduled release date of May 24, 2016, and it will launch on Windows PC, Playstation 4 and XBOX One.

Plot

Set in the near-future, years after the Omnic Crisis, which was a global conflict that put humanity in danger from the Omnic artificial intelligence. It’s a classic robots-taking-over-the-world type of setting, but the story sounds intriguing for sure. The name Overwatch comes from the international task force that the United Nations put together to protect humanity and end the Omnic Crisis.

It worked. However years after the resolution, members of Overwatch who were once thought of as heroes, are now looked at with suspicion. Overwatch stayed around after the conflict as a peacekeeping force, but people started getting suspicious when incidents of criminal activity began to rise. Thanks to conspiracy theories and such, the population began to believe accusations of corruption and sedition.

And then one day, the Overwatch headquarters was completely destroyed. They say it was an accident, but the United Nations hasn’t confirmed any details of the catastrophic event. During the destruction, Overwatch leader Jack Morrison and second-in-command Gabriel Reyes were both killed.

Gameplay

Squad-based combat is the main focus of Overwatch, so you will begin by selection one of the hero characters, and we know of four different character roles. They include offense characters, defense characters, support characters, and tank characters.

Offensive players are faster, deal more damage, and have lower defense. Support characters will be providing buffs to their allies and debuffs to their enemies. Defense characters will have higher defense, lower attack, but they’re meant to form choke points for enemies. Tank characters are what you would expect, as they take a great deal of damage, have a ton of armor and deal massive damage.

Players are going to have the chance to switch their character in-game every time they die, similar to how you would change your class in the Call of Duty series.

The first three maps that Blizzard revealed are all based on real-world locations, so expect to see maps based on London (King’s Row), Japan (Hanamura) and Ancient Egypt (Temple of Anubis). Control has three maps, Nepal, Lijiang Tower, and Ilios. There are three hybrid maps; King’s Row, Numbani and Hollywood. Hanamura, Temple of Anubis and Volksaya Industries are all Assault maps. Dorao, Watchpoint: Gibraltar and Route 66 are Escort maps. So Overwatch is launching with 12 maps.

There are three confirmed games modes featured on Overwatch, they are Assault, Escort, and Control. It has been revealed that some of the maps will actually be a hybrid of Payload and Assault.

Assault puts one team in charge of capturing two targets on the map, while the other must defend the targets.

Escort is where the attacking team must escort a payload to a specific location before the time runs out, and the other team has to stop them from making it there. Some of the hybrid escort maps will want you to capture the payload before escorting it to the target location.

Control puts both teams in charge of capturing and maintaining a control point as they try to get their capture percentage up to 100%. Best-of-three rounds wins.

Recently, game director Jeff Kaplan announced that they will be dropping competitive mode from the game. Kaplan did say they will bring it back at a later date, but it will not make it into the open beta or final release.

Kaplan explained, “We’ve been reading feedback from the community and taking it all to heart. As a result, we’ve temporarily disabled competitive play for open beta so that we can rework the system and make it better.”

Conclusion

Overwatch is getting a lot of talk around the net, and for good reason! The game has potential in every area, from the dynamic cooperative gameplay to the not-so-far in the future setting. This first-person shooter is launching with 12 maps, 21 heroes, and 3 game modes (not including Hybrid). It’s interesting to play a first-person shooter where you don’t go around picking up weapons from your dead enemies. Instead, you, you’re character, is the weapon. Each character will have it’s own abilities and this makes gameplay incredibly dynamic. It’s almost like a first-person MOBA, being a hero and all.

Blizzard is hoping to capture the attention of competitive players by putting together an Overwatch tournament on May 28 with a $10,000 prize pool. It’s hard to say whether or not Overwatch will become a huge hit within the eSports community, but Blizzard intends to make that happen.

Since the open beta is closing and the game is releasing later this month, we have all the information we need to know about Overwatch. Below is a video of Overwatch gameplay, hopefully this will help you determine if it’s worth buying.

Please leave a comment below and let us know what you think about Overwatch!