Announced at BlizzCon 2014, Overwatch is a team-based, multiplayer shooter in the same vein as Team Fortress 2 but with less hats and an even more cartoony art style.

Beta sign ups are available at Overwatch but you will (obviously) need a BattleNet account.

There is a gameplay trailer:

Overwatch 'Gameplay Trailer' - YouTube

And a cinematic trailer:

Overwatch Debut Trailer - YouTube

And here are our heroes:



Individual profiles available via the main page. Though some on the image are not yet available, the missing characters I suspect will become DLC/Expansion packs.

 

Could be neat.

 

Eh. Doesn't look interesting.

 

Man if I was a Disney exec and saw that cinematic, I'd be thanking all my lucky stars it was for a game because seriously, that looks like it would be a kick arse film.

 

Ugh that looks like some horrible design-by-committee garbage right there. It looks as if somebody who does not know anything about games just went ahead and made a game out of generic "nerd" stuff they found at comic-con or something like that.


(But sadly I might play this because the lighthearted-arena-shooter market is pretty dry right now.  )

 

I think I will stick with Battleborn for a team based shooter. I have more faith in the creators or Borderlands to make a game like this.

But as always, Blizzard is blowing all kinds of money on cinematics and they will spend $50 on the writing.

 

Looks decent. I'll wait for more gameplay videos.
I love TF2, so I might like this.

 

Well since it's a team based shooter ala Team Fortress 2, then there is no campaign and therefore no writing to speak of.

 

Is that so? Well glad they spent so much on that cinematic. I guess Valve does the same thing.

 

There's a gameplay trailer as well, so if nothing else you can't accuse them of trying to blind us with pre-rendered stuff.

I agree, but considering the amount of complaining I've heard around TF2 becoming a glorified hat trading room I think there's a decent shot at this obtaining a solid fanbase. Hell, if Blizzard wanted they could do stuff like double EXP every time a player with a Warcraft account plays on Server Maintenance night.

I'm drawn to it I guess because for some reason I really like all the different characters and the offbeat and colourful tone of the whole thing.

 

Oh I'm not saying anything bad about the gameplay at all. I have faith Blizzard will make a game that plays well. They really are just known for the absolute highest quality CG videos. They are so good that they usually contrast a great deal with the story you actually get in their games.

 

Signed up for the Beta. Not keeping my hopes up seeing how Heartstone turned out to be.

 

to be frank, doesnt help that they aren't trying a dramatic shift in the paradigm. This seems heavily based in TF2.

 

Game looks beautiful...too bad it seems to be pvp only...wish this could've been an awesome game with story.

 

really like everything I'm seeing here so I signed up for the beta. looks a lot faster then tf2 imo.

 

While the current material doesn't suggest that as you there's a huge shift in the way it works compared to others I personally have a feeling that Blizzard looked at the market and came to the conclusion that trying to redesign the wheel would be a fruitless exercise. Kind of like what was said on Zero Punctuation about Painkiller:

Though sadly the game seems to lack a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning.

I'm not blind to the idea of this fucking up or just being TF2 with a better colour palette and being treated as such; but the varying character design and complete lack of the dreaded realism and what looks like fun and fast paced gameplay means I'm interested.

That would have been fun; hell that cinematic should have been able to greenlight a movie by it's own virtue.

It's weird that this interests me but I have like zero interest in Team Fortress 2; I think all the memetic gifs and other shit have ruined it for me. Although according to some of it's playerbase, the hats have done that on the official level.

 

I honestly can't stand when games make such awesome trailers showing hints at a deep story, and then make it PvP only.

 

I'm curious, given Blizzard's colossal success with unoriginal ideas before this, but yeah, as a die-hard hat simulator fan I'm going to have to be sold on this game.

 

TBH I'd be fine if they just relegated that to other CG videos and visual media. Would be interesting if it was a single player game of some kind but this is Blizzard we're talking about.