BlizzCon has kicked off with a bang: a non-apology about the company’s recent Hong Kong controversy, an unveiling of Diablo IV, and now, the future of Overwatch: Overwatch 2. There were, as is the Blizzard house style, a lot of snazzy cinematic trailers to reveal it:
Blizzard, still desperately trying to convince you that Overwatch has lore
Why do I feel so exhausted every time these fucking Pixar characters speak?
Overwatch 2: Reaper still isn’t getting any new skins stop asking
Oh, they added a Canadian hero and a Toronto map which seems to be a hockey arena.
Because they have the veneer of a developed personality, without demonstrating the lived-in experiences of actual human beings, so most of their presence is in big heroic one-liners, and doing the things they do in the videogame.
Please don’t take this as carte-blanch to get into a TF2 vs Overwatch debate, but the machinima of that game nailed the idea of “Pixar, with blood” because there’s such a stronger focus on character vulnerability, the in’s-and-out’s of their personal lives, and a willingness to let them be themselves without needing to advertise their mechanical functionality.
My step-dad, who has almost zero interest in videogames as a whole, absolutely adored the TF2 shorts to the point of saying he wishes Valve would make a full-length film of those characters.
I guess my problem is I can SEE so much through that. Unlike a good Pixar movie, the heartstrings the game tries to pull are so big they might as well be bass strings. It doesn’t feel earned. I guess my instinctual reaction is, “I am being manipulated by the doe eyes and the swelling music.” And realizing that I’m being manipulated like this makes me annoyed, and what turns me off from the whole game in such a way that I have good friends BEGGING me to play, with me having 0 desire to ever play it.
it does, it’s just written by the fans
He has the bmx skin, he doesn’t need anymore
@hideokojima
Ah yes, of course, the dedicated community of shippers and fanfic writers and artists that Blizzard is seemingly embarassed by, despite them probably being the most fervent fans.
Speaking of lore, Mr. Kojima, pee grenades. Why?
i had no involvement in the development of tf2 sorry
Who wants this?
Overwatch doubling down on its completely nonsensical story, sounds exactly like my kind of garbage, so me, I guess
My gut reaction to this is ‘oh hey those characters are neat, I’d like to see story stuff with them’ but then I remember that Blizzard’s writing has left a lot to be desired over the years so y’know what I think I’m good actually. I think I’ll just stick to reading Pharmercy fanfics.
Well. I like the way the overwatch characters play. But I kind of hate PvP games, so, maybe me? But the Blizzard brand is no longer a positive for me, so maybe me if it’s super cheap and it gets great reviews?
Characters still feeling like they are targeted advertising tools with 0 depth like always I see.
Also the dialogue written for that trailer just sounds really bad. It’s the kind of bad I would expect from a direct to DVD children’s movie. It’s also so trope heavy that it feels like a bot wrote the outline. If you would have shown me this 6 years ago I would have thought this was a new Dreamworks movie that was going to bomb in theaters.
It does take some audacity to call this a sequel and not… an expansion or an update? Or even a side release? I mean, isn’t this basically Mann vs. Machine???
I actually fully expect this to go onto mobile devices. PvE seems to be a common structure on those kinds of games. But what do I know?
I’m excited for the new PvP stuff, which appears to be coming to Overwatch 1. So I guess I get the stuff I want without giving Blizzard more money. I can live with that.
blizzard wanted robots to be an oppressed Other to humans who are getting unjustly treated and then turned around and went “well actually they were war-mongering invaders so actually people’s dislike of them is somewhat justified” and now they added a second evil robot empire/faction to the game just to double down on robots being the bad guys in the universe. like. lmao why even bother with the “”"“social commentary”""" at all if you’re just going to totally ignore it at all times
(its because blizzard only knows how to write one story and they’re terrified of having any stance whatsoever)
also yes overwatch’s plot is literally just jacked straight from tf2 and forced through the marvel grinder lol
Damn you all are so down on this cinematic, I was just super happy to see how pleased Mei was to be officially part of the team.
Rumour on the street is, that this was all just a move by the higher ups to get her to shut up about Hong Kong 
