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    BlizzCon 2017 - Overwatch: Archives

    BlizzCon 2017 - Overwatch: Archives
    Take a look at the Behind the Scenes of making Overwatch

    The Pitch
    • Overwatch development started in the summer of 2013
    • The development team is known as Team 4
    • Made 3 totally different game pitches, first of which was new Starcraft content
    • A sketch of Chris Metzen was used to inspire this new project
    • After the first two weeks it looked like the Starcraft project was likely to happen
    • The second pitch was a Chris Metzen idea, about a far remote crossroads planet for aliens
    • Movies, other games, and community artists are used to inspire the visual style
    • This was supposed to be a new class based MMO with about 9 classes
    • Explored the idea of having around 50 classes with very different but specific abilities
    • Titan had a lot of incredible art made for the project
    • Character art from Titan was used to make a new concept for the third pitch
    • After the pitch to the team, each team member was assigned to come up with 1 hero
    • A total of 48 hero concepts were made the very first day
    • A more polished pitch deck was made by Jeremy Craig to be shown to Blizzard
    • This was to be a global game with maps around the world
    • The concept art for the maps by Peter Lee were used, however this was a completely different art style
    • The final concept was to be pitched to Activision
    • The CEO stopped the pitch mid presentation, and asked to go back three slides
    • This was the group concept art of the Overwatch heroes
    • The variety, and color became hallmark of the Overwtch universe
    • This new project was code Prometheus
    • Was given permission to develop Core Combat for the greenlight gate

    Core Combat
    • The core of the game was to be developed with 4 heroes and 1 map
    • Almost 4 million lines of the code from the Titan engine were erased
    • Only about 760 thousand were kept to develop into Overwatch engine
    • The concept was taken from Titan, but all the art was re-modeled from scratch
    • New Render pipeline to allow for 60 FPS on console and PC

    Tech Reboot
    • Very first render of the engine. Tracer with her floating gloves showing
    • Added guns, and experimented with light
    • In November it was added to the Blizzard engine to have more game Physics added
    • Smooth camera development to make movement more organic

    Heroes of Core Combat
    • The core combat was started in October, 2013
    • Reinhardt was one of the first four to be developed
    • Tracer, Reaper, and Widowmaker were the other three
    • Rocketdude later was developed into Pharah
    • Early play testing on Temple of Anubis
    • Reaper used for scale for buildings
    • After block levels, the map was further developed
    • Abilities slowly added to the game
    • Early animations
    • By February, 2014 the map was almost complete
    • The Core Combat was to be shown in March at a company show and tell
    • Announcement was planned for BlizzCon the following year
    • 3 playable maps, and 12 heroes were needed for the announcement

    Ability Design
    • Hanzo first had the bow implemented
    • Sonic Arrow
    • Scatter Shot
    • Dragon Strike was to be a moving AOE known as the caterpillar
    • The initial design only had 1 dragon
    • The final version would have 2 dragons to show the full range of the hitbox

    Hero Ideation
    • A hockey hero was being though of as a fast moving hero
    • A free flight character with a flamethrower
    • Later became the Jetpack cat in early concept art
    • These ideas were though of going too far, but not within the boundaries of Overwatch
    • Torbjorn's early ability Claw Trap was a mine which when triggered would grab the hero and contain them
    • In the video Reinhard is shown as throwing his hammer
    • This ability was implemented to deal with Claw Trap
    • If he threw his hammer too far, he had to wait before attacking
    • This later evolved into his new E ability, which is now in the game

    BlizzCon Video
    • This early video had Mercy with green healing animation
    • Early Reinhardt charge had no charge-up time
    • The last point, known as Robot City in King's Row was very open with multiple drops
    • First Mercy ultimate allowed her to heal multiple people
    • Winson's early ability marker was a banana
    • Early Volskaya had a capture point which also moved like a payload would
    • First point on Hanamura was initially a circular area
    • Symmetra's early sentries were mini Torbjorn turrets
    • Bastion's early ultimate was a volley of grenades
    • Winston's initial leap also stunned when landing
    • Genji started out as a melee character who was able to perch on walls

    Q&A
    Q: Will we ever see a Titan progress video?
    A: There are screenshots and video of Titan, but someday they might surface.

    Q: Have you considered Officer Mai skin?
    A: Yes, a lot of the skins are inspired by the community.

    Q: Overwatch is very character driven, is there a chance of novels for the game in the future?
    A: Different character mediums are always being explored, such as the 2D Doomfist reveal.

    Q: In the Hanzo-Genji short Hanzo can bend the path of arrow, was this ever something on the board?
    A: Deflect on Genjo was the closest thing, but the tech is capable of supporting this and might be part of future mechanics.

    Q: Is there a cap on how far the game can go?
    A: The game is only as good as the last patch, so ideas are constantly being explored. Very inspired by Warcraft, Starcaft, and Diablo, so Overwatch is just though of as the first game.










    Last edited by Stoy; 2017-11-06 at 12:06 AM.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Titan hype! Oh wait, too late for that.

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