Where is Overwatch Now?

The love I had for this game soured over time

I am not ashamed to admit I may have played a few video games in my 24 years of living. Oh did I say a few? Sorry, I meant a lot. My teens were pretty much dominated by World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Pokémon. Some people have genre preferences, but I didn’t have one. I played multiple kinds of games.

In 2016, when Overwatch came out, Blizzard offered a new FPS game that rose out of the ashes of their failed MMO called Titan. The mix of intriguing gameplay and likable characters grabbed me easily. I have an interesting relationship with games. The games themselves eventually become boring, but the narratives they bring stick with me.

It then comes with no surprise that Overwatch started to become irritating as an IP. Blizzard brought a lot of potential in the beginning: multiple story-driven cinematics, character introductions, questions that people wanted to be answered. It’s been four years since then. Has the story progressed forward at all? No. It hasn’t.

Barebones Narrative

I am not saying that Overwatch is a bad game. Far from it. The narrative notwithstanding, the gameplay is good. It’s just that people get bored after playing it for enough time. It’s inevitable. The angle I am coming at this from is the perspective of someone who isn’t into the game as a game anymore but the game as a narrative. A lot of people play these kinds of games without care for the narrative and only play because it’s fun. That’s fine.

Someone could argue that Overwatch doesn’t need a story, which is also fine, but it doesn’t add up with the way Blizzard has acted. I wouldn’t say I’m trying to convince you of Overwatch needs a story, rather, this is a criticism of how Blizzard has not satisfied me as a consumer of their product.

You may be saying “but Blizzard has released story bits! Cinematics, comics, short stories!” All true, but there was a wonky consistency in what their purpose was. Many of them were character building, and some were narrative building. It’s more often backstory than anything else.

It makes sense. Overwatch gameplay is non-canon. Characters that would drop dead being seen alongside one another do it without a care. Since narrative logic is not in use, it would make more sense to focus on individual characterization so that the player can connect with them on a more fundamental level.

We see how Reinhardt gets his damaged eye. We see the events of his life that lead him to join Overwatch. When that cinematic released, there were tons of comments of players feeling vindicated playing him.

These cinematics do what they’re supposed to do. Yet, for some reason, there are narrative building elements that are sparsely populated in between these character-building moments. In another cinematic, the character Genji mentions:

The world is changing once again, Hanzo, and it’s time to pick a side.

This is despite the cinematic being largely about two brothers working out their differences. We get to see that something is happening within the world of Overwatch. Blizzard has given a child sugar for the first time and now they can’t look at their vegetables anymore. They’ve opened a door that can’t be closed.

Repetitive Content

Blizzard has an extremely talented cinematics department; it brings value to the overall experience regardless of what the cinematic exists for. I really can’t say the same about the game devs themselves. Again, I don’t think Overwatch is a bad game. What I do think is that the game peaked after one year. Why? Because that was when the majority of new content stopped coming.

Every seasonal event was used up, and their novelty wore off. Every year since then the events have been repeated aside for one. That would be the Archives Event, which is special for a PvP game like Overwatch. It’s PvE instead and focuses on a short narrative involving a group of characters. Like the title implies, these narratives are all in the past. More backstory. What makes it worse is that these stories don’t feel like they’re doing anything aside for allowing us to see how these characters interact with each other. There is no meta-narrative aside for robot bad. Just smaller ones that begin and end.

Blizzard is still far too focused on creating that connection between player and character. What they should be doing is offering more chances for the narrative to be moving forward. Good thing that the latest Blizzcon happened, right?

Blizzard is holding off for Overwatch 2

If I wrote this article before November 2019, I probably would have been a lot more pessimistic about my view of Blizzard’s handling of Overwatch. Though it was leaked beforehand, Overwatch 2 seems to be the answer to every fan looking for Blizzard to expand on the lore of Overwatch. The problem is that it’s going to release at least four years after the original game was released.

I know that games take time to develop. That’s not my issue. The issue is that Blizzard didn’t manage what should go where very well. The overall appeal of Overwatch 2 is not just in the narrative but in gameplay. It’s PvE focused, something that is better suited to telling a story over countless PvP matches.

Did Blizzard decide that it was important to wait for a PvE game to be ready before releasing story content? It’s not a question I can answer but that’s what it seems like. Yet it’s also very unnecessary. Most of the story Blizzard released within Overwatch itself were character bios. Characters interact with each other, but since the gameplay is non-canon it’s hard to take that as seriously.

The vast majority of information we’ve received on these characters has been from the Overwatch YouTube channel cinematics and various comics / short stories. Blizzard put a lot of effort into these projects. So, if one was to make the argument that it’s important to put the lore within the game itself, what has Blizzard been doing this whole time then? Certainly not that.

The overall point I am trying to make here is that in my view, Blizzard needlessly left a lot of the player base high and dry with the promise of a narrative that has yet to arrive. They’ve released tons of backstory outside of the game and could have continued that trend by releasing the story itself in the same way.

On top of not doing that, the game started to recycle a lot of its content in the following years after Overwatch’s initial release, which just kinds of pours salt in the wound. Somehow even after all this time, I’ve stayed invested in the future of the Overwatch universe, despite Blizzard making it difficult.