I guess I don’t mind the aesthetics as much because most videogame aesthetics don’t sit well with me, so it’s the underlying game/mechanics that I enjoy. And in there, Blizz’s whole “focus-testing the shit out of it” works pretty well, even if it hampers the aesthetics a bit.
Which of course isn’t to take away from anyone complaining about them, because there are some really bad ones in there. Lucio is just silly, as noted in the previous post. The only female model that wasn’t built to cater towards mainstream nerd sex fantasies is made into a guy by the fanbase.
Also it isn’t to say I don’t like some games’ aesthetics, but I am willing to overlook them if I enjoy the game under them, to a point.
I don’t have any problem with it. The characters are distinct and recognizable, and some of them have very small tics that are at least interesting (like Mercy’s sniff, which I don’t see very much in character animations, and Junkrat’s lapse of insanity-as-coping-mechanism before restoring whatever wall he has between himself and trauma-guilt).
I’m not up on enough pop culture to recognize any references outside of the Joker and Scarecrow references in Junkrat’s design, so I can take the rest at face value. They all seem videogamey and innocuous.
Any given superhero comic is drawn by one person who applies a consistent and idiosyncratic aesthetic to all the wacky costumes, for good or ill. Overwatch’s ugliness is in part because the designs are all wildly incompatible but then forced into plasticky homogeneity. It looks like a different dude drew each character (which is probably literally true).
Overwatch is like the only large group of comic book style superheroes/villains that I have really liked the wide swath of their designs in about 30 years. If this had been the launch lineup in the 90s of like wildcats or gen 13 or whatever i would actually have read them
Seriously, this hodgepodge influence birthed from Starcraft/Warcraft III’s easter egg characters in proto-MOBAs is pretty damn ugly but it is a perfect representation of internet culture. Fanculture is being recreated and re-presented as new product. I like strong aesthetic directions and it freaks me out!
In a multiplayer game where no one is giving any consideration to roleplaying or atmosphere it may be harmless, though. I feel more odd about people getting very attached to their MOBA characters; PAX and gaming convention cosplay is 80% League of Legends.
It’s a testament to the power of games that people become this attached to a character that doesn’t really exist as a character, just a companion, a playstyle, an attitude. We have the technology to birth media properties without the media, just cold hard game design and a poorly-rendered illustration or two.
My stupid opinion is that I can look at a character in the game, instantly recognize who they are, associate that with a set of powers and tactics and respond thus
It is exactly all the character design a class-based shootman needs
I think that Overwatch’s design sense is tapping in to the same qualities that propel Hollywood action movies to huge success in other markets. See the Warcraft movie grossing way more in China than the US, for example. Blizzard gets international appeal and prioritizes it highly.
I concur, but I come from a fighting game background, so I see nothing stupider/less original in Overwatch than I’d expect from a fighting game. Explains a lot about its appeal to me as well; there’s an element for self-expression via character choice in there that I didn’t expect from an FPS. I’m not just another guy with a helmet and an assault rifle on a team of the same (unless I rolled Team Dad). True, I’m expressing myself through some fairly corny characters, but I find actually playing them far fun enough to wash that bad taste out of my mouth. Even Lucio gets more fun the more I play him, and he’s literally just about staying in LoS and holding lmouse while not dying and occasionally pressing E or Q.
No: TF2 is just as readable but is beautiful and consistent while still being fun and cartoony. I’m not asking for more CoDguys in digital camo here. TF2’s classes are so vibrant that those Meet The videos are entirely compelling character pieces. Can you imagine what equivalent videos would be like for Overwatch characters? It’d be the videogame advertising equivalent of a Hillary Clinton tweet (“yas, I am on fleek with my bae”).
Lucio actually might have one of the highest skill caps in the game. The wallriding by itself is super nuanced and complicated and map-specific. You need a lot of situational awareness and have to pay attention to what the rest of your team is doing. There are a lot of situations where speed is much better for keeping people alive than the healing is. The knockback move actually has a lot of applications and can be tricky to use correctly. He’s also sort of like Winston in that it takes a while to know what you can chase and what you can’t (and, unlike Winston, to be good enough to land your slow left-click projectiles in the first place).
He’s a very satisfying character to get good at. He’s by far my most played!
I dunno where you’re seeing this but I’ve seen a good amount of Zarya cheesecake art showing off those lady muscles. And by lady muscles I mean the muscles that make up her body, not lady exclusive muscles.
