Category Archives: Games

Overwatch’s Story Is a Failure

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This year’s Gamescom saw the release of some more of Overwatch’s animated clips. This has provided an opportune moment to voice a thought that has been growing in my mind for some time.

As much as it pains me to say it, Blizzard’s attempts to tell the story of Overwatch are a complete failure.

A shot from the Overwatch short Rise and ShineI have wanted to like Overwatch from the moment it was announced. I am and always have been the eternal Blizzard fanboy. I love their art style and their personality and their larger than life flair. More than that, Overwatch’s idealism and diversity speaks to my ideals and beliefs in a very powerful way.

I have been frustrated from the start by Blizzard’s refusal to include any in-game story content in Overwatch. It’s the reason I still haven’t bought the game, despite my usual “shut up and take my money” attitude to most everything Blizzard does.

I have instead dutifully consumed Overwatch’s out of game story, its online comics and animated shorts. For a time, I thought maybe it was for the best that all of the story took the form of tie-in media, as it allowed me to get all that I wanted from Overwatch without having to spend a dime.

But as time has gone on, I’ve realized that none of this — not the comics or the shorts — has really proven satisfying. They’ve only left me wanting more — much more.

The thing is, a ten minute video clip once a year and a ten page digital comic every six months aren’t a story. They’re marketing.

A shot from Overwatch's The Last Bastion shortDon’t get me wrong. Some of those shorts have been good. Very good. The Bastion one is a bloody masterpiece. But there just isn’t enough content here to tell a meaningful story. There is no space for true character development, or anything resembling a story arc.

We’re well over a year past Overwatch’s launch, and we’re still awaiting answers to some incredibly basic questions about the characters and the world. Why doesn’t Mercy age? Who was Pharah’s dad? What is Talon actually trying to achieve?

Nor has there been any forward momentum to the story. We’re still just hovering, frozen in time, at the moment Winston  reactivated Overwatch. If this were a movie, we’d still be in the first five minutes.

It’s time to face facts. Blizzard is trying to sell all this as some bold new experiment in multimedia story-telling, but it’s not. It’s a half-assed attempt at a story that is accomplishing nothing of any value.

Maybe one day Blizzard will put out an Overwatch game with an actual story, or some meaty novels, or a movie, or anything. On that day, I will rejoice.

But unless and until that happens, Overwatch’s half-hearted attempts at story-telling are just a waste of time, at least from an artistic perspective.  I’m sure they’ve very successful as marketing, but again, that’s all they are. Marketing.

Overwatch's latest character, DoomfistI’m disappointed that all the massive potential of Overwatch’s universe is being left to rot on the vine, but what really worries me is that Blizzard as a whole may become enamored of this low-effort style of “story.” Already we’ve seen StarCraft abandon in-game story in favour of some incredibly brief digital comics, and Diablo seems to have thrown in the towel on story altogether, without even bothering to finish the current arc.

Only World of Warcraft, for all its flaws, still gives me hope. While I have some mixed feelings on the specific story-telling decisions of Legion, I can’t deny it’s by far and away the most story-driven expansion to date.

I hope this is just a lull and that Blizzard will start putting out more story-heavy games again soon, as they have for the last twenty years. Because if Overwatch is a sign of what is to come for the company, us Blizzard fans who are also story fans won’t be Blizzard fans much longer.

The Mustering of Azeroth: Mager Nostalgia

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Next up on my journey through Legion’s class stories is mage, and this was an interesting case.

My mage shows off Felo'melorn in World of WarcraftLong-time blog readers may remember that my mage was my original main. He wasn’t the first character I ever created in World of Warcraft, but he is the first one I committed to and made significant headway into the game with. He was my first character to ever reach max level, alongside a bevy of other firsts, and he received the lion’s share of my attention for the first year or two at least.

But I started falling out of love with the class in Cataclysm, and when Mists of Pandaria launched, I completely abandoned the character.

That was five years ago, and now suddenly I was playing him again. It was a bizarre feeling. I really don’t know what to compare it to.

Bizarre, but not unpleasant, though. I found it an excellent example of what makes MMOs special, and why I keep playing them despite all their many foibles. The persistence and longevity of them is staggering. There’s something strangely comforting to be able to return “home” to a character nearly ten years old after so long away.

Single-player games cannot offer anything like this.

That’s not to say I’m entirely back on the mage train. While there were times, as I fell back into the dance of locking down and kiting mobs, when I felt some of the old joy return, the fact is mage still just doesn’t click for me the way it used to. I’m not sure if it’s because of how the class has changed, or how I have, but the magic just isn’t quite there anymore (no pun intended).

The Forge of the Guardian in World of WarcraftThe most fun thing about it was actually my combat ally, Archmage Modera. She has a ranged version of frost nova, helping me keep enemies at a safe distance for even longer, and it even allows my spells to benefit from shatter and all those other juicy frost mage passives. And unlike my nova, it doesn’t even break on damage!

This created a great “tag team” playstyle, and I haven’t felt so much camaraderie for a video game NPC since that time Cora and I charged the same Kett at the same time from opposite directions.

It was not a good day to be that Kett.

But while I didn’t entirely fall back in love with playing a mage, their class story proved to be quite enjoyable, maybe the best yet.

One thing I’ve learned from doing these is that the class campaigns aren’t long enough to tell satisfying, self-contained stories. To work, they need to lean heavily on established lore and characters. The Warcraft universe is so vast now that there are oodles of great characters and potential plot threads that are just gathering dust. Class stories are a good way to fill in the blanks, so to speak.

The mage story works well because that’s exactly what it does.

The mage order hall in World of WarcraftInterestingly enough, the mage campaign is basically a sequel to the Warcraft comics, focusing on the hunt for the Dreadlord Kathra’natir. Med’an issues aside, I was a big fan of the comics, and I think they’re one of the highlights of modern Warcraft lore, so this pleases me well.

Meryl Felstorm, in particular, could be the poster child for ridiculously awesome yet totally obscure Warcraft characters, so I loved finally getting to meet him in-game. The voice actor they got for him is great, too — exactly how I imagined his voice.

It’s a relief because it doesn’t always work out that way. Valeera’s voice actress is not bad, but her voice just doesn’t suit the character at all, and Thisalee Crow’s new voice has scarred me for life.

As with most class stories, the plot was a little straightforward, and the final quest over a little too quickly, but on the whole the mage campaign tells a very satisfying story.

It did a very good job of utilizing the class’s abilities in interesting ways, too. Among other things, there’s a boss fight where you will be overwhelmed by adds unless you spellsteal them to power them down, and a segment where you evade a small army of demons using invisibility.

My mage in World of WarcraftMy one significant complaint is that if this is meant to be the final throwdown with Kathra’natir, Valeera really should have been there. I realize she’s already in the rogue campaign, but there’s no reason she couldn’t have appeared in both. Of all (living) people, Valeera probably has the best cause to want vengeance against Kathra’natir.