Blizzard recently teased a major announcement for Overwatch on April 11, and while speculations are now running rampant on what the announcement would be about, game director Jeff Kaplan revealed many insights regarding the popular multiplayer shooter in separate interviews with GameSpot and IBTimes.
The interview with GameSpot covers a wide range of topics, including a rebuffed request to patch out Genji, Kaplan's peanut butter preference and the Hanzo Main insult incident. However, it also covers a few noteworthy topics on the past, present, and future of Overwatch. The interview with IBTimes, meanwhile, discussed the upcoming 25th hero of the game.
The Abandoned Cat Hero
In Kaplan's interview with GameSpot, he revealed that when the development team first started making Overwatch, boundaries were being tested. While Soldier 76 was a regular soldier, on the other end of the scale was Winston, a talking gorilla.
There was once a hockey player hero in the game that was later scrapped, but there was another character that Kaplan said caused a huge internal debate within the development team. That hero was a jetpack with a cat lying on top of it, and every once in a while, the cat would pay at the jetpack's controls.
The team later decided that a cat in a jetpack hero was going too far, abandoning what may have been an adorable but rather confusing Overwatch character.
Pick And Ban System
On a question regarding the possibility of a pick and ban system coming to Overwatch, Kaplan said that he is not a fan of such a system as it will disrupt the fluidity of the game. MOBAs that implement a pick and ban system do not allow players to switch heroes, but in Overwatch, players are allowed to switch the heroes that they are using while in their team's starting point.
Story-Driven Campaign
When asked if the development team is thinking about launching a story-driven campaign to Overwatch or if the plot points being integrated into content releases are enough, Kaplan answered that the topic is actually being talked about a lot by the team recently. Kaplan revealed that animated shorts is one of the favorite things to do by the team, and that a new comic that reveals more about Overwatch than the past once will be released soon.
Kaplan mentioned the Junkenstein event that Blizzard did for last year's Halloween, which included a player-vs-enemy mode and a narrative that explained the story behind the event. He then added that such a thing is something that the development team will be experimenting with.
The 25th 'Overwatch' Hero
Meanwhile, in his interview with IBTimes, Kaplan stated that he knows who the next hero of Overwatch will be, and that this 25th hero is "very far along in development."
The development team is doing a lot of "aggressive play-testing" for the 25th hero, with art already being done for the character. The hero will be the next one that will come to Overwatch after the omnic quadruped tank Orisa.
Many players are expecting that Doomfist will be the next hero that will come to Overwatch, a character that is part of the game's lore that has been teased numerous times by Blizzard.
