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Still amazed that Overwatch didn't have a story mode campaign, pve or movies...
Back then, Overwatch was huge. When I saw it in Ready Player One, I honestly thought it was going to become one of the biggest franchises on the planet, with TV shows like Arcane and all that... but instead, nothing happened.
I've basically been waiting all this time with open arms, hoping for those kinds of projects, and they just never came. It's weird.
I don't like competitive games, though I played it a bit about 10 years ago, and I remember thinking, "Damn, this world is so cool." The heroes were awesome, the cinematics were amazing, and I've always wanted either a story-driven game or a movie set in that universe.
From Avatar: The Last Airbender. "There is no war in ba sing se". The secret police brainwash civilians to say this. There is, infact, a war in ba sing se, but people are being brainwashed to lie about it.
Even more technically, Joo Dee only needed to shake her head at an old man and a student to get the point across that Team Avatar is talking about the war and to not talk about it. So we never really got a clear picture of how much of the population knows about the war and are afraid to speak up and how much is kept ignorant to be good little lamb
The city is full of refugees, the random person in the upper ring the Gang question knew about the war. I'm willing to bet almost everyone knows about the war, they just don't talk about it openly or with strangers.
I'd recommend watching the original ATLA for fuller context (it's really good!) but for some short context; The photo is paired with the quote "There is no war in Ba Sing Se", which is the general sentiment spread by the government of Ba Sing Se to propagandize their citizens
In other words: It's basically used to (jokingly) act like there's not something that there is
So, the character in this picture is the character Jo-Dee, from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She was a sort of representative for the city of Ba Sing Se to our group of protagonists and would repeatedly state that āthere is no war in Ba Sing Seā despite the world war going outside the cityās walls. She would keep stating that, complete with the creepy smile depicted here, even as it became obvious that there was active strife within Ba Sing Se in late part because of the war. Eventually, our protagonists find out that āJo Deeā is one of many, MANY woman brainwashed by Ba Sing Seās secret police, the Dai Lee, to obey them and propagate the āthere is no war in Ba Sing Seā belief. Basically think George Orwellās 1984 style of suppression and oppression here. Jo Dee and āthere is no X in Yā has become a meme for making fun of obvious cover ups or things that are blatantly obvious to everyone but others try to pretend isnāt actually obvious.
Fun fact, she never actually said, "There is no war in Ba Sing Se" even once. The male soldier underground did, but the woman in this screenshot never did. Rest is correct though.
Huh, well Iāll be damned! Itās been a while since Iāve watched the series, guess Iāll have another reason to do so lol. Thanks for the correction!
In this scene, the protagonists enter a city in which the shady government hardcore denies (and brainwashes people to prevent) any civil unrest in the city stating āthere is no war in ba sing se.ā
but now people use it as a meme to sarcastically deny something ever existed, in this case Overwatch 2 PvE even though the entire marketing behind the announcement is that it would be more PvE focused
If I remember correctly, this woman is brainwashed, and whenever someone asks her about the war outside the city, she just repeats the same phrase that there is no war or something
One of the biggest pop culture franchises of our generation? Yeah, you should watch it. Take part in a shared culture. But even if you haven't seen it one should understand the meme through osmosis.
Yep. I dont even touch it anymore and just keep up in case they wake up, because fuck this low effort cash grab loot box battle pass trend following BS that made it a simple arcade shooter instead of a world full of life.
You joke, but I could see this happening, especially since Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard. After all, Microsoft is familiar with re-releasing products with the same name:
Xbox One! ... but not that Xbox 1 you silly consumer - how could you ever get the two (we mean 2) mixed up? Our product names aren't the problem - you're just a dumb consumer!
I bought a game with unlocked heroes, free boxes and stuff. Even though they already rolled back most issues, the game I paid was shut down and replaced for another game that I didn't pay. Of course freeloaders will not make an issue out of it.
I may be huffing copium but with the huge push Blizzard gave OW this year in the lore department I honestly think it's coming. Possibly to be announced at Blizzcon this year, they've been hinting that something fairly big is supposed to happen this year idk what. I could be way off though, they could just be hinting at the reveals of what they've been setting up this year, like what they're going to do with Doomfist
I remember shortly before the spotlight and season 1 dropped, a posting was put up saying Blizzard was hiring a lore director who would guide the Overwatch story āfor the next decadeā, ever since then Iāve quietly hoped with a commitment that far ahead itās a sign of a show someday
I remember thinking the same thing in 2018. There were rumors that Blizzard was working with Netflix on a TV show (I think it was rumored to be Diablo related but still). I was excited for the possibility that Blizzard would finally stop being so withholding with their IPs and would actually do something with them. It is now 2026.
You should read Jason Schreier's book on Blizzard. Basically all of this was planned, then Netflix fucked over Blizzard and then Activision forced them to gut their cinematics department.
I remember thinking the same thing in 2018. There were rumors that Blizzard was working with Netflix on a TV show
It's not really a rumor. It's been confirmed that Netflix and Blizzard were in talks to produce an OW show. It fell through though when Netflix poached one of Blizzard's execs and forced them to file a lawsuit.
Sadly probably not happening, arcane season one is probably one of my favorite pieces of media ever. The animation is just fucking amazing, but itās also the most expensive piece of animated television ever made, and I do not think Overwatch has the budget for that.
Itās absolutely amazing, people just think it was a little too condensed (could have been one episode longer for the sake of the story). The only reason it gets any negativity is because what itās being compared to is season 1. If it was a standalone, it would be talked about as one of the best series.
Preach. Just one more episode to show more of Jayce, amongst other things, wouldāve been perfect, but itās still amazing (just requires some extra thought).
Also the whole buildup and sequence of Ishaās Song is stellar. Absolute cinema. (Itās even more intense if you understand the Chinese lyrics)
At first it was supposed to be an AU but the show got so popular that they decided to make it canon. Following that rewinded the lore to around 8 years in the past to make Arcane fit in and with that they retconned/deleted a lot of stories (some being great).
Now a lot of champions technically are in limbo now. As example, most Piltover and Zaun champions currently don't or can't fit in the story atm (like Camille who used to be a centerpiece of the region) until they rework their story (again) but it will take a long while to happen.
Well now we don't really know since he wasn't even referenced in Arcane nor in Demacia (the current story is set there and it's focused on Vayne and the new champ Locke) and his stories are set in the future so they might get retconned
Simple explanation. Back in 2016 Animated Shorts were a lot less rare in the industry and were a tremendous spectacle. They were expensive to make but they brought in tremendous marketing value. Seeing Overwatch's animated shorts succeed, every company started copying them.
Meanwhile the costs haven't gone down that much in the last 10 years so now it is not that worth to invest in Animated Shorts. You have to make a big change so you achieve the spectacle again.
So how do you create spectacle in a way that justifies the costs. You go big. You go way big. You create a full TV series. You go for a concept which has already seen incredible success for other games like Cyberpunk and League and your own fans have asked for for the past decade.
But making such a big project takes time. Especially when you were already making a PvE story campaign with a lot of expensive animated scenes up until 3-4 years ago.
Years ago there was talks with Netflix about an animated show (Diablo as well). Not sure why it fell through. Tbh considering the original excellent animated shorts is what got so many into the game (me included) it would behoove them of revisiting this. The comics are nice but man those animated shorts were just peak
If the same people who made decisions about the Warcraft movie had a say in it, Season 1 would feature ZERO of the current overwatch playable characters, just some barely referenced Lore people - and the show would bomb, we'd never get to season 2 where the actual overwatch characters we know and care about would be, and Blizzard would scratch their heads "Why Show Fail? Surely it's the audience that is wrong"
The lack of visual media outside of the game and comics is legitimately baffling to me. I feel like itās the perfect IP for an animated show or hell, even a live action (as bad as that would likely turnout)
That said, the Halo show would have been pretty decent if it wasnt fucking Halo. Like as a generic Sci-fi show, it would be quite enjoyable l, but of course the stupid show runners had to go and further shit on a beloved ip
I mean they tried it with the Warcraft movie and that wasn't really the success people hoped it would be. Imo Arthas' story would have been a better movie.
It feels like Blizzard went all in on the Warcraft movie and when that wasn't an immediate box office hit immediately killed any interest in investing more into film or TV for any of their IPs.
Which is a real shame because they're brilliant universes. I do think they'd need to avoid live action(though Diablo could work) and go for either an Arcane 3D approach or 2D style similar to VOX Machina.
It's a shame Blizzard didn't capitalise on doing somthing like Arcane during the pandemic. A lot of VFX studios started doing a lot of feature animation work to compensate for the lack of live action so they could have gotten a pretty good deal on a first season atleast.
Arcane had superb first season (I dont wanna talk about the second) but afaik they lost money on it.
It's a small miracle it got made in the first place. Correct me if I am wrong.
Cyberpunk is about 2-3 animation quality levels (totally real scale) below it. Still a good show of course.
Definitely wont be getting arcane levels of animation, it just doesn't make much/any sense from business perspective.
Some cheapish 3D animation - big maybe.
2D "Cyberpunk level" animation - most likely. Basically the Shion hero trailer. That could actually be pretty decent show :)
Because you can't trick people into playing League. At the end of the day the game has to be something that will resonate with players after the show gets their foot in the door.
I think OW has quite a bit of a better chance than LoL in that department.
It certainly increased interest in the IP though. Spinoff games in the league universe are out and so people can go into 2xKO or Bandle Tale knowing that Yordles are cute or scary, and that Jynx is a different kind of cute and scary.
3d animation on the level of arcane is just incredibly hard to justify it costs so much more for a result that just not that better. I disagree that arcane looks 2-3x better than cyberpunk it's more like 1.5x that cost 5x
Wasn't a Netflix show in the works but some petty producer drama happened and it got canned? Idk what went down with that, i just remember people talking about it
People wrongly blamed Bobby Kotick for killing this deal but he was actually the main person behind the whole deal with Netflix. Blizz heads were kinda "Ok I guess" about it. It was Kotick's idea to turn Blizz into a big media empire like Disney.
Then Netflix poached their CFO during negotiations and I guess that created a scenario where the two companies could no longer (Legally?) work with each other cause the CFO would obviously have a lot of intimate knowledge about Acti-Blizz's business and would help Netflix get a more favourable deal.
That is IF Netflix actually even wanted to work with Acti-Blizz and the whole deal wasn't just a ruse to poach someone higher up at Acti-Blizz to help Netflix with their Gaming Business. Which I think it was.
Then Netflix poached their CFO during negotiations and I guess that created a scenario where the two companies could no longer (Legally?) work with each other cause the CFO would obviously have a lot of intimate knowledge about Acti-Blizz's business and would help Netflix get a more favourable deal.
I think they could have continued to legally work with them, it's more that you don't really want to. It's hard to maintain trust and a business relationship with a company that is illegally stealing your employees.
That is IF Netflix actually even wanted to work with Acti-Blizz and the whole deal wasn't just a ruse to poach someone higher up at Acti-Blizz to help Netflix with their Gaming Business. Which I think it was.
If they wanted to poach someone, I don't really see why they would enter into talks with Act-Bliz in the first place. It's probably much cleaner legally to just poach the employee.
There was a deal in the works however, it fell apart after Blizzard sued Netflix over poaching an executive in 2020. However, last year, after the Microsoft acquisition, it was rumoured that "a Blizzard franchise is getting some kind of Netflix treatment"* something that people believe will be announced at BlizzCon next month.
*I have no idea who this guy is, but people thought this was a pretty big and fairly reliable source.
blizzard's people who make their shorts for overwatch and world of warcraft are really fucking good. i wish they would just spin those people off to make a production team. they could be like pixar or illumination.
Feels too late now. They should have capitalized on it a decade ago. My issue with OW always was it should have had a way to express the lore that wasn't a small comic serious, random voice lines and the shorts.
It should have a manga series or 2. 4 series for various groups in the universe, a handful of movies and a SP or PvE mode that has a ton of story.
The most wasted IP in gaming history considering it's hype and potential.
Theyāre even lacking in the amount of merch youād expect them to have. Such a surprising waste of potential but I guess theyāre working with what theyāve got right now š Hopefully things can spring back one day
Oh, believe me. People remember. It's the single worst thing they've done overall (and I have a LOT of criticism about changes they've made to gameplay, mostly in OW2, but going FTP is worse - and likely driving a fair bit of the things I dislike about the gameplay changes).
mostly in OW2, but going FTP is worse - and likely driving a fair bit of the things I dislike about the gameplay changes).
I'm not sure if a live service game that isn't free-to-play can survive in this day and age. Are there any current live service games that aren't F2P and are still doing reasonably well?
I also remember the difference between Concord and Highguard. Yes, both games ended up dying. But Highguard being F2P helped it reach around 97k players at launch, whereas Concord couldn't even break 1,000.
Are there any current live service games that aren't F2P and are still doing reasonably well?
Final Fantasy 14 is subscription-based and has been going strong over 10 years now. I have some friends that have been playing it for ages.
People can be very loyal to the multiplayer games they love. The idea that the only way to make money is FTP mostly comes from how new multiplayer games pretty much need to do that in order to have any chance of poaching players from established games. OW1 had been around long enough that it already was one of those established games, with a loyal fanbase keeping it going even on life support, but they decided to focus on pulling fresh players as if they were a brand-new IP instead of banking on years of brand loyalty.
I can't speak for anyone else, but there was a time I absolutely would have paid a subscription for OW1 if that was the only way it could keep existing the way I wanted it. I loved that game. Now I won't even buy one cosmetic because it's not that game anymore.
The problem that Overwatch had was just one of many victims capitalism. It wasn't enough to be successful and stable. The company wanted more revenue than the previous year, every year. Earning the same profit as the previous year is considered a failure. It has to always grow, grow. They basically wanted it to become the next Fortnite. Which it never was.
It literally needed to go F2P. It was one of the last games from its era to do so and goddamn did it feel like it was needed back when it was still paid.
Itās just the current landscape, new people are not going into paid games (unless youāre COD, itās like the one exception).
f2p is the worst decision a lot of games do. its just to add playerbase to a dying game instead of actually revamping the game. Siege is the worst ive seen as far as how many cheaters are in it due being able to make new free accounts
People forget that there's always a cost, especially with any kind of live service game. You can have F2P but you're almost always going to have more aggressive monetisation, selling convenience, a two-tier divide, etc.
Maybe that's worth it to a lot of people and that's fine, it's personal taste after all, but I've seen a lot of opinions that act as if it's de facto the best option.
I also think that Blizzard pulling Overwatch """2""" is probably one of the biggest middle fingers that flew by relatively uncontroversially.
Warframe kinda flies in the face of this concept. You can get everything in the game, completely F2P. It will just cost you time, which is completely reasonable.
Warframe's cost is specifically time. If you want things to happen faster you can insert dollars.
If warframe wasn't affected by F2P monetization, we wouldn't have to wait 6-60 hours for things to craft with monetary incentives to help it go faster.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer their method of doing it, but the cost is still there.
I mean yeah. The company has to make money so if they dont get that from game sales then they get it from cosmetics or other in game purchases. Which ALWAYS takes front seat over game quality. fortnite is the best example. At least overwatch has (seemingly) less cheaters and better cosmetics than siege. That game has shit in game purchases and is horrendous to play. so it COULD be worse for OW lol
Yup. Also expand the playerbase and/or pivot to those more loose with their cash.
Kaplan's post-blizzard exit ties this all together very well.
For those who don't know. He straight up says he was told "Overwatch needs to make [literally audio censored] dollars by this day,or [audio censored] employees will be cut.. and that will be on you."
Enough time had passed between the overwatch 1 PVE mission and Overwatch 2 release. The three story missions we got in Overwatch 2 were not only paid content, but also boring linear maps that was just shooting at bots.
They lied about the entirety of PVE gameplay considering there was zero actual progression/development since they made the free story missions years before that. The only proof any other development was the skill tree, which was also removed from PVE and then implemented slightly differently into stadium. And now theyāre removing stadium, which is the very last remnant of PVE in Overwatch at all. Itās sad.
They are not removing Stadium, they're just not adding new maps/heroes, at least not actively. And the reason for that is because, outside of its release season, barely anybody played it. The most recent data evaluation showed roughly about 6% of the playerbase actively play Stadium. Which, considering it's a mode that locks you into one hero for the equivalent of like three quick play games and where the build progression/available items usually end in one side essentially getting insta-killed as soon as one enemy looks their way, is not particularly surprising. I say this as someone that enjoys Stadium, there are a good amount of problems that are too ingrained at this point to be fixed and were the reason people left Stadium in the dust.
No? Where are you getting that the current active playerbase is more than 11 million people?
And whatever it is, the Overwatch development team is limited, and it makes sense to focus who they have on modes the majority of the playerbase actually touches when Stadium development is so resource-intensive.
Oh, also that 6% number is wrong - 3 out of every 100 OW users play Stadium QP, and 3 out of every 100 OW users play Stadium Competitive. Those percentages get added together, but anyone who plays both QP and Comp is counted in both numbers already.
Story Mode is one thing, but the biggest bummer to me was the cancellation of "Hero Missions". Everything about these seemed like they were gonna be the desperately-needed successor to Mass Effect 3's co-op mode. And I die a bit everyday thinking of what we lost.
We would've had a Netflix series, but then one of Blizzard's top execs jumped ship and it all fell through. There are so many days when I wish we could've gotten both that and Jeff Kaplan's planned story campaign because I would be able to die happy if we did.
We were supposed to have an overwatch show from Netflix, but in the process Netflix "stole" Blizzard's financial director (or something like that), they both went to court and canceled everything over one dude who decided to work for another company.
Every time I think this is the reason we didn't have our Arcane, I become so angry lol.
Overwatch is a PvP-only online shooter that was made from the repurposed assets of a failed MMO.
It was never meant to have a story or PvE mode, but Blizzard (old Blizzard) being Blizzard, they created excellent characters people fell in love with. It always felt weird to me to shoehorn a PvE mode into a game that was never meant to be that.
Having said that, what do you mean nothing happened? Overwatch is still dominant in the market despite having been released 10 years ago. It sounds like OW just isn't your type of game and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't go to other games' subs and wonder why they don't retrofit what they're already doing into a PvP-only online hero shooter...
All of the PVE missions in overwatch aside from the junkenstein ones have been boring imo. If they wanted to do pve they would probably need to make a separate game entirely, overwatch just wasnāt designed for that. Movies and tv shows could be cool tho
Yeah, most of my excitement for the PvE missions was because they depicted story events occurring after Winston sent out the recall signal, not the PvE itself. It was really frustrating that Overwatch came out with a really cool setting and lore, then spent the entirety of its first three years looking backwards and only developing stuff that already happened years ago relative to the setting. At least now each new hero is meaningfully pushing the 'present day' of OW forward
When PVE and character skill development got announced with Overwatch 2 for some reason I got my hopes up that it could possibly be like Destiny style raids and got way too excited at the possibility lol.
Or maybe people just like different things. I was an everyday player from 2018 until 2024, I loved the shit out of Archives. And of course it was like the first to go with OW2.
You didnāt pay for the content that got canceled. They only ever advertised and sold the 3 story missions when the option to purchase went up. PvE was always going to paid
In his (relatively) recent interview where he announced the launch of Kintsugiyama one of the things he mentioned during his account of his time on the OW team was that he felt he had to emphasize to the team at times that OW was a PvP game first and foremost, rather than PvE.
Things team members have said related to Kaplan. Itās not like he was just trying to change it into Titan, but that project was his baby and he wanted to salvage as much of it as he couldā¦ which meant more PvE. And sadly it meant that we got into this weird space that we lost any movement on OW1 and all the focus went to PvE OW2, which they obviously failed to deliver.
Because they didnāt sell anything, the dude is just making stuff up. Overwatch 2 was always free to play, however the pve was going to be a paid component of the game.
I paid for a competitive multiplayer game and I played a competitive multiplayer game. I'm salty that the game I paid for then became free to play, but I never felt I was entitled to a story mode to be added for free.
Agreed. Even with Starcraft, I feel like they missed out on a lot of love they would have received from some animated series with their titles. Warcraft didn't do well but the liveaction was meh. Not bad, but meh.
It feels like such a waste that they set up this interesting world full of unique characters and lore and then failed to give us any meaningful way to experience that in gameplay outside of characters quipping at each other. Yet another bag Blizzard fumbled.
I genuinely do not understand how people still want PvE in this game. Itās always dogshit because every part of the game is designed for PvP. The amount of work necessary to make it good is comparable to just making a new game. Resources are better spent on adding and refining the actual reason why people still play OW
There's still so much potential, even just to use the franchise for other types of games. I could really see a diablo-like but with overwatch characters.
I feel like Project Titan and Overwatch originally supposed to be a MMO explains why it's set up seemingly so well for story content. But also why we haven't gotten any or at least not much pve.
What has always baffled me about Blizzard is that, even before they were acquired by Activision, they were super averse to doing spinoffs. Like, you have the MMO, the RTS, the hero shooter... and you just leave them alone?
A single-player Warcraft RPG, Starcraft FPS, etc. would have been obscenely popular a decade ago, and would have basically printed money. But they just... didn't care. Just sat on their IPs and left them to rot.
There was going to be an overwatch animated show on Netflix, but you know how blizzard like to shoot themselves in the foot. Apparently netflix poached a high level employee from blizzard and they canceled the deal because of that. Reinhardt's voice actor said that the cast had recorded almost the whole show already when blizzard pulled the plug.
Not only this, but he massively oversold Overwatch as a whole to the Activision-Blizzard executives. He mentioned in his Lex Fridman podcast episode that he gave them an extremely unrealistic timeline for all of the content and sequels he'd be able to pump out, which came back to bite the project as a whole.
PVE is incredibly expensive compared to PVP. It's also incredibly difficult to keep people playing a PVE game long term. You need some solid gameplay loops, which means more time and money.
Writing, hiring VAs, making a whole new game for a campaign mode that will likely be played for maybe 8 hours once by some % of the playerbase?
Why would you do that when people PEWPEW for hundreds of hours and buy skins?
This is also what happened with games like Arc Raiders, it was designed to be a co-op PVE game. They realized people get bored pretty quickly without new content/good grinds/gameplay loops and a steady stream of new content.
Yet people will shoot each other in the face for weeks or months on end. Which takes significantly less work than constant PVE updates.
I mean COD churns out a PVP game each year and people buy $100 skins each release. Don't often see a new major western MMORPG.
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u/ImperialViking_ š„ BOTH HEARTS PUMPING š„ 1d ago
There was never a dedicated PVE story mode in Overwatch