Blizzard's New Overwatch Game: 10 Essential Things You Should Know: Page 2 of 5

Overwatch characters in all their glory.
Overwatch characters in all their glory.


3. Roles


Hanzo is in some need for some defense

Overwatch will have each player in the team playing a specific role. Tank, Offense, Defense, or Support. I mentioned Winston being a Tank, that means he'll take damage and be up close to enemies so that the others can attack from a distance. There are also Offensive characters that are made to deal damage but also have some powers to keep them safe like Reaper's ability to puff away in a cloud of dark smoke.

Defensive characters are like Widowmaker who stays far away, most likely from a lack of health, and tries to deal damage without taking any. Some revealed Support characters are Symmetra who is an Architect with the ability to quickly craft turrets and other weapons, Zenyatta is another support who can create orbs to assist her allies.

These roles will be important for certain types of gameplay, Tanks will need some support because they are meant to take damage and keep the heat off the Offense players. That is a bit of a give and take at the same time because if Winston is getting blasted by turrets he'll need someone to heal him like Mercy.

Defensive characters will need to hide behind Tanks and Supports because they will have very low health but the ability to inflict some damage both with their abilities or with any products they could produce like Turrets or Dispensers for ammo.

4. Weapons and Combat


Hanzo showing off his sweet bow

The nature of first-person shooters is to have guns. Obviously this game will have guns, but these are futuristic guns. From Winston's big lightning gun known as the Tesla Cannon to the seemingly simple sniper rifle wielded by Widowmaker known as Widow's Kiss that actually can transform into a fully automatic rifle.

The weapons in this game are well thought out to balance he characters ability with their fire power like Reaper's pistols coupled with his teleportation or a character named Hanzo who uses a bow and arrow called the Storm Bow that has abilities to fire a tracking arrow or the scatter arrow that bounces off walls and ricochets around.

Reaper with his hellfire shotguns

More on this topic:


Gamer Since: 1997
Favorite Genre: RTS
Currently Playing: Mount & Blade with Fire and Sword
Top 3 Favorite Games:Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Grand Theft Auto V, The Stanley Parable


More Top Stories