Gray walls, nothing but Tracer, and bullet paths that looked like yellow lasers. In late 2013, this was what Overwatch looked like.
Blizzard showed off some pre-production footage of the game at a Blizzcon panel this year. Not only did it help illustrate how long iterations took for the Overwatch team, but it also helped how a game comes together. For instance, it took Blizzard a while before Widowmaker’s ultimate could properly display silhouettes through walls. So early on, it just rendered arrows above enemies heads.
The footage also showed off some features that users would have never seen, like the caterpillar. Dragon Strike, for instance, was the initial name for Hanzo’s ultimate. But the early graphics for the ability were just massive yellow blobs that looked a lot more like an insect than a raging dragon.
Mercy’s healing was initially green. The final stage of King’s Row also used to be a lot more open, and Reinheart’s charge initially didn’t have any start up time. There was even a doge icon for the payload.
“Maybe if we switched back to that icon people would be attracted to it in someway,” Kaplan quipped.
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