An Interview With The Overwatch Developers

Blizzard had recently rolled out the Overwatch Anniversary update that comes with a ton of skins and a new Deathmatch Map – Petra! With the celebration of their 2nd Anniversary, they are also having a Free Weekend for eager players who have not gotten the game to try it out! However we have tons of questions to ask about their new feature that comes with the Petra map, like the breakable floor! So check on below for some insights that we got from our interview with Geoff Goodman (Lead Hero Designer) and Bill Warnecke (Lead Software Designer)!

Firstly, the Petra map that comes with a breakable floor is actually a prototype feature that was developed by the team. Once they’ve play-tested it on their own, they decided to put it out in the map hoping to gain feedback from players. Just like the jump pads that we have in Oasis, we can expect the breakable walls to be featured in future maps but it is still not necessarily in the next map.

The lore behind Petra is also one that is pretty interesting. Because the maps also play a role in telling the story of Overwatch, Petra also tells a story of the early days in Overwatch. Petra is an archaeological site where the archaeologists were excavating the area to uncover something. This leaves us with a new mystery in the lore of Overwatch which paves and gives opportunity for future in-game or cinematics to explore the main plot line. As such, we can expect more revelations to come in future seasonal brawls and cinematics.

With the Legendary skins that come with the Anniversary update, it was all thanks to the amazing concept artist team led by Arnold Tsang. Though there are a lot of fans who shared their concept art of their favorite heroes, the Overwatch’s concept artist team draw their inspirations from almost anything. So there’s a possibility that they were inspired by some of the fan artists. However, the concept artist team do come up with their own original skin ideas as stated by Geoff which he relates to when the Doomfist comic was released internally, there were already variations of Doomfist to choose from.

As we all already know, previous brawl events were also included in the Anniversary update which allows us to play it now instead of waiting for the right season. Because of that, it only makes sense for the Overwatch team to bring us new brawl events in the coming seasonal events. However, no details were disclosed during the interview as Geoff and Bill were not allowed to reveal anything. But we were assured that the Overwatch team has a very powerful toolset that they have been using to experiment with heroes and game modes. So we’re definitely hoping to see something new in the coming seasonal event!

There’s also a Symmetra rework coming up soon in the PTR which would change her role from a support into a heavy damage dealer. Well not like she isn’t already, but she still retains her ability to deploy her teleporter. However it wasn’t disclosed on how her teleporter would work now as they mentioned that it has the potential to get characters into hard-to-reach locations. Symmetra is not the only one that’s looking for a rework, but Reinhardt as well. Because of the many bugs that happened with his Earth Shatter, the developing team are rebuilding the tech that it was laying on in the hopes to fix the many bugs that exists.

While on some of the questions that were asked like, “So, the community has been curious what’s under the mask of Reaper. Will there be a chance for the community to ever see what’s under Reaper’s mask?”. Well it certainly was a new question to them and they think it’s a cool idea to have as well which they jokingly said they might have an emote sticker of that! (I hope that’s true!) And on a final note, no, the Free For All Deathmatch Competitive Season will not be carried over onto the Overwatch League.

So there you go! We hope these have answered some of your questions of the recent updates and future of Overwatch. We hope that you enjoy it and be excited for future new brawls, events AND Symmetra rework!

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