If you’re curious about Overwatch, its new hero Soldier: 76, or how the game is developed in general, then today’s Reddit AMA about those very topics should be of interest to you. Geoff Goodman (a principal designer specializing in Hero Design), Scott Mercer (another principal designer, this time specializing in Systems Design) and Michael Chu (Senior Designer, Lore and Story) answered a variety of questions. We’ve gone through and found some of the most interesting answers to share with you here.
On the decision to make Solider:76 a fairly conventional FPS style character.
[blizzardquote author=”Geoff Goodman” link=”https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3dezkd/hey_roverwatch_were_here_for_a_quick_qa_about/ct4k2vn”]So to answer specifically about Soldier: Seventy Six, we actually got to a point where we have so many crazy characters jumping and flying all over our maps, someone more rooted in the Call of Duties of the genre really does stand on his own as a unique character among other unique characters. On top of that, because of the popularity of these games (and believe me, we all love CoD as well), we found that a lot of players’ first reaction to the game was this feeling of being overwhelmed by our crazy cast of characters and they really wanted to start with a character that they could be somewhat familiar with. We’d hear feedback like “Don’t you guys just have a character with a normal rifle or something?”. So we were like, “yea you know what, we really should have that character…”[/blizzardquote]On if character’s backgrounds and origins will change their dialog options:
[blizzardquote author=”Michael Chu” link=”https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3dezkd/hey_roverwatch_were_here_for_a_quick_qa_about/ct4lv9w”]The different characters have special lines of dialogue in different situations that they say to each other. Sometimes it comes from a rivalry between two characters, sometimes friendship. And sometimes it’s just for some fun.[/blizzardquote]On how Soldier:76’s ultimate works:
[blizzardquote author=”Geoff Goodman” link=”https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3dezkd/hey_roverwatch_were_here_for_a_quick_qa_about/ct4nhno”]It works (hopefully) how you’d think it does, by automatically aiming at the nearest target to your reticle within a certain area on the screen, which is currently designating by that large circle in the HUD.The thing you might not know about it though is that it also locks your spread to zero, which means you can just hold the button down and go to town. This means even if you are an FPS god and somehow can literally hit every bullet without your ult, it still offers you a significant benefit in aim, in a sense. [/blizzardquote]
For more about Soldier: 76 and Overwatch’s general game design and story, check out the full Q&A over on Reddit.