Overwatch is a highly stylized team-based shooter created by Blizzard Entertainment, which is set on earth in the near future, but not-so separated by time and space as StarCraft, or as fantastical as Warcraft.
An international task force of heroes were banded together in a time of global crisis to restore peace in a world of conflict.
The game features 12 confirmed array of unique heroes, ranging from a time-jumping adventurer, to an armored, rocket-hammer-wielding warrior, to a transcendent robot monk. Every hero plays differently, looks differently regarding even the sizes, genders and ages, and mastering their abilities is the key to unlocking their potential.
Heroes' were revealed as Pharah, Reaper, Tracer, Hanzo, Zenyatta, Mercy, Symmetra, Torbjorn, Bastion, Reinhardt, Widowmaker and Molten Core.
According to the developer, it wants players to feel well-represented by its cast of men and women (and robots and gorillas).
According to Polygon, Blizzard's Chris Metzen and Jeff Kaplan answered questions about the representation of women in their new game and their approach to designing female characters during a press conference at BlizzCon:
"We've heard [from] our female employees and ... even my daughter tools me out about it," Metzen said. "We were looking at old Warcraft stuff on YouTube, a cinematic ... and my daughter is like, 'Why are they all in swimsuits?' And I'm like 'Ugh, I don't know, honey.'
"I think we're clearly in an age where gaming is for everybody," he continued. "We build games for everybody. We want everyone to come and play. Increasingly, people want to feel represented, from all walks of life, boys and girls, everybody. We feel indebted to do our best to honor that. There's a lot of room for growth, but specifically with Overwatch, over the past year we've been very cognizant of ... trying not to over-sexualize the female characters. I don't know that we've over-sexualized the male characters. But it's something that we're very sensitive to."
"We want that to be a part of who we are, what our brand looks like and appears to our community. Mike [Morhaime] talked in a roundabout way to that in his speech this morning. So it's something we're very cognizant of. We want girls to feel kick-butt, equally represented."
"We want everybody to feel kick-butt," Kaplan added.
Aside from having good feedbacks for the game, they are also getting comments that Overwatch should be filmed:
Scratch the game. I want to see this as a movie.
@Ovirew oh man if they can pull off a storyline like The Incredibles, this will be a top earner.
Overwatch will be available on PC in 2015.
