Setting aside all grief about Hazard ability wise, Blizzard is making the least bit of effort to create a new hero personality wise. Look at the last couple of heroes they released.
I think generally the last hero they actually build a personality for was Kiriko. Rammatra and WifeLeaver are much less well-written but still somewhat fun, cool and managable.
But since Illari it all went downhill fast.
Illari - boring, self-tortured dead-serious woman. Cool to play, but without a shred of a good voice line between her.
Mauga - his personality is great, but one can argue he was written already years prior so they actually had no need to put any work into him. He was anticipated since forever, when he was shown in Bap’s backstory.
Venture - non-attractive, non-binary somebody who just talks about old stuff and makes rock-jokes…? I have nothing.
Juno - Ok, she’s sweet and all, but she’s mostly played for comedy value. “Hey everyone! I’m a Martian who doesn’t understand human culture and mistakes everything for something else. Love you all! <3” Yeah, despite how I like her hero, that’s not exactly a “personality”. And besides it’s just a rip-off of Starfire from Teen Titans.
I could let all of the above slide though somehow.
But with Hazard it’s… i just… can’t. He’s an:
angry
scottish
dude
and says “Cannae” all the time.
That’s it.
A truly masterfully written hero if ever there was one.
Watch her short. Her personality is that she is a sweet girl who is very anxious but tries to maintain a positive mindset. She isn’t very confident in her abilities but still pulls through.
Come on… say it… “OW2 bad, OW1 was better in every way!”
I am sorry, but thats all preference. While I dont like Illari and Soj, every OW2 hero has an amazing personality and is more notable than older heroes in my book.
I did watch it originally when it came out. Well it’s a positive character surely, and it all speaks well towards modern society and default anime heroes. And she is the most fun new hero in a long time, but probably because she’s Support, and somehow Blizzard seems to be better at making Support heroes than other roles.
I literally cannot disagree any harder.
OW2 heroes are fun to play - yes.
They mostly all have positive personalities - yes.
But positive =/= well written.
And Hazard is just not there. He’s fun to play, but it’s like playing an empty shell of a man.
Maybe it would be better if he’d actually was convincing with his anger. He’s voiced so badly he doesn’t even feel like his heart is in this “revolution”.
Also you can literally make a valid argument that an angry, freedom-fighting Scotsman is as cliche stereotype ad you can get. Only one worse would be if he was Irish.
We also have to swallow the pill that the lore is dead and most people only care about how a characters feels and acts with other in the game and on THAT level, Hazard might be with Juno one of the best additions to the game. They have a strong personality and you FEEL like the character. With someone like 76 or Soj you dont feel much I would say. Story is one thing, character another if you know what I try to say.
But with regards to having a strong personality - I just don’t FEEL much when playing him. I am having fun and totally own the battlefield. I like mobile characters and he’s a great addition in that regard.
Still I don’t feel like him, since he’s not really communicating to me what this heroes inner character is all about. It’s a fun game, but an empty one so far.
With Juno I can agree. With Hazard not really…
It’s too early however to say he’s a great addition since it’s still techincally a demo of a hero. They can totally still rework a lot of his abilities and I’d honestly agree if they in fact did. Same goes with how well he works with others.
My friend just told me that playing Moira for example he didn’t feel like we did too good (though we owned the enemy, and with only 1 DPS to help us) because I kept building walls and wasting his Orbs. When I was playing I felt we did work great, but from his perspective I obstructed him too often
The whole Wall thing is really the hardest aspect in his kit to control. But as I said, it’s just that it’s way too early. I mean Juno was perfect at her Trial Run and Blizz still decided to release her with weird patches, which later got reverted somewhat (at least I think they were…)
I think its because they don’t wanna set anything thats too developing, remember anything that hints at development in character means something to do with the story in the game, and we all know thats 6 feet underground. So they just play it safe.
Mauga and junkerqueen and from the looks of it Hazard are similar, very loud and chaotic personalities (despite junkerqueen being VERY different in her short)
Soujourn and Juno are I guess quiet, out of all the new characters they are probably the most normal acting people
Venture is a a bandkid
This is all just my guess, but out of all the new characters Ram stands out the most, most likely because they already had his story and personality finished a long time ago.
Really? Illari and Hazard are worse characters than Kiriko? They have actual backstory while she’s a magical teenage girl. And don’t get me started on her voice lines. Oh Pharah-chan, I never lose.
As an avid Hazard supporter the dude’s got lots of personality. He’s cocky and confident, and yeah he’s angry but his life was literally ruined by Overwatch so I wouldn’t exactly see him playing nice with them. His trailer showed that he’s at the very least something of a thrill seeker. His kill lines against Talon leaders and Ramattra pretty openly show he opposes them morally. He gets a thrill out of the fight and is constantly mocking the enemy in one way or another. He’s proud of being a cyborg which is a nice change from Genji’s existential crisis over it and Sojourn seeing it as a tool to make her personal performance better. Hazard sees his prosthesis pretty clearly as a new lease on life. On top of which it’s shown that he managed to get pulled out of depression and found a new zest for life with the Phreaks over it.
He’s just as bombastic and over the top as any other character. I just think you’re having a hard time with his accent.
