I’ve been playing Junker Queen, and she feels incomplete as an OW hero.
Her First Person walk animation is fine, if a bit unremarkable compared to other heroes. But her footsteps are really soft and quiet, you could practically call them dainty. Why? Compared to other tanks, like Rein or Winston or Zarya, her movement feels incredibly generic and weightless. And that clearly doesn’t match her character design.
The other junker heroes, Junkrat and Roadhog, have incredibly unique animations for their walks, some of the best in the game, but she has maybe the most unremarkable walk we’ve seen. Where’s the handcrafted OW touch that other heroes have? Where’s the great sound design every other hero has?
Then, there’s how she looks from 3rd person perspective. Her design is fine, perfectly valid concept for a hero (maybe a little too Borderlands for my taste, but whatever). But her silhouette looks like an Ashe skin. It’s almost impossible to pick her out in a team fight. In a game that has such unique body types all over the place, how did we end up with another Ashe? And for a character practically begging to have some element of mechanical enhancement to her design!
But it’s not just her silhouette, her walk animation is also completely unremarkable. She walks like a normal person, a lot like Ashe. She doesn’t lumber around like other tanks, she just walks normally with her gun out. Where’s the personality? Just having writers give her rejected Borderlands dialogue isn’t a full personality, and it definitely isn’t enough to make an OW hero.
What does this even mean? Lmao. She’s not walking any less remarkably than Zarya. She’s not going to sound like a 400 lb man or a 500 lb gorilla. She doesn’t walk like them because she isn’t them. That’s not a problem. If her steps aren’t loud enough, they can just turn it up.
How many different ways can a person walk and how exaggerated do you think it needs to be? Junkrat walks the way he does because he has a pegleg. The Queen isn’t moving like she’s on drugs, but it’s fine for her personality and the weapons she’s wielding.
I don’t understand how anyone is confusing a 7ft tall muscular woman for Ashe; they’re body types are not at all the same. But this isn’t quite the first time I’ve heard this. Necros kept confusing her for a DPS hero in his stream. She’s definitely an unorthodox tank.
Lmao, what “normal people” do you hang around? If you put a silhouette of a person jogging next to the queen, it won’t look the same.
I think you’re confusing ticking the boxes on a campy caricature checklist with personality. If they exaggerated her walk a bit more, made her bigger, and increased the sound of her steps, would that suffice?
Yes, she is. Zarya lumbers, she’s carrying a huge gun and you can feel it. Her steps have weight. And she sounds exactly like she looks.
But she occupies the same role as them, and those aren’t just random character features. They are part of the role, a hero that is big and loud and draws attention. That’s what a tank is.
Infinite? Especially in a game that has basically no limit on body types.
As much as any other OW hero, while not being the exact same as any of them. The same standard as every other hero. She fails on both counts, looking just like Ashe (who fits a little better in the DPS role than as a tank).
If I am, so are the people writing her dialogue and directing her voice performance and designing her character model. So why did they not extend that to her animations and sound design? Why is the giant barbarian yelling all the time walking more delicately than Genji?
That would be more of an OW character, yes. That’s my point. The same as every other hero in this game. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation.
Actually her first person walk is the first thing I enjoyed about Junker Queen. She stomps around in punk-rocker boots, no she isn’t going to feel weighted because she isn’t weighted down (What she carries is light to her body type/size).
That stomp around is full of personality, it reminds me of Kurgan from Highlander… stomping around thinking she owns the place. Love it.
Yet it has no sound at all. And it isn’t represented in her 1st person view at all. That’s unlike every other hero in the game. Ana bounces around more than her while walking in 1st person. That’s insane!
JQ is arguably the loudest vocally, and I think it’s a fair trade for not being heavy. She also is a brawler, so she will get close enough for you to see/hit her. But if you don’t hear her coming by her voice (one of her abilities is literally just SCREAM) then you have your game muted.
And in terms of being big, she is like twice the height of Mercy. She just isn’t bulky and wide. I think they could’ve stood to have added her axe mounted on her back to give some width, but she’s fine.
Mayhaps she walks a bit like Ashe because she is also a physically unimpaired woman carrying a gun? (Though in reality she carries it differently from Ashe, in one hand, wielding a knife in the other) We’re all the same species, we’re going to walk in similar ways.
There are 32 other heroes with different walks that are easily distinguishable. Unique walk animations is not a brand new concept I made up, it’s a core part of the game.
Probably because Zarya is carrying a huge gun and Junker Queen is not. But that’s just a guess.
Well “loudness” and “drawing attention” definitely aren’t problems for her if recent complaints about her voice lines are anything to go by lmao.
Infinite, yes. Infinitely remarkable? No. Not without forcing it. She doesn’t need to walk like a clown to feel like an Overwatch hero.
Baptiste isn’t exaggerated or remarkable. I actually can’t stand his walk animation, personally. Not for this reason, though. Many of the characters don’t have exaggerated walking animations. They walk more “normally” than she does. And you really shouldn’t be confusing her walk with Ashe’s.
I don’t entirely disagree with that, but there’s more personality conveyed in her campy voice direction than what would be in your suggestion because her walk conveys enough. She is definitely not walking more delicately than Genji. Genji walks in a very stiff, but swift manner.
I think you have a few especially noticeable examples in mind and are tuning out all the examples where this isn’t the case. They don’t all have ridiculous or hyper-characterized walks. The only thing I agree with is that she doesn’t fit the lumbering tank mold, but I don’t necessarily agree that it’s a significant issue.
Describe her walk and what makes it unique from other walks.
That’s not my complaint. My point is that her walk doesn’t match her character, and it shows zero personality. People with unremarkable walks in OW still have walks that fit their character. Bap is boring, so is his walk. He’s a normal soldier, he has a normal soldier walk. That fits. It’s not weird for his walk to be unremarkable. It’s very weird for Junker Queens’s walk to be unremarkable.
Junker Queen should stomp around and SOUND LIKE she’s stomping around and FEEL like she’s stomping around in 1st person. She is an insane character, her walk should fit that. It doesn’t. It doesn’t have any sound, she has no unique character to her movement at all. As I said, Ana bounces around more than her while walking, and that’s weird.
She is an insane giant barbarian gladiator, she shouldn’t walk like a biker outlaw with inherited wealth. She should walk differently. That’s what OW does, that’s why OW characters are more memorable than any other hero-based game. Everything about them fits into a cohesive whole to create a clear, distinct character.
No he’s not. This character is insane, her walk should not be normal. Yes, she should walk like a clown, look at her! I mean really, look at her!
Yeah, that’s atypical for tanks. He is an exception, and it’s obviously because HE IS LITERLALY FLOATING. That’s a unique, cool thing about him. It makes sense.
So what’s Junker Queen’s reasoning for being quiet? What about her design indicates she should make no sound??
Hold on sonny, calm down. You want a clown, I want a Queen, I’m sure Blizzard can make a clown tank for you to play with while I get my Queen… let’s not lose our minds over this, I’m sure there’s a sensible compromise.
She has a 12 pack, a blue mohawk, and parts of dead sentient robots all over her. She is an insane character. I’m sorry, but she just is. I don’t think “she should have a distinct walk in a game known for distinct walks” is that big of a stretch.
