What is Blizzard's stance on heroes with super powers?

General Discussion
1

I know you can claim technology does most of the work for our heroes, but then you look at Genji and Hanzo’s dragons, which clearly revolve around some supernatural force. And despite that it’s technology-based, Tracer’s time-manipulation is more-or-less a super-power.

So what I’d like to know is if Blizzard would be willing to, every now and then, add a hero who has supernatural abilities like ESP, Pyrokinesis, or something else.

EDIT: For anyone interested, I have a Hero Concept for a heroine with psychic/psionic powers.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/hero-concept-psych-defense-telepath/85627

2

Seeing as how they have a character that basically Kamehamehas as an ult, I would imagine it isn’t too far out of the question. It would still be an oddity in such a universe unless they explained it very well.

3

So Telepathy/Telekinesis wouldn’t be out of the question as an ultra-rare trait, right?

4

They would have to explain it as a form of science, rather than a magic, but sure, why not?

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5

Or as a mental mutation, of sorts. They do it for X-Men, after all.

6

“Magic is only magic until science can explain it.”

So the things we think of as supernatural today might be easily scientifically explained tomorrow.

There are already smidgens of telepathic examples. Some sets of twins very often exhibit some odd abilities to know what the other is thinking, or if the other is hurt, etc.

So “mind magic” such as that probably has some roots in science. I’m assuming in an age where light dragons can be summoned from a bow, we have figured that out. :stuck_out_tongue:

But short answer: Yeah, I imagine we could have any kind of hero imaginable. Everything can always be explained as “future science.”

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7

Except, of course, anything involving turning Winston into a sheep. :stuck_out_tongue:

8

As long as he can still use Primal Rage in that form…

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/skylanders/images/1/1a/Really_Angry_Sheep.png/revision/latest?cb=20161028212714(image larger than 4 MB)

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

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9

Genji and Hanzo have magic.

10

I’d like to point out that the arm Doomfist used to break himself out of prison is an advanced prosthetic made by his own company. This is pointed out in his story section, but if you go back and look at the animated teaser video you can see it very clearly has a different skin tone and a mechanical look to it.

As to why the prison didn’t take his prosthetic off while he was serving time is a whole other question, but Doomfist does NOT have super powers. Any other super strength could be explained by his training and other cybernetics found all over his body.

11

Fair enough, but it’s not so easy to explain Genji and Hanzo’s dragons.

12

Short explenation - Devs thought it will be apropriate ultimate for shimadas, fitting thematicaly.
In world explenation - it is Shimada clan mystery what they are.(Aka you provide us anwser, because we didn’t got that far yet)

Personally I blame nanobots. Dragons are wave of glowing nanobots programed to destroy it target.

About superpowered heroes. We do have genetic experiments and mad scientist doing said experiments (Moira). Maybe there will be some mutants with superpower but for now everyone have rather technology based power sets.

13

Can anybody here explain mercy rez scientifically? And reaper transforming into shadow. If it isn’t superpowers, I don’t know what it is.

14

It’s all magic. Overwatch is futuristic fantasy. Like Star Wars.

15

We can easily assume, given what we know from science, that most of the heroes use superpowers. Seriously… Our current science cannot prove many of their powers.

I mean… Mei’s gun is a hairdryer. All those shields? They let “good shots” through but not “bad shots?” But let’s go down the list of superpowers:

Ana - Shoots some sort of drug into team mate that gives them Hulk strength for limited time

Mercy - Can hover with light-based wings; Can revive people

Bastion - No superpowers whatsoever; pretty accurate futuristic machine (except for that self-fix… it’s a little fantastical)

Brigitte - Her shield… again: good goes through, bad does not

Junk - Is impervious to own explosives???

Roadhog - Even those nails are WAY too accurate… but no, no superpower

D.Va - Her superpower is her delusion. She thinks she’s in a game (hmm… is she, perhaps?)

Doomfist - He jumps extremely high, like the Hulk, and comes down Hulk Smash!

Widow - Telepathic targeting mechanism gives her the ability to show enemies to fellow squad mates

Reaper - Back when he COULD “reap,” that was a superpower. Everything he does is still a superpower.

Genji - you mentioned it (dragon blade)

Hanzo - you mentioned it (dragon arrow)

Lucio - Can tweak gravity/friction to ride on walls and move faster, can share the latter of these two with others; temporarily gives everyone superhuman strength with his ult

McCree - Ability to hit up to 6 targets with revolver without missing, even if they are moving

Mei - yeah… everything

Moira - her own version of Reaper’s Wraith form (or was it originally Moira’s?.. hmmmm)

Orisa - Selective gravitational pull (Halt)… pulls people but not objects; may explain why neither Torb turret or Bastion in Sentry can be pulled; Gives squad mates super strength for limited time

Pharah - Not really super in any way… better with Mercy or babysitting Brigitte/Zen

Rein - Same shield thing

Soldier - His ult may one day be achievable through science; no supoerpowers

Sombra - umm… turns invisible

Symmetra - Can teleport people without disturbing space-time continuum; very super

Torbjorn - Magical hammer easily constructs highly advanced sentry turrets

Tracer - Let’s not even go here… she’s a mess that seems very scientific, but is really fantastical

Winston - Hulk form

Zarya - Same shield thing

Zen - Gives everyone invincibility for a short period of time, using “meditation” (should’ve used that on his master; then Widow wouldn’t have killed him)

16

Rez specifically is not hard to explain.

Its not a true “ressurect” in the sense of bringing someone dead back to life, rather its injecting a person who is incapacitated due to injuries with a large amount of biotic nanomachines and then sending them into overdrive to rapidly repair the damage to get the person at the bare minimum mobile and able to defend themselves. With the biotic nanites basically going inert after the process due to consuming all of their resources and power.

Reaper is an actual abomination of science straddling between life and death stuck in a cycle of massive high speed decay and regeneration. He turns into smoke by somehow forcing himself to decay and then pulls himself back together.

He is pretty much the only thing, aside from what Moira has learned off of studying him, to have a “super power”.

As Hanzo and Genji have what basically amounts to dragons made of energy.

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17

There are a lot of theories about what their dragons are, one theory that I agree with is that their dragons are massive swarms of nanomachines that get inside their enemies’ bodies and damage them from inside

18

This would be amazing, I would love to see a character that has a supernatural power like controlling fire, magnets, water, earth and other things too.

19

I think they started out with science to explain, then decided to go for cool with some heroes instead of science. So there is some sort of unexplained in the world of Overwatch. For Genji and Hanzo I’m not sure how they’ll explain it using science, the only thing I can come up with is Hanzo’s tattoo being a nanonpartical base infused with hard light (sort of the same used by Symmetra), so that when he speaks the “right phrase” the hard light is activated and taking the shape that the tattoo is made off. Genji - being of the same brother - has had the same treatment, and as such can “control” the hard light sent out by Hanzo (meaning it’s somewhat DNA coded).

Well, that’s the only scientifically explanation I can come up with for Hanzo.

20

Yeah, that’s how I’d view Mercy’s Rez. It saves you inches from death.

As for the dragons being nano-machines, that seems a tad far-fetched, as why would they take on a dragon shape?