Well the bar is so low that anything they give us will be a big deal.
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I really need more lore. Hopefully they give us something major soon
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Always a pleasure delivering this piece form Dinoflask if a lore thread pops-up now and then:
I’d advise OP to remove any OW staff or developer clean off this thread. The last time there was a 100 post thread criticizing the Story/Visual team it was deleted.
Objectively, 2018 is the most lore-empty year until this quarter. Last year was O.K. but the cancelled First Strike 100-page lore comic was disappointing.
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It’s not that hard. Hell, there are fanfic writers making better content than the overwatch team are currently, and those are people who are doing it for free as a side project.
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As a minor note, I wouldn’t say that all the playable characters have to be part of Overwatch.
Symmetra, the Junkers, D.Va, Zenyatta, Lucio etc. all have their own things going on. They may brush against the main story of OW vs Talon, but they’re currently just part of the world, not the main conflict.
Though I agree that the lore has been oddly nonexistent as of late. The characters have been designed to be bursting with personality, they’ve released several comics, Blizz have spent big bucks on Pixar-quality animated shorts that expand backstories,…so the lack of content just seems at odds with what they’re trying to create.
Overwatch has offered so little in the way of an actual cohesive story, or even overall world-building “lore”, that the game having an actual writing team makes no sense whatsoever. The total number of offerings over the past 2+ years has been absolutely abysmal, and that’s taking into account every animated short, comic, and in-game snippet.
I find it hard to believe Blizzard could actually justify having even just a lead writer — let alone a whole team — for the game as it stands now, not unless those people are also working on other things or games for Blizzard.
Setting aside the actual unavoidable time it would take to render the more advanced animated shorts, the sum total of what we’ve seen story-wise is about what you’d expect to see in just a couple of months from a lone developer making an indie game, not in over two years from a professional big-budget studio.
The reality is that “lore” doesn’t sell loot boxes or convince people to watch esports, so it’s not really a priority, and never will be unless those first two elements magically disappear.
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You really hit the nail on the head here. Blizzard is not a small indie company and we should stop treating them so.
We are barely getting anything in-game, our standards are so low that we are satisfied with comic books. If anyone is familiar with Manga’s they are pumped 20 pages on a weekly basis or 50 pages on a monthly basis.
These are very small teams and yet they out pace Blizzard’s team who puts out 20 pages every 6 to 8 months on average.
The flash backs for in game events only happen once per year and the story delivered is extremely limited.
The shorts while high quality are rare but that’s to be expected. However if Blizzard used the game’s own models to deliver short cinematic then that would allow them to deliver more content faster.
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They just hired a new writer to add to the Overwatch development team. Maybe there is hope?