Ohhh no… It happened…

Overwatch 2 was officially announced at BlizzCon 2019 today! From someone that has been mildly and unhealthily obsessed with Overwatch since it was first announced (you could even say I was interested even before it was officially known as Overwatch, RIP Titan), I think OW2 looks amazing, and I am already consummately consumed with anticipatory-giddiness!

Anyway! With the new iteration comes some great character redesigns! Ithink all of them are mostly fantastic (Reinhardt’s top-knot hair is… Choices™️) and it’s nice that they’re more subtle tweaks instead of complete reworkings or overhauls. The silhouettes of these characters are just so well crafted! Both from a character/personality standpoint and from a game design perspective; the silhouettes immediately signal to players which character is which, even from large distances, even with the expansive library of skins. So these designs are excellent because it shows proportionate character progression (it’s just been 3 years since OW was released, but I don’t know how much in-game time has supposedly passed) while simultaneously streamlining and modernizing the character’s designs.

They haven’t released all of the updated designs, but I’ve made these handy GIFs that compare the New Lewks with the Current Lewk for each hero since the interface on PlayOverwatch.com kinda sucks…

Now my only hope is that Blizzard stops being a dumbass in time for Overwatch 2′s release! Because I definitely won’t buy anything from Blizzard while they’re still stifling the right to protest and freespeech.

Anyway, follow me for more Overwatch and other various LGBTQ+ Gaming related things on Twitch (nearly daily) and Tumblr!

<sb> hrmh. i’m substiantally less impressed by linkin park playing blizzcon than i was by metallica last year.

<sb> CRAWLING IN MY SKIN / THE PRIEST, HE WON’T CAST HEAL

<sb> looks like metallica’s playing blizzcon this year.

<sb> For Whom the Bell? Trolls.

<sb> Wherever I May Rogue

<sb>Leper GnomeMessiah

kokkili:

Overwatch 2 looks for Widowmaker, Reaper, McCree, and Pharah

addictedtooverwatch:

I had really low expectations coming into Blizzconline, but luckily they did much better than I expected!!! We got Rome, a map in India(I don’t know exact where it will be), New York, and the new looks for Widow, Reaper, McCree, and Pharah. This all combined with the fact that there looks to be an or a couple animations in the works brings back a lot of the hype I was feeling when OW 2 was first confirmed!

“Those who dare harm my people will not live to see the sunrise!”

In case y'all haven’t seen the new cinematic of Malfurion kicking Horde ass, just know THE NIGHT ELVES ARE PISSED AND READY TO RETALIATE and MY GIRL HAS A NEW LOOK

Bread’s Game Journal 04/19/22: Grizzly Hills 2: Grizzlier Hills.

Hell yeah, a new WoW expansion was revealed today! More content for my all time favorite game is always a good thing, and from the looks of things, Dragonflight is off to a great start! New race, new class, new continent (See you in hell separate zones only accessible by flight path!), Dragon Riding, revamped professions, it’s all really exciting!

That said, I’m hyper fixated on one thing they showed today and I know that I’m gonna be until I get there in my playthrough: the Azure Span. Blizzard directly name dropped Grizzly Hills as an inspiration for this zone today, and if you know anything about me, you know I love that place. Hell, I have that place set as my Steam VR home so I can load into it whenever I play VR games, I would live in it if it was real.

From what little we’ve seen it’s obviously taking after Grizzly Hills, but more so, I think it might just be taking after Northrend in general? It has snow, towering red-woods, orange tundra, furbolgs etc etc. Hell, it even has Tuskarr! With great new models! Did we ever think we were going to see those guys again!? Cause I sure didn’t. There’s a lot to look forward to in Dragonflight, but I already know where the bulk of my hype is centered!

Bread’s Game Journal 01/18/21: Microsoft Is Buying Activision-Blizzard And I Am Very Happy.

To come out in front of this, let me just say, yes Monopolies are bad for any creative industry in which they’re present. That said, I not only have no qualms with Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard for near 70 billion dollars, I am in fact completely ecstatic that it’s happened. Let’s not beat around the bush here, Activision-Blizzard has had a rough year, or so, in the news. Widespread abuse revelations, constant delays, Booby Kotick in general, it was pretty much one long downhill slope. Now though? Now I have some hope, and let me explain why.

Activision in general holds, arguably, about 80% of the IP’s that are important to me as someone who loves video games. A few years ago they actually started doing something with some of the bigger ones they held. Crash and Spyro got fantastic remakes, Crash got a new game, even Tony Hawk came back for a brief, but fantastic remake of the first two games. Then none of those games made a billion dollars, and Activision threw them all in the hottest pile of trash you’ve ever seen without a second thought.

Activision is one of the most brutally stupid companies to ever exist. They’re so obsessed with sure thing bets, that they’ve taken almost every studio they own, all of whom have shown great talent in the past, and place them all on one franchise, instead of growing any kind of diversity of output. But now, we might actually be free. You know what company of late has shown a fantastic willingness to use their IP to explore new and different genres? Microsoft. You know what company wants and needs smaller budget content that doesn’t necessarily need to make a trillion dollars? Microsoft. And they’re the ones who bought Activision! You see where I’m going with this?!

None of this is even to mention the possibilities laid now in front of existing games. Could you imagine some kind of World of Warcraft subscription being added to PC Gamepass? It wouldn’t just save some of us a lot of money, but could cause a large new base of people to discover the game! Overwatch could see an influx of players. Even just adding the back catalog of games from the Activision-Blizzard lineup could drive Game Pass numbers for a long time. Imagine a day when Call of Duty games, which are notorious for stubbornly keeping their full price even years after they’re irrelevant, are all added to Game Pass for players to easily access whenever they wanted.

Again, I know it’s isn’t super thrilling to see the makings of a monopoly form, but you know what? Right now I truly don’t care. For me, this is indisputable good news. I truly cannot wait for this deal to go all the way through, and to finally feel excited about the future of these IP again. Because boy, do I gotta say, I’m sick as hell of just sort of shrugging and thinking “Well, at lest WoW still makes enough money for them to keep making more of it.”.