For those of you who don't know, Overwatch is a new team-based FPS, being made by Blizzard. Yes, those guys who did World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm and Starcraft. Currently, there is no actual release date, but there is a confirmed Beta start in 'Fall 2015' (or Around September for non-Americans), as Blizzard like to do their stuff in the Autumn such as Blizzcon.
So, let's draw some lines. Overwatch has a very unique, clean, almost Pixar-esq Artstyle, similar to another first person Hat Simulator we all know. As many people are already making the comparison, we're going to contrast Overwatch's Heroes with the Mercenary's in Valve's Team Fortress 2. Now, we don't have much in terms of visuals for Overwatch as it is in a pre-Alpha state (though looks very polished), and much of this will be speculation, based on short videos and the steadily growing Gameplay previews being put out by Blizzard. But I suppose I should start with some background.
Overwatch's story is relatively simple. In the future, Humanity has had great success in making robots to do jobs and fight wars. However, shit's got a bit Terminator up in here, and the Robots have had an uprising called the 'Omnic Crisis'. In response, Overwatch, a global peacekeeping force, was created to stop this crisis, and recruited many heroes and champions to fight the Robots. Eventually, the Robots were defeated, and Overwatch was disbanded. Many Heroes in Overwatch served this peacekeeping force during the crisis or afterwards, and are merely continuing their duties to the world, but not employed by Overwatch.
While there are some similarities to Team Fortress 2, there are some great divides. Yes, they both have a very different artstyles from the brown corridor norm, and are class based. And that's about where the similarities end. Firstly, Blizzard have said they want a focus on changing Heroes rather than loadouts, like in TF2. But the main difference is probably that we've only seen 6 v 6 matches, and that might be all we see when Overwatch is released (for now, lets presume it is). Yes, many things in Overwatch seem OP, but for a very good reason. There's only ever 6 people on a team, so everyone has to pull their weight. In TF2, teams are commonly 12 or even 16 people on each team, so if there's a few noobs who have no idea how to play, the other 9 or 10 people will cover for them.
Another key difference is abilities. Each Hero has 3 Abilities: A 'basic', a 'not so basic' and an 'ultimate'. While many people will despair over the lack of Ubercharge in Overwatch, what's important to remember is that effectively everyone has their own Ubercharge. Which, unlike TF2, allows each Hero to pull their own weight and make no class entirely necessary. Also, an interesting note, is the Ultimate ability. It charges on damage dealt (or damage dealt by healing target for healers), but doesn't go away if you die, only if you change Hero. So even if you suck balls at Overwatch (which we probably all will at the start), you're going to be popping an Ultimate. And I also like the fact that each Hero has a loud Audio cue when popping an ultimate, so your enemies know when to shit themselves when you bombard the living daylights outta them.
But, what's speculation without detail? Let's do some breakdown of Heroes in Overwatch.
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