Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan loves battle royale modes and discusses the challenges that would come along with introducing the game variant to the Blizzard shooter.
Anyone who has been gaming in 2018 knows that battle royale is the trend of the year. The PUBG craze brought the 100 player free-for-all mode to the forefront of the community and, since then, similar modes in many other games have become incredibly popular. Although the trend has worked out well in many games, Blizzard isn’t so sure that would be the case for Overwatch.
There is no shortage of demand for a battle royale mode in Overwatch, but the game’s director and designers don’t want to rush into anything. Director Jeff Kaplan recently spoke with Kotaku about his thoughts on battle royale modes and why bringing one to Blizzard’s shooter presents a serious challenge.
Kaplan made it clear in the interview that he’s a big fan of the game mode, and of PUBG, but he also sounded like the dev team wouldn’t want to rush into a new mode without a serious plan. The unbalanced 1v1 face-offs and the range of most character attacks seem to be the biggest stumbling blocks for bringing the mode to Overwatch…
“First and foremost, Overwatch is a game about heroes, and part of what makes the core loop work in a battle royale game is the search, the looting, and the fairness that everybody’s sort of equal… Overwatch wasn’t designed to be a 1v1. Every hero’s not balanced against every other hero.” “I think there are also some technical challenges of large, open game spaces… Our primary engagement distance is usually around 15 to 40 meters. The Hanamura dojo point B is 45 meters across. I don’t think people realize how tiny it is. Part of what makes Fortnite and PUBG so awesome is that you can have these really long engagement distances.”
As much as everyone would love to see a new battle royale mode full of Overwatch characters, Kaplan’s logic definitely makes sense. In order to make the looting and long-distance encounters really work, Overwatch would need to be totally redesigned in some ways.
That said, it doesn’t sound like the option is totally off the table at this point. Blizzard is full of very creative designers and it’s quite possible that they can crack the problem and find a way to make the mode work in Overwatch. Blizzard also doesn’t like to rush into things though, so there’s the chance the fad will be long gone by the time the team finds an appropriate solution.
Either way, it’s still exciting to know that the Overwatch team likes the idea and is still spitballing. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that some kind of battle royale variation arrives eventually. Until then, there’s always more Fortnite!
Overwatch is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
