Jeff Kaplan reveals 5 secrets about the supporters of Overwatch that were lost during development.
During the development of Overwatch, there were many changes and discarded plans that ultimately never saw the light of the internet. Jeff Kaplan has now revealed 5 of these secrets in a video from IGN – we will show you the video and present the 5 things.
Ana was originally named “The Alchemist” and could brew various potions and salves that she threw at enemies and allies. It was only when the concept of the sniper healer was on the table that her current playstyle and ability kit were formed.
Lúcio‘s first ultimate slowed down time – for all players except Lúcio. While other players moved in slow motion, Lúcio could move at normal speed, shoot people, and push them around. However, this felt quite strange when you suddenly got slowed down while running back from the spawn room – so this idea was discarded.
Mercy originally did not carry her name – but Pharah was named Mercy! Then Pharah was referred to in the code as “Rocket Dude”, shortly thereafter renamed to “Rocket Queen” and finally received the name Pharah. This caused funny incidents internally at Blizzard, as it took a while for the developers to get used to it. They often logged in Pharah when someone told them to play Mercy. By the way, the original name of Mercy was simply “Angelika”.
Symmetra could already use a teleporter in her first iteration, but had to place both the entrance and the exit. This led to many players never finding the entrance. That’s why they discarded the concept, and the entrance now always stands in the same place in the spawn room of the respective team.
Zenyatta was the second healer programmed and initially had the unremarkable name “Cyber Monk”. The idea behind him was to be able to provide healing to people without being in immediate proximity, in contrast to Mercy. Thus, the various orbs for Zenyatta were created.
What do you think of these ideas and old concepts? Funny things or good that they were never in the finished game?
