In Overwatch, players are rewarded with loot boxes at every level that contain new skins and other cosmetic items for players to customize the characters in the game.
Advertisement
Furthermore, Harris states that Paladins itself grew up from a previous project from the company, a similar hero-based shooter called Global Agenda.
“As a last point, it would be nearly impossible for a studio of our size to “clone” Overwatch in a year, but Overwatch did have some nice features that we made a decision to incorporate into Paladins (Kill Cam, Improved Lag comp, some verbiage like “eliminations”)” Harris concluded. Game development is an interactive process with ideas coming from many past projects.
Harris explained that numerous ideas that are present in Overwatch, such as defending a payload to move it forward, actually originated in their title Global Agenda, while other ideas originated in Valve’s Team Fortress 2. Now another game is attracting unfavourable comparisons with Overwatch: Hi-Rez’s class-based shooter Paladins.
Numerous character archetypes that appear in its game and Overwatch though, were ones it created or re-used in earlier games, it claims. According to Harris, “of the approximately 85 combat abilities now in Paladins, the vast majority are from the game Global Agenda we made 10 years ago”.
Paladins, a video game that looks very much like Overwatch, has taken some heat for its similarities to Blizzard’s popular team shooter-to the point where last night one of Paladins’ top developers felt compelled to write a big ol’ Reddit post explaining how it isn’t a clone at all. “People who are interested can see all this early gameplay footage on YouTube and come to their own conclusions”. Paladins entered closed beta on November 17, 2015, while Overwatch entered a close beta in October 2015. Global Agenda released in 2010, whereas Overwatch was announced in 2014. The game’s characters D.
IGN has reached out to Blizzard for comment about the comparisons and will update this story should they respond. Va and Mei – those who have been compared to Paladins’ Ruckus and Evie respectively – were revealed and detailed for Overwatch at Blizzcon 2015.
Advertisement
Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN.
