Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter

simple@lemm.ee to Games@lemmy.world – 378 points – Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter
eurogamer.net

Though the way the leaker describes it makes it sound more like a 3rd person MOBA than a hero shooter.

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I just want a nice story driven single player game from Valve again that isn't VR.

Same. Something I can play, save anywhere to deal with life, and pick back up when time allows. I was one of those weirdos who really enjoyed Doom 3 when it came out (with the ducttape mod; that was one mechanic I didn't like) and grew up on old Commodore, Amiga, and PC single-player games and NES/SNES/Genisis RPGs. I want that again.

Have you played A Plague Tale (innocence, then requiem)? It's one of the best story driven games I've ever played. It's entirely linear, so plot urgency doesn't feel artificial like it does in open world games.

I liked the plot of this game, but I did not like it as a game. I have not played the second one.

I played the first one but not the second yet. I did enjoyed the experience and the hairstyles stood out for the character designs with the ribbons.

Me too but it'll never happen. The age of good single player AAA games are long long gone.

Wasn’t last years game of the year, Baldurs gate 3, a triple Aaa, single player, game that had an amazing story?

Year before was Elden Ring. I've never played that one online.

Hang on, that is a single player game? I now auto-discard AAA games up front because most of them are online multiplayer affairs with fancy in-game items to purchase and silly anti-cheat gimmicks that give Linux users a hard time.

I might look into buying this one, then.

Yep. You can play alone, couch co-op with controllers, or with friends online if that's what you're into. I've logged a couple of hundred hours alone and another hundred or so couch co-op.

I want to play it in couch co-op but I kept hearing that you miss out on content by playing it that way. For a first playthrough, is that true?

You're going to miss content no matter how you play. It's the nature of the game. Some decisions lock you out of options.

I can't think of anything you'd inherently miss from couch co-op.

I played through the whole game with my gf and didn’t see nor read anything that would indicate that.

Regardless of if you play, solo or with up to 4 people there are 4 characters in your party. Your main character can be one of the predefined ones or not. You will probably have/want a mix of both.

First play through will take more than 100h and you will still have plenty to see for subsequent playtroughs. It’s literally impossible to see all of it first time regardless of how you play.

Just get it, it’s not just a GOTY, it’s one of the best games in a long while.

No. My girlfriend and I are 140 hours in and still not finished, and I'm amazed at how smooth the coop works with the story. You can each be different places doing different things, or you can travel together, you can each have your own relationships with npcs. A lot of conversations with npcs will repeat depending on who's talking, but important story ones won't. As long as you mostly stick together and make choices together, you'll have every option a single player game does.

Indeed! You can choose to co-op with friends, but it isn't necessary at all. It's a really nice model for RPGs.

1000 IQ power move: Valve promotes a fake game with fake trailers and fake reviews.

Day of the release approaches.

People buy and fire it up.

Starting screen says “Half Life 3”.

Thousands die from a stroke.

I'd like a HL3, but not yet another competitive pvp game. So not sure if that would be the right approach if they can't even hit the same target audience.

I'm inclined to agree with you, but Valve doesn't often miss

They don't often shoot either. I would agree when they do shoot they tend to hit though. At minimum, it'll be interesting to see what the studio with such a large stream of revenue finally decides to release. Even if it's horrible, it'll be a moment to remember.

Valve hasn't released nothing but tech demos since Artifact, and that was a huge miss. And excluding Artifact, Valve hasn't released nothing but tech demos in over a decade. So you could say Valve hasn't hit the mark in over 10 years.

Alyx came out 4 years ago, and is recognized as one of the best VR titles of all time. It's a full 15 hour game, so not a tech demo. I'd say that's a hit.

Alex is a tech demo designed to sell headsets.

It also was unplayable for me made me sick and I can play things like super hot or beat saber for hours

Super Hot and Beat Saber don't cause motion sickness. If you have no idea about how the different kinds of VR movement affect nausea and haven't developed any VR legs, then that's absolutely on you. Especially given that Alyx remains accessible to people prone to motion sickness by giving you the option for teleport locomotion and snap turning instead. I know my limits and while I can use smooth locomotion, I still use snap turning. Don't blame the game if you don't know your limits and it's essentially your first VR game in which you don't stay in a single spot.

Valves next game...

SQUEEEEEE!!!!

it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter

My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

Won’t hurt to give it a shot, but I’ll be cautiously optimistic.

This seems reasonably different than the headline implies. It's a hero shooter, in that there are classes based on heroes (like Team Fortress 2 as well). The gameplay is more moba it sounds like. I think I've only played one other moba shooter, and it failed quickly, so that's different already.

It's not a copy of OW, and even if it were it could still innovate. Half Life might be a "Doom Clone", but it did stuff no one had done before. There's plenty of innovation potential without inventing a new genre. Even if you do create a new genre, it's probably still just evolution of existing things. No one ever has an original idea. It's always inspired by their environment.

All fair points, and given the way Valve operates (like a free collective) this would only happen if there were some really passionate people leading and working on it.

That said, it’s still a mix of things I just really do not have any interest in. Competitive online game, esports focused, MOBA-like, PvP, hero shooter… that’s a whole lot of hard no-thanks from me.

I’d love some new light-narrative single player and/or co-op stuff from them, though.

Man, I was taught "don't judge a book by it's cover" but you're burying it by it's genre, I hope you can experience new things once in a while .

What if you've already played all the big names in that genre and hate all of them?

It's been many years, maybe even decades, since I liked a straight up turn-based single player RPG. I seriously can't think of one that has sucked me in since FFX. I even tried Divinity Original Sin 2 after so much hype and good reviews from my friends. But I just didn't like it.

However, Baldur's Gate 3 sucked me in. According to steam, approaching 100 hours of playtime (although I'm sure there is a good chunk of time where I just walked away with the PC with it "paused.")

I'm not saying you'll like the game, I have no idea. But to already be convinced that you won't like it based on pretty much the nothing we've got it terribly presumptuous.

I don't think 'past data' is nothing. Something might defy your expectations but its perfectly reasonable to expect you won't like something if you've never liked anything from that genre before. I'm not ordering pizza from a restaurant if I've eaten 12 pizzas before and never liked any of them. I'm ordering the pasta or something.

Especially if you have liked games that company has made in other genres you already know you do like. I'd have been pretty excited about almost any other Valve announcement.

I hope the game is good for people who like that sort of thing.

I’m not ordering pizza from a restaurant if I’ve eaten 12 pizzas before and never liked any of them.

I was very intentional with my language, and pointed out that we know pretty much nothing about the game, so claiming you know you won't like it is h reasonable. This is nothing like having a pizza, not liking it, and then not getting that same pizza again. This is like not liking the pizza at one store, it's much closer to saying you don't like the pizza in one store, so you know you won't like it in another. Still imperfect because it would be closer saying you've never had a pizza you like, so you won't like the pizza in a new store, which is more reasonable because you have a lot of information about that pizza.

But we have virtually nothing about this game.

To be faaaaiiiiir… D:OS (both of them) make the age-old mistake of having really slow, uninteresting, prologuish RPG starts. It takes a solid 5h of powergaming or 10h+ of normal play to get past that hump. That’s the point where the story picks up and you have enough tools to start really taking advantage of the games sandbox.

With BG3 they really seemed to have learned their lessons.

Well, it's valve, so honestly the odds of it being genre-defining in an already established genre? Pretty high, actually. Seriously, when is the last time valve put out a shit game?

Here's hoping it helps OW2 finally die.

Well they did make Artifact. But if something is the best of something you already don't like, that's still disappointing. I don't play games like DOTA or CS so outside of Half Life Alyx they haven't put out anything they caters to me in a very long time. Since Portal 2? Which is fine. But I'm still disappointed.

Artifact

.... OK name two!

/s

I honestly forgot about that piece of crap lol.

Going to let an unannounced games rumored genre ruin your day?

Gamers need to set a better image of themselves.

I never said that lol. The top commentor used a well known meme. I just want to play a cool new single player Valve game.

I hate beets. HATE them. I will eat durian, thousand-year eggs, stinky tofu, and a million other things that most people won’t touch… but beets? Fuck beets. Their sweet-yet-earthy funk is like a dead animal that has just started to decompose. I don’t care if they are cooked, pickled, or stewed in borscht… hate them and won’t touch them. They ruin everything they touch.

This is like that. They are cooking with lots of beet-like ingredients. Some people will love that. But as for me…I hate it… I hate just everything about it… and I hate it because I’ve experienced all those ingredients before. Over and over and over again. What they are making is for a very particular crowd, and I am not part of said crowd.

Edit:This was meant for the person above.

This seems reasonably different than the headline implies. It's a hero shooter, in that there are classes based on heroes (like Team Fortress 2 as well). The gameplay is more moba it sounds like. I think I've only played one other moba shooter, and it failed quickly, so that's different already.

It's not a copy of OW, and even if it were it could still innovate. Half Life might be a "Doom Clone", but it did stuff no one had done before. There's plenty of innovation potential without inventing a new genre. Even if you do create a new genre, it's probably still just evolution of existing things. No one ever has an original idea. It's always inspired by their environment.

Sounds more like TF2 crossed with DOTA, which sounds weirdly fun and hella toxic.

I can't wait to be called new and exciting racial slurs as I lose the game for my team.

Or bring back the classics. I haven't been called a swamp kisser in a while.

I don't want to get banned but just assume I tend to go 1 and 15 and every notices every time.

Isn't Smite exactly this?

Ish, smite is literally a MOBA with the camera sitting behind the characters shoulder instead of top-down.

Easiest and only description of SMITE is third-person MOBA. I’ve played since 2012

Can you imagine the chaos of a veteran Dota2 player being matched with a notorious conga dancer?

overwatch style

You mean team fortress style

Isn't an overwatch style hero shooter just team fortress 2? Now get off my lawn, I have clouds to tell at.

Nah. TF2 is a shooter with 9 classes. People can double up on "soldier" for instance. A hero shooter has for one, a lot more classes / heroes (which comes from MOBAs), for two activated abilities on each hero which change the games significantly, and usually disables doubling up in competetive modes. You wouldn't call Enemy Territory a hero shooter for instance.

Overwatch disabled doubling up well after launch, and only because they couldn't or wouldn't balance the game such that a 4 tank no DPS comp didn't utterly cheese the game.

They brought it back as a gamemode called "open queue", which nerfs tanks to be more in line with DPS.

I think you can get there in TF2 when considering subclasses via weapons loadouts. Demoknight for instance is a completely different play style than normal pipe/sticky demoman.

I stand by my assessment that overwatch is essentially team fortress 2 with a limit of one player per class and fewer game modes.

I don't know the name of the trope, but it's like when a cover gets more popular than the original. Except the person doing the cover (blizzard) is a huge scumbag.

I mean, okay, people can claim that every fps is just Doom with extra steps, doesn't make the distinction irrellevant though. Mobas are their own thing, they aren't called RTS anymore. Same with hero shooters. Tf2 isn't a hero shooter.

If you set the server config to limit one player per class, and set the max team size to like 8, you basically have a hero shooter. That's not an unusual config- some servers were just like that for years.

What's missing ? "Each class has two powers" is an extremely specific metric I don't think is a requirement for hero shooters, and even if it was you have the unique grenades on top of the more obvious "he can build a sentry, he can turn invisible".

You could maybe argue there aren't enough classes, but I don't buy that. As long as you have enough for everyone on the team to play something different, you're good. The characters in TF2 certainly have personality.

I knew someone who got really upset when I compared overwatch to TF2, but I think it was because they were emotionally invested in overwatch and felt bad when I was like "it's kind of like this much older game I like more". Saying the thing they love is kind of a knockoff made them feel bad.

Anyway. To your point. I wouldn't call tf2 a hero shooter first. It's not the best representation of the genre, probably. But to my point, I still stand by overwatch added very little on top of TF2. Most of Blizzard's changes were changes in minor detail. It's basically "more classes, fewer game modes, you can't run your own server, and we're going to try to sell you micro transactions "

Just the fact that you need to go through so many mental gymnastics to prove your point shows it. Tf2 is not a hero shooter, get over it.

It's essentially a hero shooter. You shoot. It has heroes. I don't know what else you want.

Going by that definition CS is a hero shooter.

Competitive shooter

Brooo I just wanna chill and have fun and play some games.

This is why I bought Hell Divers 2

Valve releasing a competitive game doesn't prevent you from doing this. I for one am excited by the potential of this game. Then again, I've been playing Dota for 10 years so maybe I'm just a masochist.

Then don't play competitive shooters lol? There are literally thousands of great games for you out there. Why are you even commenting on this post?

Because some of us want a game from Valve that’s not competitive? There are literally thousands of us out here. Why do you even care?

It's a Team Fortress Style Hero Shooter

Because it's a Valve game

Because TF2 Inspired Overwatch

Get it right

So Team Fortress 3

One might think so, but the number 3 in the potential title makes this highly unlikely.

Whatever it ends up being, I'm not interested. Never cared for competitive gaming. Sad that Valve has decided to use part of their enormous talent pool for, well, this while almost any genre would've been better.

Also, this is already a highly saturated niche. I don't doubt Valve's technical prowess and knowhow to develop a game that can surpass all the other ones in quality, but a gilded turd is still a turd under that gold leaf, even if it's technically the best turd in the world.

That's unfortunate that it's not a genre you personally are interested in, but it is a popular genre and Valve is a business. Just because it's not to your tastes doesn't mean it's a waste of their talent.

Oh absolutely. I'm not conceited enough to imagine Valve is developing games for me or that I'm entitled to anything. Just venting my personal disappointment with their choice. I still consider them the cream of the crop in game and hardware development.

I'm just curious why Valve looked at the oversaturated hero shooter market (seriously, we've had failures 8 years ago now) and said "Oh yeah, let's devote our resources there"

edit: Like, I seriously can't understand it. Not even Blizzard is coming out unscathed from Overwatch 2.

Not even Blizzard is coming out unscathed from Overwatch 2.

Overwatch 2 didn't fall because it's a hero shooter

this is where you say "It failed because...."

My assertion was that it was an imperfect hero shooter among many hero shooters. The more competition, the harder it is to enter a game.

this is where you say "It failed because...."

Gestures broadly

Not really my responsibility to make an argument for you. Of all the reasons Overwatch 2 might not have performed well, it being a Hero Shooter doesn't have any strong evidence and you didn't provide anything showing that was the reason.

One could argue Overwatch 2 being a Hero Shooter is why it didn't perform worse than it already has, given its problems.

Here you go. Reasons the hero shooter aspect is not working.

Blizzard's Approach To Balancing in Overwatch 2 is Not Working

Overwatch 2 Cancels PvE Hero Mode, Reveals Seasons 5-7 Roadmap

Overwatch 2 players demand “faster” balancing fixes as ‘one-shot’ heroes run rampant

Overwatch 2 Is Failing Its Way Into Reinventing Overwatch 1

Overwatch 2 support role feels stale and needs a shake up, say fans

Overwatch 2 Dev Team Calm on Declining Player Engagement

  1. Blizzard is bad at balancing the game - could be true of any game, doesn't have to be a shooter

  2. Blizzard cancels promised mode - Blizzard being bad at design and following through on promises.

  3. See 1.

  4. Forcing a game to become the sequel, not making meaningful changes other than monetization

  5. See 1

  6. Blizzard made a bad game

None of these are a result of Overwatch 2 being a shooter, and all of them are a result of Blizzard being shit at making quality games, caring about players, and following through on promises. So thank you, you have done a fantastic job demonstrating that Overwatch 2 being a shooter is not the reason it didn't perform well.

Competitive online games have been Valve‘s focus for well over a decade so it‘s in line with their portfolio. If anything, Alyx was an outlier they only did because they have a headset to sell it with. I think they know what they‘re doing. Sucks for you to not be their target audience though because they are pretty good at making games.

Sounds more like SMITE than overwatch

Or Paragon even. That game was so fun back in the day before it got killed. If anyone can make something that fun again, it's probably Valve.

Before that there was Super Monday Night Combat.

God I miss Monday Night Combat. It was one of my favorite indie games on the 360.

Yeah, that really brings me back. I had like 4 tokens on Steam to give the game away when they were trying to get more people to play. There was some other hero shooter MOBA a little after that too, by Epic or something. Didn't last very long and wasn't all that great, but I still played the shit out of the falcon character that could "fly". Man, I need to jump into another one of these games.

There's a remake out right now called Predecessor that I've been enjoying, free on PC/PS/Xbox.

Oh shit, I hadn't heard of that. I'll definitely check it out; thanks for the recommendation.

Was it really that good? I heard it was overwatch from wish when it launched but then got better. I never tried it, because i didn't wanna learn something new.

It was a hero shooter MOBA but with some verticality, so that's about as far as the Overwatch comparison goes. I had a great time with it. I like traditional MOBAs but don't have the skill/patience/time for them, so hero shooter MOBAs are the perfect way for me to be able to play them more casually. In my opinion, of the few I've tried, Paragon was the best implementation of a hero shooter MOBA; the core gameplay just felt really tight to me.

Why are people angry? This is exactly the kind of game valve has worked on for the last few years.

I'm not angry, but I'm tired of live service esports games. Also the last time Valve arrived late to a trend (Artifact) it didn't turn out well.

Because many of us remember before that, when Valve revolutionized the single player first person genre again and again with the Portal and mainline Half-Life games.

Any other dev would have capitalized on the massive interest in a sequel or at least sold off the property so someone else could have continued those franchises.

Yep. sigh I guess I'll go replay Portal 2 again. It really is fantastic, I should be happy that we got it when we did.

Imagine downvoting someone for saying they're going to replay one of the best single player games of all time.

The valve of yesteryear would've a great single player campaign to go together with the multiplayer, just like Half-Life.

I, for once am excited. I didn't buy Overwatch since I was deeply disappointed in Blizzard, after D3. Then the whole pandering to CCP and Blitzchung fiasco happened and that cemented my decision.

I didn't play Valor ant since I don't enjoy having a Chinese kernel level spyware on my PC.

So this may be something that can satisfy my itch.

Valve famously only works on what excites them. You're yelling me THIS is that?? How utterly defeatingly disappointing.

Bold statement. Might wanna hold judgment till you actually see some gameplay.

It goes both ways then, people who are happy should shut up until they see some gameplay.

Artifact would like a word.

Like idk, when overwatch came out, it was an absolute blast. I wasn't looking forward to it at all, i didn't care for it a bit until i played it. It just got run into the ground slowly. Also they made team fortress 2 way WAY before, and yeah that's what they excites them.

Valve's game development division feels more like a weird cult than a proper game company. I don't think they get "excited" for the things that most people get excited for. (Remember when they were excited for a virtual card game where you have to pay for every card?) The Valve of the 2000s is long gone IMO

Typically valve only puts out games that showcase something new, so might be interesting

Looks nervously at counter strike and dota.

They were both originally mods that they adopted rather than original creations though, right?

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Calling things an OverWatch style shooter is a bit like calling every first person shooter a Doom clone. Just call it a hero shooter I know what a hero shooter is. You don't need to compare it to another game.

It's bad enough that the term a "roguelike" exists, I can guarantee that hardly anyone who plays them has ever actually played rogue, and fair enough since it's ancient, so they have no idea if the game they're playing is like it or not.

Overwatch is a particularly successful Team-Fortress-like

"Roguelike" has also become very watered down. I see "roguelite" used less often, though it's more accurate, but there isn't a good alternative term right now. Turn-based-dungeon-crawler-with-permadeath is historically accurate but there's a tendency to lump action games like Rogue Legacy and Enter the Gungeon in that needs to be accounted for.

(And no I haven't played Rogue but I did play a bunch of NetHack)

Rejects all cookies on website

Website image:

Rip, in EU they cannot force targeting cookies so we can see

VPN to EU countries for all general article reading it is then. Fuck this is getting obnoxious.

It's the EU's fault and their stupid ill thought out law. Even they admit that it's bad, and it's only made things worse.

Who are these "they" that has admitted it's a bad law?

It's one of the best recent pieces of privacy legeslation. It's not the EU's fault that websites are scumbags insisting on making life difficult for people.

Yes it is. They completely failed to specify what would constitute compliance. They were warned repeatedly about this when the law first came out.

It has good intentions behind it but the law itself doesn't work. They haven't reduced privacy violations at all because everyone just clicks yes because it's so frustrating, And it isn't against the law to implement these dark patterns so what's the point?

I don't mean the banner ads for cookies, I'm referring to sites restricting viewable content based on your selection. Which seems to be illegal in the EU.

The Newscast is not the images. It's an annoying video they embed in all articles and then floats when you scroll. I actually have set an adblock rule to block that shit.

As for the images, for now hotlinking to Twitter images is possible, so:

You know this sounds like battleborn and i miss battleborn. I'm kinda excited.

I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.

IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.

I'm not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it'll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.

Trust me the market could use some competition. The only thing that really comes close to OW is Paladins.

Was gonna say. How is the hero shooter market over-saturated? There's like 3 games that people actually know about, and like 2 of those are good/decent.

I could be mistaken, as I don't really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.

My first thought was that Valve was basically making a Paladins clone.

Ugh, as if we don't have enough of this kind of game already. SMITE 2 and Marvel Rivals are coming soon. Valve for fucks sake, look at how well Half Life: Alyx did. I seriously hope they're working on a future Half Life game or some new story driven style game at the very least. I'm calling it now, Deadlock is going to be another Artifact.

SMITE isn't a shooter, though. Overwatch 2 killed Overwatch and left an empty space. I don't see a problem if two games (or more) try to fill it. I hope they are fun.

That said, it shouldn't be Valve's only focus if fans are expecting different games from them.

JESUS CHRIST JUST MAKE HALF LIFE 3 AND PORTAL 3 WHAT ARE YOU DOING VALVE?!?!

At this point, we have some absolutely impressive Portal 2 mods that, in my opinion, definitely make up for not having Portal 3. We've got Tag (the paint gun mod), Thinking With Portals (a short one that gives you the ability to create a clone thing that copies recorded actions), and I've been playing through one I just found out about called Revolution that is pretty cool so far.

I personally like to think that the fans have done a good enough job at creating mods and maps that a Portal 3 would be redundant.

Damn I didn't know portal had a mod community like that. I'll check it out.

Revolution is flat out better then most AAA retail games, both in quality and length.

Portal Stories: Mel is also something to try out. There's some small references to Mel in Revolution, but playing Mel before Revolution isn't necessary, but recommended.

Somehow I get the feeling Valve still had some lingering feelings about the failure of Valve's TF2 comp and they're trying to right their wrongs.

Me reading the headline: "Why would Valve make a porn shooter?"

Seeing the Steam store lately I'm honestly surprised there isn't a porn shooter. Imagine if someone went all in making an OW ripoff, but committed to making adult skins. Think about how much money that could make.

So they're ripping off the game that ripped them off. The industry is in an absolute state.

There's no such thing as an original idea. Just look at tvtropes. The whole idea is to make a new take on a previous idea, to integrate and innovate. No idea if this will be successful in doing that, but the premise alone shouldn't condemn it.

god this is like when everyone called first person shooters "doom clones", overwatch is absolutely not a tf2 ripoff lmao, and making a hero shooter does not mean it's an overwatch ripoff either.

I really like what I see , and icefrog has been working on it for a long time. If he's involved then I'm interested, the man created the moba genre and IMO the best moba on the market.

I thought overwatch was based on team fortress. Why not just a new team fortress?

That's interesting... bold move though. I can think of MANY failed 3rd person mobas.

If companies see titles like Overwatch and Fortnite and want to be MORE like that, then I'm just done with anything other than Indie Games and Singleplayer at this point.

I wonder how many loot boxes will be made and how many lives ruined….

The screenshots look like a MOBA such as Smite or Predecessor

Speaking of Valve games, why did I ever stop playing Left 4 Dead? I need to play that again.

This game doesn’t look terrible going off screenshots, but I’ll wait until an actual announcement. I’m hoping this may lead into them making more games in the future though.