Esperança is the newest map in Overwatch 2. Set in Portugal, it pays tribute to the country’s architectural past while ushering in the future of Overwatch through the streets. As a push map (an addition to the sequel’s tug-of-war menu), it presented the development team with many new challenges to overcome, but it paid off equally professionally and personally. We spoke with art director Dion Rogers and sound designer Felipe de Mello Pereira to learn about the design process, but we started with the basics. Why Portugal?
“When we’re working on a game, we really have a huge list of places to go, and the team is pretty international,” Rogers explains. The environmental artist is Helder Pinto from Portugal.Sometimes having people in a place gives you more of the culture and details.It feels so much better because we have that close connection. You can.”
“In terms of representation in the Western media, Portugal can be overwhelmed by neighboring countries experiencing cultural and tourism explosions,” said Pereira.
“I’m Brazilian, so a lot of my ancestry is Portuguese. My great-grandfather was Portuguese, and that’s basically where my lineage came from,” he continues. “So it’s always been this kind of mythical place where much of our culture came from. As it happens, my wife and I are finally going to Portugal. We booked a trip and started working on a map of Portugal at work and it was just a coincidence. “
I think having access to the actual location of the map you’re trying to create only benefits the design process. This means that the sights and sounds of the world can permeate the digital version. For Pereria, however, his trip came late in the process and served as justification for the team’s efforts.
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“Thank you so much to those who have recorded a 4K walkthrough of the city on YouTube, I have seen a lot of it,” he says. “And I just watched for hours and just analyzed it. We recorded all sorts of sounds, urban sounds at different times of the day, indoor spaces, and outdoor spaces.
“I went to Lisbon and suddenly it was a super surreal experience to be there. I’m so deeply rooted in this culture that it feels like it’s been months. , I’ve been hearing things, and I’ve put it into the game, and I’m on an Airbnb, and there’s a tram right by the Airbnb, and it sounds exactly like what I’m putting in the game. did, I think I did it.
Esperança is packed with details that really give you a sense of the place. Among them is Antler Antler, a Portuguese rock band formed from Omnics.
“It’s the Portuguese scene,” says Rogers. “There are a lot of indie bands out there, so I thought I’d make a cool indie band. I wanted to show that Omnics actually formed an indie band in Portugal.”
And, of course, the map had to include perhaps the country’s leading culinary delight, pastel de nata.
“I wish it had sound!” laughs Pereira. “No exaggeration, but when I was in Lisbon and saw Pastel de Nata’s bakery, I bought it at any time of the day. So when I was on the map and saw an artist making them, I am!
However, not all art and sound design choices are made purely for aesthetic reasons. Mr. Rogers found in his piece the striking center of the map.
“I like towers. Pushbots start there, so this is a good guide,” he says. “So it’s very easy to get your bearings just by looking a little higher. There’s also church bells going off from there. So hopefully it’s kind of like being subconsciously summoned over there.” We realized that we probably needed to do that with every push map, some sort of central one.”
Push differs from many other modes in Overwatch in that it requires the arena to be symmetrical so neither team has an unfair advantage. This presents a unique challenge for art teams. How do you keep the overall map visually interesting while still allowing each faction to play in exactly the same mathematical realm?
“You cannot create an asset that gives the opposite side an unfair advantage, or an asset that allows the other side to gain an advantage and the other cannot,” Rogers continues. “So we usually go with the classic reds and blues, right? One side of the map favors cool colors and the other side favors warm colors. But in Portugal I think the construction aspect really helped. increase.
“One of the things Herder pointed out is that Portugal is always repairing things, especially these days. The blue side has more construction elements and the red side is a bit more complete.It’s fair while keeping the mirrored part balanced.It’s the same volume, but there’s a visual difference.”
It’s not just the visual aspect that needs balance. As you quietly fly through the map, traditional Portuguese guitar music wafts from bars and restaurants. It’s a nice touch, and the team wants players to listen, but it never comes at the expense of the gameplay experience.
“I think I just want the in-game music to play all the time,” Pereira smiles. “We call it diegetic music, the music that exists in the game world, because when I get something like that, I’m always super excited. Let me crank it , but we can’t.
“We have a system in place, basically a priority system that determines what sounds are heard at any given moment,” he explains. “Obviously Overwatch is a competitive FPS, so combat is paramount. Because you can’t push through everything, there’s too much going on.
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“And it’s something that’s being tweaked all the time, but in general, obviously enemy fire, footsteps, alts, callouts, those are all the most important things,” he concludes. , things like diegetic music and ambience are dodged and other things get through.”
If there’s one thing Overwatch players love as much as gameplay, it’s lore. Splashes of story have been drip-fed by Blizzard over the game’s six-year lifespan and won’t arrive in bulk until next year’s PvE content. But outside of the portrait of an important gentleman with an omnic arm found in the lobby of a town hotel (the developer was teasingly silent), this map is all about worldbuilding. Reveal the world rather than destroy it.
“Sometimes we choose maps based on heroes,” explains Rogers. “Then sometimes we choose maps that are almost purely lore. You can see what’s going on, and as you fly around the map you’ll see details related to some of the tech we’re deploying in Portugal.
“It ties into the lore of the game world. Maybe not necessarily characters, but maybe not yet, but we’re developing things that we want to learn later in the world of Overwatch. There is a little
“I think the Sea Wall Museum is a good example of that,” Pereira adds. “This is an opportunity to enhance the world building. Maybe this doesn’t directly link to anything like the main storyline or anything like that, but yeah, enough lore to do things later. You know what? “
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Rogers explains that it’s not the first time an item has been included in an Overwatch map, only for the team to fully realize an idea from a seed planted years later.
“So the Route 66 payload had an egg. But the details were still being fleshed out, so we needed a cool object that the player was protecting on, and like Portugal, we could later relate more details Sometimes they lay the foundation for future lore.”
Each developer has key takeaways from Esperança’s design process. For Dion, it felt like all the work put into developing Overwatch’s newest mode culminated in the successful creation of a town in Portugal.
“The great thing about Portugal is that it is built within 5v5 and only knows the 5v5 world of Overwatch 2. So we took that into account when designing and creating some of the art for the map. There are a lot of revamped heroes and new heroes with different abilities, for example Chirico is another hero who can climb, Portugal has a lot of opportunities for her to use that ability. There are a lot of two-storey buildings, much more cover than we usually build on the map, which helps support our heroes, and one less tank to protect in the group.
“Portugal is the third push map in the game, and we want to create a balanced group of maps for this game,” he says. “I mean, the Colosseum in Rome and New Queen Street in Toronto. The Colosseum is a little tight when you’re fighting over robots. , Toronto is a bit more windy, has a lot of cool flank routes, and is like an S-curve across the map, and in Portugal we took the best of both maps and applied them to Portugal.
“Working purely on Portugal gave me a better understanding of what we need to do with future push maps. It was a bit of a transition map because we were learning a lot about what it takes to really enhance the 5v5 gameplay, but I feel really Portuguese, we really captured the essence of it.”
But for Felipe, it represents a more personal and cultural sense of pride.
“To give you a little context, before working on this map, I worked on the map of Rio. I grew up in Rio, so I knew exactly what I wanted to hear there and what I didn’t want to hear. And I knew the subtleties that make it feel like home.
“One of the things that started as a small seed of an idea is that it has become meaningful to me. English speakers may take it for granted, I know I grew up in Brazil and all the pop culture I’ve consumed comes from America in general. , never heard Portuguese.
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“We did it in Portugal and the Sea Wall Museum. They’re like, oh, cool, now I can add a backstory to this, on the topic of lore, the backstory was written, but I didn’t get the chance.
“How do you access it? How do you use the information? The story behind it has already been written. For speakers, hearing your language being spoken to while walking around the map reinforces your presence here. I think it means a lot to us. It’s a big event for me.”
Esperanza will be playable in Overwatch 2 when it launches on October 4, 2022.
Simon Cardy loves custard tarts in all forms. Follow him on Twitter. @CardySimon.
