'We were super confident in third-person': Overwatch 2 Stadium devs love the new perspective but understand it's not to everyone's liking, 'A decade of muscle memory exists'
One of the most jarring changes that Stadium brought to Overwatch 2 was the introduction of a third-person perspective. For the last nine years, Overwatch has just been an FPS, but in the spirit of making changes we got the option to either go first or third-person when playing Stadium.
From what I've encountered, third-person perspective in Stadium can be a bit like Marmite: you either love it or you hate it. So when I asked senior game designers Dylan Snyder and Conor Kou what their preference was, I thought it could go either way.
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"We both play third-person pretty much all the time," Snyder told me. "We played it enough where I was only in third-person for so much of the time I sort of lost that [first-person] muscle memory. Now I have the opposite. I have the third-person muscle memory, and when I go back to first-person it's alien to me."
"I think there's only like one or two characters that I play in first-person right now, I definitely prefer playing third-person just because I like playing third-person shooters," Kou adds.
A third-person perspective has a ton of benefits in any competitive shooter, and Overwatch 2 is no different. It's not just about finally getting to see the hero you play and the skins you have, one of the best perks is situational awareness and the fact that you can peek corners, spotting opponents before they see you. But there are also Stadium-specific benefits.
"It opened up a lot of flexibility with regard to designing Powers and items, you can guarantee that additional environmental awareness and view space," Snyder says. "Plus, we've talked a lot about chaos today. There is a lot of chaos that's going on [in Stadium], and being able to kind of zoom out a little bit and get that removed view helps process that stuff quite a bit. But I think we understand fully that it's a preference thing, and that's why we kept both options."
I have to admit, despite trying quite hard to get into third-person for Stadium, it just didn't feel right. Now that's likely just muscle memory from playing the same characters for almost a decade, and the fact that I simply hate change.
"We were super confident in third-person, and when it felt great we knew that we wanted to do a lot with it," Snyder says. "But we also understood that almost a decade of muscle memory exists, and it's going to make [Stadium] a little easier for people to get into if we allow for both." You can switch between both perspectives in options before and after Stadium games, so there's absolutely no pressure if third-person doesn't sit right with you.