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Blizzard’s Geoff Goodman Discusses Torbjörn Rework
Blizzard’s Geoff Goodman, lead designer on Overwatch,is discussing a rework of Torbjörn and how things are progressing, during an interview with VG247.
“I originally was sort of thinking, ‘Let’s not do anything too massive’,” Goodman tells us, before going on to explain how Torbjörn’s upcoming changes will transform the character in a big way.
“With Torbjörn, the issues we’re trying to solve are that he’s a little overly defensive focused,” Goodman explains. “We need him to be more viable on offense in a non-payload situation. It doesn’t mean he needs to be equal on offense, but we need him at least to not be a troll pick.”
Torbjörn’s power snowballs seem to be the most problematic and he seems ineffective until he set’s down a turret and upgraded it.
“You don’t get to use some of your abilities, your turret’s not as strong, it’s not as much of a threat without your ultimate ready to go,” Goodman said. “It feels like feast or famine with him a lot of time. That’s a thing we’re trying to solve.
“It’s cool when characters have their ultimate and there’s a power spike – being able to use your ultimate at the right time is a big part of the game – but it’s a little too much for him. It does everything, basically.”
The team plans to completely overhaul how Torbjörn’s turrets work.
“Currently, in our internal build, he just tosses it out – not super far, almost like a Tracer Pulse Bomb distance,” Goodman explains. “So you can kind of throw it like that and it deploys itself automatically on level two. It takes a little time to do that but you don’t have to hammer it or anything.
“This plays a lot better on offense – especially because you can run up, throw it in a flank spot and be immediately shooting again and not feel like you have to sit there hammering it. Being able to use that and have an extra threat shooting from the side feels really powerful. We can obviously tune the turret if it ends up being too strong or anything, but that’s the place we’re starting from.”
Molten Core, Torbjörn’s ultimate ability, may not be back as the team is working on a new ultimate when he is re-released.
“We may end up with a completely different ultimate at this point because it ties up too much of his power, but that’s still very much in flux so it’s hard to say,” Goodman says. “First thing we did was try a lot of different takes on Molten Core – maybe we could make it really cheap and take some stuff away from it, we tried it so it only affects the turret and doesn’t give you any buffs, and we tried the reverse so it only affects you.
“We definitely tweaked some of the base ability, so you could reload faster as that was frustrating before – you would run out of ammo in the middle of ulting and you can’t shoot anymore. As of now, I think we’ve decided to move away from Molten Core entirely.”
Currently, there is no specific time table for the rework to take place.
FromSoftware title ‘Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon’, which is published by Bandai Namco, has laid claim to the top spot of the boxed charts in the United Kingdom this week following it’s August 25th release.
Armored Core 6’s debut pushed Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to the second overall spot in news that video game journalists have been covering extensively.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, Bandai Namco believes that ‘Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon’ is a “big step up in the franchise’ and communicated their hopes that it would surpass previous Armored Core games following the increased popularity in the game developers work on Elden Ring.
The United Kingdom charts also saw The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom move back to the 3rd spot, and FIFA 23 holding the 4th spot.
The biggest rise was from Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which jumped back in the top top from it’s previous 24th spot to land in 6th with a 146% increase in sales. That game, along with Hogwarts Legacy, is currently a part of a Playstation 5 bundle.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year edition entered the Top Ten this week with an appearance in the 9th spot.
The news wasn’t so good for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which saw a debut in the 13th spot last week but has now dropped to 37th following a 43% decrease in sales week-on-week, despite it’s initial push on every video game streaming platform following it’s heavily hyped arrival.
Here is a breakdown from the United Kingdom Boxed Top Ten for the week ending on August 26th, via GamesIndustry.biz.
| Last Week | This Week | Title |
|---|---|---|
| New Entry | 1 | Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon |
| 1 | 2 | Mario Kart 8 Deluxe |
| 4 | 3 | The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom |
| 3 | 4 | FIFA 23 |
| 9 | 5 | Hogwarts Legacy |
| 24 | 6 | Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga |
| 5 | 7 | Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate |
| 7 | 8 | Minecraft (Nintendo Switch) |
| 12 | 9 | The Witcher III: Wild Hunt GOTY Edition |
| 2 | 10 | Grand Theft Auto V |
Interactive drama developer and BAFTA-nominated studio Scriptic has raised a total $6.2 million in additional seed funding, including $500,000 from the Sony Innovation Fund, bringing the total seed investments to $8.7 million.
The funding will be deployed to continue going towards the expansion of its mobile narrative offerings, and the studio aims to provide its generative AI developer tools to more writers and storytellers.
“It’s a huge honor to have Sony Innovation Fund join our roster of stellar investors, and we’re thrilled that they share our vision for the future of interactive media and storytelling,” Scriptic CEO Nihal Tharoor said, according to GamesIndustry.biz.
This marks another example of studios who find Angel Investors and find VC investors to fund their initiatives, and those deals making waves in the gaming industry.
Following news earlier this year that Larian Studios cited technical issues developing the port, there is now official confirmation that Baldur’s Gate 3 will be launching on Xbox Series X|S consoles this year.
Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke officially announced the update on social media following a meeting with Xbox head Phil Spencer.
“We’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time,” Vincke said in the announcement. “All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X.”
The Xbox Series S console version of the RPG will not feature split-screen coop, a disappointing part of the update, but Baldur’s Gate 3 will have cross-save progression functionality between Steam and Xbox Series consoles.
Stay tuned here or other prominent video game journalists for more information on Baldur’s Gate heading to Xbox in 2023.
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