Most of the buzz coming out of BlizzCon’s Overwatch reveals centered on the new playable bad-girl Ashe, who is totally not just McCree but a girl. Eurogamer’s interview with Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan, however, covers much more than the new hero and her intro video, though it does mention the team was hoping to have her up and running on the PTR today.
For example, the other key character introduced in the McCree short was Echo, the sleek Kaminoan-like robot pulled out of the pod from the train. Kaplan says Echo is “tentatively” one of the “next six heroes planned out right now,” though “she might not be” the next one actually launching after Ashe.
He also says that an Overwatch Netflix series or something akin to a movie is still “within the realms of possibility”: “Those things are really complicated to bring together and make happen – but they’re things we’re very excited about.”
Finally, Eurogamer presses Kaplan on crossplay; he says it’s something about which Blizzard is “definitely having conversations.”
“We’re super-excited about what’s going on with cross-play in all sorts of different games, from Rocket League to Fortnite, and we are constantly in discussions with the first-parties, Microsoft and Sony, to see where they’re at and gauge where their temperature is at. It’s something that would be very exciting for us to pursue. […] It’s very complicated – from a technology standpoint, a game design standpoint, and from a business relationship standpoint. But we would be excited to tackle all of those challenges; we would love to try. We’re gamers; “Why can’t my buddies on this system or that system play together?” We sympathise with that, we want to be able to do that too.”
As for the Switch? Well, nothing set in stone yet, but as Kaplan puts it, “It’s something we’re very open-minded about.”
