February 2023
THE VIEW FROM OVERWATCH 2: SEASON THREE
Poseidon Ramattra, Zeus Junker Queen, and Hades Pharah — I wrote and implemented 30+ voice lines for each
It’s hard to believe we’re already on Season 3 of Overwatch 2. Narrative Design has been putting a ton of cool stuff into the game every season, and I think we’re getting the hang of the incredibly fast-paced live-game cadence.
As a senior narrative designer on Overwatch 2, my responsibilities include writing and recording voice lines, coming up with new characters, authoring supportive lore, and a ton of game design and implementation in our internal toolkit.
The Greek Mythology-themed “Battle for Olympus” event in Season 2 was a great example of a typical assignment for me in the post-launch world. I was responsible for supporting this event from a Narrative Design perspective, including:
Adapting the personalities of 7 heroes to their Greek mythology personas — I aimed to maintain the recognizable identity of each hero while adding lots of fun new interactions and stories between them, drawing on the rich source material of Greek mythology
E.g. Pharah became Hades, Ramattra became Poseidon, and Junker Queen became Zeus; lines for scoring kills between these characters referenced their sibling rivalry…
Developing a narrative frame for a free-for-all game mode in which gods and monsters battled for throne of Olympus
Writing many skin-specific voice lines for each hero featured in the event
Writing a bombastic Zeus Junker Queen announcer for the Battle for Olympus free-for-all mode
Guiding voice sessions with actors and directors to record all of the above
Hooking all the new lines up via the Overwatch team’s proprietary visual scripting toolkit
Player reception to this work was highly positive, leading to much discussion on social media!
I have a lot of upcoming work coming down the line, and no shortage of fun assignments to dive into for the future. I feel lucky to have such an amazing team and such a beloved product, with such enthusiastic fans.
As a final note, since my last post I had the opportunity to talk to press a few times for Overwatch 2, and was happy to add working with media (from the dev side this time!) to my list of experiences. Here’s an example interview, with the Daily Dot, that I think turned out really well:
Thanks for reading! I’m having a blast over here, and I feel very lucky every day!
April 2022
NOTES ON THE PLAYER RECEPTION TO THE OVERWATCH 2 OPEN BETA
Now that Overwatch 2 is in beta and has been met with umm, let’s just say “brisk excitement,” I’ve found myself in a rather surreal position, watching players post videos and fanart inspired by voice lines I wrote…
The fact that people like my work enough to do this is without question the proudest accomplishment of my professional life. I’ll write more about my contributions to Overwatch 2 narrative design at a later date, but for now I just want to collect some tweets so I don’t lose track of them.
So, an excerpted portfolio of my writing for Overwatch 2, in the form of videos & artwork made by fans:
Junkrat
I wrote most of the gameplay lines and many pre-match conversations for Overwatch 2’s lovable pyrotechnician…
Junkrat sings before match sometimes… I’ve heard this feature is a bit controversial xD
A YouTube compilation of a bunch of his new gameplay stuff, mostly my lines in here:
Pharah
I wrote many gameplay lines & conversations for Pharah (who btw is my favorite hero to play)…
Pharah is a dog person…
some other example convos and lines… ty to @ClearTogether for capturing so many of these…
Cassidy
I wrote a fair amount of gameplay stuff & conversations for Cassidy, our six-shooter-wielding cowboy…
“The cactus conversation” was a collaboration with fellow narrative designer Kyungseo Min, and it’s spawned a fair amount of fanart, some of it umm, a bit speculatively risqué…
Hanzo
I wrote a fair amount of gameplay lines and conversations for Hanzo, the somber archer with a tragic past…
I actually wrote a bunch of these “Hero kills the same hero on the other team” lines, across various heroes:
Reaper
I also wrote a fair amount of stuff for the spooky bad guy Reaper, including these Easter egg lines:
Most of the lines in this compilation video are mine—it’s always fun to write customized lines for killing specific heroes!
Other Heroes
Starting with the above for now; I’ll keep this page updated with other videos & links as I see them! For now, one last thing that was me: