The next major collaboration coming to Overwatch was teased last week, as Capcom's Street Fighter franchise will become the first-ever video game franchise to join Blizzard's hero shooter. Eight of Overwatch's heroes will be given the Street Fighter treatment, as they'll be able to dress up as eight of SF's world warriors, with some new themed emotes to boot.
GameSpot sat down with Overwatch art director Dion Rogers and former character art director Arnold Tsang to talk about bringing Street Fighter to Overwatch, from the character-selection process to how Street Fighter inspired some of Overwatch's design choices from the very beginning.
The eight Overwatch 2 X Street Fighter skins
From the beginning of discussions–"about a year ago," according to Rogers--the Overwatch x Street Fighter collaboration has been what Tsang describes as "a match made in heaven." A big part of that, as Rogers describes, is Capcom's shared background in developing games.
"With some of our collaborations, there's a little bit more explaining to do," Rogers says. "Capcom though, they do this. They make games. They get it. If we come to them and say, 'Hey, there's some technical challenges with this, we're going to have to edit this look,' they understand. The back-and-forth between us and Capcom was really nice."
Capcom also gave the Overwatch team "complete say" in which heroes would be included from the Overwatch side, as well as the Street Fighter characters they would be paired with. There was only one caveat: The Street Fighter characters had to come from the roster of the current game, Street Fighter 6.
"We had complete say on what that would look like," Rogers says. "Capcom gave some suggestions after reviewing things with us, but we have a ton of Street Fighter fans on the team, so the concept artists already had ideas. Ultimately, we had a conversation together that landed on which hero we choose as the right hero for a character."
The team at Overwatch, with Capcom's input, eventually settled on eight Overwatch heroes and the Street Fighter characters they'd be portraying:
Some of these decisions allowed the team to explore new facets of a hero; pairing Widowmaker with Cammy, a natural fit given their assassin or "femme fatale" background, also offered a unique opportunity to show Widowmaker with a more human-like skin color as opposed to her trademark purple.
Other groups presented unique challenges; making Sigma into M. Bison, for example, resulted in Sigma donning a cape, which is not usually part of his outfit. "It doesn't affect gameplay too much," Rogers said. "Usually the animations and the movement of the hero kind of dictate who they are, but Bison now becomes a unique skin for Sigma because of the cape; no other Sigma skin has that."
The best parts of designing the skins, however, were when the animators could inject parts of the Street Fighter character's background into unexpected places. Hanzo as Ryu might seem like it poses a challenge--Ryu is no archer, after all--but the team immediately paired the two as the design process was evolving.
"Everything else [with the pair] fits perfectly, but the fact that Hanzo's an archer? We thought, 'Well, everyone else has guns,'" Arnold Tsang said. "If Ryu was going to be in Overwatch, he'd probably pick up the bow in favor of something else."
The Hanzo pairing also let Tsang add that unexpected reference too--"In Street Fighter, Ryu has that white bag he usually travels with," Tsang explains. "If you look at the Hanzo skin, his quiver isn't actually a holder for the arrows. It looks more like that duffel bag, to mimic the traveling Ryu."
Overwatch 2 X Street Fighter
When asked if the team was surprised by how naturally the two properties fit together, Tsang says he knew immediately it would work, simply because Street Fighter is "in the DNA" of both Overwatch and his own artistic approach. "I learned how to draw by studying the Street Fighter and Capcom artists," Tsang explains.
He attributes this to why, from a visual perspective, the two sides meshed so well together. "I remember in the beginning, when we were making the game, we had our first few heroes, and one of the big decisions we made was we wanted heroes from different countries," Tsang says."That was hugely inspired by Street Fighter; I used to have a poster where I would see the different characters and the little flag beside their names. So, when we made Overwatch, I thought 'Let's bring some of that energy into the game and have all these characters from different countries, influenced by their culture.' Some of that DNA is there, in these heroes from all around the world coming together."
Now that Street Fighter is entering Overwatch, what if the roles were reversed and a hero for Overwatch joined the battle in Street Fighter? Tsang has a few ideas on who might best fit on the Street Fighter roster from the Overwatch squad.
"Genji and Doomfist are melee characters, so those are no-brainers," Tsang says. "A lot of the heroes have guns, so it's harder to imagine how they'd fit into a traditional fighting game, as it makes the martial arts aspect less creative. Hanzo has a bow, but he also has the sword; he could use that too." Eventually, Tsang settles on one of the first names he mentioned: Doomfist, who according to Tsang, was "designed to be a fighting game character, basically."
The Overwatch x Street Fighter collaboration begins May 20 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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GameSpot sat down with Overwatch art director Dion Rogers and former character art director Arnold Tsang to talk about bringing Street Fighter to Overwatch, from the character-selection process to how Street Fighter inspired some of Overwatch's design choices from the very beginning.
The eight Overwatch 2 X Street Fighter skins
"Match made in heaven"
From the beginning of discussions–"about a year ago," according to Rogers--the Overwatch x Street Fighter collaboration has been what Tsang describes as "a match made in heaven." A big part of that, as Rogers describes, is Capcom's shared background in developing games.
"With some of our collaborations, there's a little bit more explaining to do," Rogers says. "Capcom though, they do this. They make games. They get it. If we come to them and say, 'Hey, there's some technical challenges with this, we're going to have to edit this look,' they understand. The back-and-forth between us and Capcom was really nice."
Capcom also gave the Overwatch team "complete say" in which heroes would be included from the Overwatch side, as well as the Street Fighter characters they would be paired with. There was only one caveat: The Street Fighter characters had to come from the roster of the current game, Street Fighter 6.
"We had complete say on what that would look like," Rogers says. "Capcom gave some suggestions after reviewing things with us, but we have a ton of Street Fighter fans on the team, so the concept artists already had ideas. Ultimately, we had a conversation together that landed on which hero we choose as the right hero for a character."
Finding the right pair
The team at Overwatch, with Capcom's input, eventually settled on eight Overwatch heroes and the Street Fighter characters they'd be portraying:
- Hanzo as Ryu
- Sigma as M. Bison
- Winston as Blanka
- Cammy as Widowmaker
- Soldier: 76 as Guile
- Zenyatta as Dhalsim
- Juno as Chun-Li
- Kimiko as Juri
Some of these decisions allowed the team to explore new facets of a hero; pairing Widowmaker with Cammy, a natural fit given their assassin or "femme fatale" background, also offered a unique opportunity to show Widowmaker with a more human-like skin color as opposed to her trademark purple.
Other groups presented unique challenges; making Sigma into M. Bison, for example, resulted in Sigma donning a cape, which is not usually part of his outfit. "It doesn't affect gameplay too much," Rogers said. "Usually the animations and the movement of the hero kind of dictate who they are, but Bison now becomes a unique skin for Sigma because of the cape; no other Sigma skin has that."
The best parts of designing the skins, however, were when the animators could inject parts of the Street Fighter character's background into unexpected places. Hanzo as Ryu might seem like it poses a challenge--Ryu is no archer, after all--but the team immediately paired the two as the design process was evolving.
"Everything else [with the pair] fits perfectly, but the fact that Hanzo's an archer? We thought, 'Well, everyone else has guns,'" Arnold Tsang said. "If Ryu was going to be in Overwatch, he'd probably pick up the bow in favor of something else."
The Hanzo pairing also let Tsang add that unexpected reference too--"In Street Fighter, Ryu has that white bag he usually travels with," Tsang explains. "If you look at the Hanzo skin, his quiver isn't actually a holder for the arrows. It looks more like that duffel bag, to mimic the traveling Ryu."
Overwatch 2 X Street Fighter
Overwatch Fighter
When asked if the team was surprised by how naturally the two properties fit together, Tsang says he knew immediately it would work, simply because Street Fighter is "in the DNA" of both Overwatch and his own artistic approach. "I learned how to draw by studying the Street Fighter and Capcom artists," Tsang explains.
He attributes this to why, from a visual perspective, the two sides meshed so well together. "I remember in the beginning, when we were making the game, we had our first few heroes, and one of the big decisions we made was we wanted heroes from different countries," Tsang says."That was hugely inspired by Street Fighter; I used to have a poster where I would see the different characters and the little flag beside their names. So, when we made Overwatch, I thought 'Let's bring some of that energy into the game and have all these characters from different countries, influenced by their culture.' Some of that DNA is there, in these heroes from all around the world coming together."
Now that Street Fighter is entering Overwatch, what if the roles were reversed and a hero for Overwatch joined the battle in Street Fighter? Tsang has a few ideas on who might best fit on the Street Fighter roster from the Overwatch squad.
"Genji and Doomfist are melee characters, so those are no-brainers," Tsang says. "A lot of the heroes have guns, so it's harder to imagine how they'd fit into a traditional fighting game, as it makes the martial arts aspect less creative. Hanzo has a bow, but he also has the sword; he could use that too." Eventually, Tsang settles on one of the first names he mentioned: Doomfist, who according to Tsang, was "designed to be a fighting game character, basically."
The Overwatch x Street Fighter collaboration begins May 20 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Source