“I am Brigitte Lindholm and I will be their shield!”

March 1, 2018 4:20 PM

Introducing Brigitte [YouTube] [Origin Story Trailer] [Developer Update] “The daughter of Torbjörn Lindholm, Brigitte is a support character. Her origin story reveals that years of working alongside her father in his engineering workshop helped her become an adept mechanic herself. Although Torbjörn has plenty of kids to go around, Brigitte is the one who really shined in the field, thanks to her prowess with building out defense systems. Brigitte uses her own custom-built armor, which helps protect her — and the rest of the team — in battle. That comes courtesy of her ultimate ability, a move called Rally that both quickens Brigitte’s pace and grants armor for those around her.” [via: Polygon]

• New 'Overwatch' Hero Brigitte Fills an Important Gameplay and Story Gap [Inverse]

“Blizzard formally announced Brigitte and released her to the test servers on Wednesday. With that came full details that confirm how she’ll fit into Overwatch’s growing lineup of heroes. She lands somewhere between Defense and Support with a bit of Tank mixed in, and her story also contextualizes what we know about Torbjörn and Reinhardt. Since Overwatch’s release, Blizzard has debuted four new heroes: two Support, one Tank, and one Offense. Brigitte’s official designation is Support+, but much like Symmetra, she’s closer to a Defense character than she is to more traditional healers like Mercy or Ana. Game director Jeff Kaplan says she’s “primarily Support” but she’s definitely a Support-Defense-Tank hybrid with a moveset that mixes Reinhardt, Torbjörn, and Doomfist.”

• Ovewatch's Newest Hero Makes Supporting On The Frontline Fun [Kotaku]

“Playing her on Overwatch’s public test realm, Brigitte was remarkably easy to pick up. What makes her special is her ability to bolster damage-dealers by dealing damage herself. Her rocket flail, which packs a punch, boosts nearby allies’ health when she attacks with it. It’s a medium-range melee weapon that can hit a bunch of enemies at once. When she wants to distance herself from enemies, she can toss out her whip shot, a long flail attack that knocks enemies away. When she’s not attacking with her flail, Brigitte can shield herself and anyone directly behind her with a 600-health barrier, and also shield-bash enemies, momentarily stunning them. She’s also got a ranged healing ability that tosses a good 150 health at an ally—and if they’re already at full health, they receive 75 armor on top of that.”

• Overwatch: Brigitte’s Backstory, Origins, and Lore [Twinfinite]

“Torbjorn, her mother, and Reinhardt all appear to be close friends while Brigitte is a little girl. She was inspired by the hero’s “gleaming armor” and followed in her father’s footsteps as an engineer, but instead of weapons, focused on learning how to construct and repair armor. Initially, she wanted to be like her father, but seeing how battered and bruised Reinhardt would look after battles inspired her to be more than someone who just patched people up after a fight. She would travel with Reinhardt on his adventures, despite Mercy’s reservations. This is highlighted in the second Overwatch comic, Reinhardt: Dragon Slayer, where Brigitte expresses her concern about Reinhardt’s health. In the animated short, “Honor and Glory” [YouTube], she once again expresses her concern and love for godfather. She tries to talk him out of rejoining the Overwatch in order to protect him and also out of principle since Reinhardt was eventually pushed out of Overwatch to begin with because of his age. He, of course, doesn’t heed her warning.”

• New Overwatch hero looks like one of our heroes, says Paladins maker [Eurogamer]

“Who's copying who now? Paladins president Stewart Chisam has raised an eyebrow at Overwatch's newly unveiled hero Brigitte Lindholm, because she looks more than a little like his game's hero Ash. Chisam posted a picture of the heroes side by side on Twitter, and wrote: "Quick poll: If I happened to notice and point out any similarities between these two characters, would that make me the pot calling the kettle black, or the kettle calling the pot black?" And then he included a picture of a black pot and kettle. The similarities are apparent - between the two kitchen implements and the heroes. Not only are both women clad in a kind of knightly armour - although Brigitte has her distinctive rocket flail, and not a gun like Ash - their abilities sound similar. Ash has a Shoulder Bash, Brigitte has a Shield Bash; Ash has a Siege Shield; Brigitte has a Barrier Shield; and Ash has a kind of plant-the-flag rallying ability and so does Brigitte. These abilities don't work in exactly the same way, it's worth pointing out, but they're thematically in keeping.”

posted by Fizz (24 comments total)

Previously on MetaFilter : A collection of all of the Overwatch animated shorts released thus far.
posted by Fizz at 4:23 PM on March 1, 2018

At some point the player base asshole percentage hit a point of no return for me. I envy those who are able to put up with it.
posted by selfnoise at 4:24 PM on March 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm sure I'm playing what many would consider "the wrong way" as I mostly play against AI and I'm mostly here for the story/lore (and the fun costumes/outfits) that is built around the game. But you know what, fuck the haters, I enjoy the game in this way and it satisfies me.

Cheers love.
posted by Fizz at 4:28 PM on March 1, 2018 [12 favorites]

Honestly, I only play quickplay and my experience has been pretty good lately.

Also, I like what I've seen of Brigitte, but I'm a little annoyed that her design seems to be just mini-Reinhardt.
posted by runcibleshaw at 4:53 PM on March 1, 2018

New Overwatch hero looks like one of our heroes, says Paladins maker

Literally the pot calling the kettle black.
posted by Talez at 4:58 PM on March 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I know we have MeFightClub for this... but if anyone is playing OW on Xbox One, MeMail me :)
posted by sixswitch at 5:23 PM on March 1, 2018

How good is the AI? I love a good FPS from time to time but I'm really terrible at them.

They have three difficulty settings (easy, medium, hard) and you can choose to play with 5 other randoms on the web or you can play with 5 other AI bots against 6 other AI bots. I find that the AI is competent enough to keep me engaged and playing on hard is fairly challenging, though others might disagree with this assessment. I'm not the greatest player so the level of play is more than enough for me. I tend to mostly play on either medium or hard.
posted by Fizz at 5:35 PM on March 1, 2018

And here I was, hoping you’d have a post for Into The Breach.
posted by sixfootaxolotl at 7:47 PM on March 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

Even before release, the moment the hype reached a certain point, it was absolutely fated that the assholes would converge upon it.

Regarding the skill similarities... honestly, the Paladins people are a bit oblivious if they think they came up with that moveset. Hell, the warrior class in GW2 has a literal Shield Bash skill and an entire subset of multiple banner-planting ally buff skills. It's not exactly some wild leap of originality to give a tanky, shield-wielding melee class skills like that.

The only ~hero shooter~ type game of late whose designs have struck me as remotely original are those of Gigantic, which AFAICT has much less reach than either of these, and I can't say its characters' skillsets are necessarily startlingly unprecedented either. So it goes. (And no, even that has its assholes...)
posted by inconstant at 8:01 PM on March 1, 2018

Hah! Typing up that comment made me go look up Gigantic again, and apparently they're shutting down. Truly the space was too crowded. I'm sorry to hear it -- I know the devs threw themselves into it even after many difficulties, and the character designs really were a breath of fresh air -- but I might have been more surprised if they'd managed to hold out, given the circumstances.
posted by inconstant at 8:06 PM on March 1, 2018

I'm a big OW fan, and play most nights with a bunch of MeFighters. Most other games (except some single player games like Subnautica) have fallen by the wayside while I main Zarya. I like that they are keeping the game fresh with new characters. And as a Swede, I love that they gave us a female Swedish hero. Wish they had added some Swedish lines too, though, like there are native language lines for some of the other characters.

And yet... I'm irrationally irritated at the name they chose. I don't know why they picked it, as it sounds very weird and not at all Swedish to me. I was irritated enough that I looked up the frequency of "Brigitte" versus the way more common "Birgitta" and posted the screenshot of the stats (which bear out my contention that it's not a very common name) with a Twitter rant.

I get it. Common German name, given by Reinhardt. But yet it bothers me so much! I'm not even all that excited to play her just for that, that's how weird I am...
posted by gemmy at 8:43 PM on March 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Wouldn't Brigitte have shone in the field, rather than shined?
posted by The Seeds of Autumn at 10:09 PM on March 1, 2018

tfw your friend voices a new Overwatch hero and doesn't tell you about it.
posted by Talez at 4:05 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

How good is the AI? I love a good FPS from time to time but I'm really terrible at them. If the AI is at least passable, I might have to give it a try. Used to love Quake 3 vs. bots back in the day.

I'm in the same boat as a lot of the commenters here, I find the "community" to be toxic, and enjoy playing this game against AI, thus eliminating what is the least fun part of the game for me.

While this can be enjoyable, there are limitations. The main limiting factor is that there simply isn't AI for all the characters. The AI characters that have been implemented are mostly hitscan. While understandable from an ease of development standpoint, this eliminates many fun possible playmodes. All AI Junkrat, for instance. I wish this was possible. The mayhem would be fierce.

Another problem with the way the AI has been implemented is the difficulty curve. Easy is dead easy. Medium is challenging if you get cornered by several enemies, but is fairly easy one-on-one. Hard is ridiculous. The enemies have perfect aim, are unaffected by any dodging you may do, and they seem to be able to hit you through barriers that no human player would think to shoot from. Ledges come to mind. Normally, we think of high ground as an advantage. Not so with these AI. They'll see you up on the ledge when you can't even see them on the ground. It's not very fun to get killed this way.
posted by sydnius at 5:12 AM on March 2, 2018

Here is a list of all of the added heroes to OW post-launch:

Ana - Egyptian old lady support sniper
Sombra - Young latina stealth hacker
Orisa - Massive centaurish crossing guard robot (designed by girl-genius engineer from Nigeria*)
Doomfist - Middle-aged Nigerian* melee dude who also leads a clandestine organization based on social darwinism
Moira - Middle-aged / young (I can't tell) Irish geneticist support lady who is super into anime (runs like Naruto, lol)
Brigitte - see above (rhymes with Vegeta?)

*lore-wise, I think Numbani is in Nigeria*

This game now has 12 playable male characters, 12 playable female characters and 3 playable robot/omnic characters (and of these 3, one has a woman's voice, one has a man's voice, and one just beepboops). All 6 civilized continents are represented, and by more than one hero except for S. America (only Lucio so far). As far as gender and ethnic/national diversity goes, OW is doing a pretty good job. /EZ clap
posted by Groundhog Week at 5:21 AM on March 2, 2018 [9 favorites]

And here I was, hoping you’d have a post for Into The Breach.

*cough*
posted by Fizz at 5:23 AM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wish I had the opportunity to play with more Mefites (or Mefights), but my play time tends to be daytime on the weekends. I did manage to catch Katya and Gemmy recently.

In my experience on PC, the toxicity levels seem lower in Arcade and Quick Play, with QP getting a little more salty when Competitive is off season.

It's nice to see Brigitte added, since she's been featured in some of the recent media, but I'm still holding out for Jetpack Cat.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:56 AM on March 2, 2018

I might come back to Overwatch when Pachimari is a playable character.
posted by Foosnark at 7:22 AM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

> and by more than one hero except for S. America (only Lucio so far)

But you just mentioned Sombra.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:31 AM on March 2, 2018

Sombra is Mexican. Mexico is in North America.
posted by Groundhog Week at 7:50 AM on March 2, 2018

How good is the AI? I love a good FPS from time to time but I'm really terrible at them.


The game has a pretty good matching system for quickplay, so you will be put in games with people of similar skill levels. As you improve at the game it will rank you higher. Just do quickplay all day and you'll have a blast. Honestly even low-level competitive is fun.

At some point the player base asshole percentage hit a point of no return for me. I envy those who are able to put up with it.

I exclusively play Overwatch with text and voice disabled and I find it really enjoyable. Other than DPS sometimes spamming "I need healing!" there's not much they can do. Quick play is is a blast, and even gold-level competitive is totally doable without communication.

If you enjoy the game, then play it!
posted by mayonnaises at 8:08 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's nice to see Brigitte added, since she's been featured in some of the recent media, but I'm still holding out for Jetpack Cat.

To my eye, it looks like Brigitte is building Jetpack Cat in her intro vid.
posted by davros42 at 11:04 AM on March 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Side note, I have been watching the Overwatch League streams basically to earn credits for a few of the skins because I like purple and don't want to spend money on it, and I am surprisingly into it.

I've never gotten the sports thing before but I'm finding myself remembering player names and getting excited and not recognizing myself. (Two bonus skins from the random 100 point drops helps tbh.)

In game these days I play exclusively mystery heroes. There's still some salt but's usually because the RNG did something ridiculous like giving the defending team two Orisas, two Mercies and a Bastion instead of being directed at a person so it seems less toxic. I'm still useless when RNG gives me Doomfist but I've gotten a lot more comfortable with a larger variety of heroes than if I'd been left to my own devices.
posted by rewil at 11:05 AM on March 2, 2018

I played Overwatch enthusiastically during the open beta, bought it immediately, and then never once actually played the shipped game because I was intimidated. Maybe I'll try playing just AI sometime.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:28 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]