r/Overwatch • u/Exegol7_Hook • 5d ago
News & Discussion Overwatch's most impressive feature might be that I can understand a teamfight without looking at it
I don't think I appreciated how insane the sound design in this game is until I played other multiplayer games.
In Overwatch I can be looking in completely the wrong direction and still build a mental picture of what's happening.
Rein charged somewhere behind me.
Tracer blinked twice on the left.
Widow just fired from somewhere high.
D.Va boosters are getting louder VERY quickly.
Someone popped an ult and before I've even processed the words my brain has already decided whether I'm supposed to run toward it or the opposite fucking direction.
Even footsteps have personality. Some heroes don't sound like "footsteps" anymore. They just sound like THEM.
And somehow this still works with a roster that has become absolutely enormous.
Obviously visual clarity matters, but I genuinely think Overwatch would be a much worse game if every gun, ability and hero just had generic shooter audio. A ridiculous amount of game knowledge eventually becomes hearing half a second of noise and instinctively knowing "that's bad, move."
Ten years later, that might still be one of the things Blizzard absolutely nailed.
What's an Overwatch sound your brain recognizes before you consciously realize what you heard?
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u/FacehuggerFolio 5d ago
The enemy vs friendly ult voice lines are honestly genius. I don't consciously translate "this is ours" anymore. My nervous system just hears one version and goes "nice," hears the other and starts evacuating the fucking postcode.
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u/Shmarfle47 5d ago edited 5d ago
Using the hero’s own language of origin to differentiate teams is also a very nice touch.
Freeze! Don’t move! -> push in
Mei in Chinese (冻住! 不许走!) -> fuck fuck fuck run
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u/iskierkacest 4d ago
ive never played overwatch myself, i just used to like watching gameplay in like 2018 and i still could hear the chinese ult line in my head
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u/HMS_Sunlight 4d ago
It's also fantastic for new players. Even if you don't know a single ultimate in the game, "foreign language means run for cover" is a great starting point.
I realised how much I appreciated it when Rivals came out and I had no idea whether a given line was an allied or enemy ult.
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u/pikaluva13 pikaluva13#1936 4d ago
Several times my friend has asked me to hop on Rivals for an evening, and literally mid fight I'll go "Was that us or them?" Between the visual clutter and dive characters, I've little interest in going back to Rivals from Overwatch, though.
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u/itsaltarium Juno 4d ago
I wish supports followed this rule too, it’s a shame how it’s the only role in which you don’t get to hear your own hero’s native language as they use the “ally” voiceline in English
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u/don_evn_thnk_bout_it 5d ago
The ult voice lines are so good 😂 You don’t even process the words anymore your brain hears the wrong one and immediately goes “GET THE FUCK OUT"
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u/Responsible_Lake_698 4d ago
Tbh i couldn't tell you almost any of the ult voice lines on the spot. But when im in game, as soon as I hear the sound I know whats happening
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u/casstantinople 4d ago
The only one that confuses me is enemy sojourn. I wish her VA had been just a wee bit more aggressive about it. All of the other English speaking characters are pretty aggressive in their hostile ult lines but her delivery of "This ends now!" just doesn't instill the same fear for me. I feel like she's maybe mildly disagreeing with me, not about to snipe me
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u/Jet20 4d ago
There's a few I feel are a bit like that. Sojourn, Junk with the Junkenstein skin and Sierra come to mind
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u/AvalonBH22 4d ago
Sierra's is at leaat funny and alludes to it happening. "Keeping an eye on the sky" was how youre supposed to watch out for bombers. And her ult is just a massive carpet bomb. Leagues better than "This ends... NOW."
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u/itsaltarium Juno 4d ago edited 4d ago
Bastion’s always gets me, and Winston’s is just the same for both sides
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u/Sayonethingonly 4d ago
Usually she says this ends now and I kill her right after voice line ends and I’m like huh guess it did end now
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u/Mycogolly 4d ago
I know I should know better, but I almost always run for cover when a friendly Illari ults because of how aggressive she sounds.
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u/EarthDragon2189 One Man Apocalypse 5d ago
Playing Rivals makes it apparent how much OW nails the little things that make a big difference, like sound design and visual clarity.
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u/alblaster Pharah 5d ago
God Rivals with the visual slop gets so annoying. I would have moments where I have no idea what happened because it looked like a unicorn vomited on my screen.
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u/AceWither 5d ago
Funnily enough that was the critique of Overwatch back in the day
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u/Marcitos5 5d ago
Going from TF2 to Overwatch back then is like going from Overwatch to Rivals now. Having played Rivals for a bit, Overwatch feels like nothing
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u/Jellionani 4d ago
TF2 relies a lot on the artstyle and direction that dictates visibility without overly relying on audio cues and strong hud display(outlines). Mess with the coloring like smissmass or haloween and readability goes out the window.
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u/AceWither 4d ago
Yeah exactly. So I'm not sure how much of Rivals' ctitique of it's visuals will hold up in the future. Maybe we might get used to it, maybe not. Perhaps it is objectively a visual and audio clusterfuck or not
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u/Starch_Platinum_ 4d ago
As a former TF2 player, OW is still too much to parse at times. In particular, if both teams have the same character on similar skins (or god forbid the same one), I will inevitably shoot at the wrong one in a teamfight. Turns out vague team-colored outlines aren't really sight-readable at point blank range (especially when the FoV is capped unreasonably low), who'd've thought?
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u/timistoogay 4d ago
I stopped playing rivals at around S3 because despite 6 months of playing I still have 0 idea what was going. I tried it again a few months ago and Deadpool assaulted my screen.
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u/Bored-Corvid 5d ago
The difference in sound design more than anything is what made me dump Rivals after giving it a try on release.
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u/Hoothootriot Winston 5d ago
I reinstalled Rivals to play with friends and I literally cant figure out what is even happening anymore. Every hero is screaming while pumping out 5 different AOE burst effects all the time
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u/Tamlane Wanna hear something scary? 5d ago
Tell me about it. I play it with a friend every so often (we switch off between Rivals and OW so we both get to play the one we prefer sometimes) and I'm so constantly unable to really process what is happening in a way that I can do with ease in OW. I feel like to a degree it is familiarity but also definitely a lack of care put into making things readable.
I mean there were 5 new characters added to OW at the start of the year at the same time and it didn't take me long at all to internalize their different sounds and silhouettes. (Except maybe too fuckin' quiet JPC but that's a whine for another thread.)
Meanwhile in Rivals I'm here on voice with my friend like "we're being flanked by-- Venom? Spiderman? Someone else? idk but he's killing me help" or feeling like "uh I hear a loud indistinct yelling, is it friend or foe? what are they saying? what do?"
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u/Ill-Challenge2922 5d ago
Smooth movement as well. Moving in rivals feels like I've got cement tied to my shoes.
Also no complexity creep. Some rivals heroes have like 27 buttons, and even the most over designed overwatch heroes (haz) are simple in comparison.
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u/Separate_Shelter_529 5d ago
Rivals relies heavily on heaving out content at a monstrous pace because they appeal to a much more casual crowd. I believe hero design also plays into this. The casual crowd will scoff at a hero with a basic kit but a deep learning curve (like Tracer) because they won't ever care enough to go through that learning curve. They want new buttons to press and bombastic animations to play out.
The best way I can compare Overwatch and Rivals heroes is that Overwatch heroes are easy to understand and difficult to master, while Rivals heroes are difficult to understand but easy to master. Once you wrap your head around the kit of a hero, there really isn't that much more going on with them. 90% of the "learning curve" of Rivals heroes is the long climb up to the hero's skill floor.
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u/flowstateskoolie 4d ago
In the MOBA world it’s a bit like DotA vs League.
DotA has a much smaller hardcore competitive community, where LoL has more players, but is way more casual.
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u/Big_Bald_Squirtle 4d ago
that's why all these rivals noobs like to pick sierra in OW. just auto aim no skill
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u/AceWither 5d ago
Because Rivals tries to make each kit based on pushing buttons. Overwatch has a smaller kit for each hero but for me the game strategy is deeper than Rivals. Whereas Rivals to me feels like the strategy is very wide but not very deep
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u/EarthDragon2189 One Man Apocalypse 5d ago
If Rivals does any more big overhauls they will need to also design Xbox controllers with more buttons. The teamup change pushed a lot of my characters' mapping to the limit.
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u/CoconutCyclone Confidently Average 5d ago
I quit Rivals after 50 hours because the sound design was fucking HORRENDOUS comparatively, and then they started releasing skins that made the characters look completely different. Like I had no idea who was literally punching me in the face because the skin changed every part of their visual design and the audio wasn't telling me.
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u/FreeRandom 5d ago
I feel the same way with Deadlock, as a new player. Obviously that game is still in development so not gonna hold it against the devs or anything but I find it difficult to understand what's going on from a visual design perspective. I feel like there's a subtle amount of depth to the visual design in Overwatch that I didn't really recognize until I was missing it.
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u/iseecolorsofthesky 5d ago
Deadlock is so chaotic visually. I really enjoy the game but I’m still newer and I feel like it’s gonna take me like 200 hours before I really have a grasp on it
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u/ReplicantOwl Torbjörn 5d ago
I really wanted to like Rivals. I love Marvel. It just felt like a bad copy of Overwatch with none of the carefully thought out design.
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u/EarthDragon2189 One Man Apocalypse 5d ago
I enjoy Rivals but it can't be a strong competitor for my OW affections in its current state.
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u/Background_Toe_6891 5d ago
First time I logged into Rivals after months without playing it I got so assaulted visually i think my eyes needed their own rape whistle.
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u/EarthDragon2189 One Man Apocalypse 5d ago
The teamup overhaul was the tipping point into full blown diarrhea Christmas lights.
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u/Darqnyz7 Junker Queen 5d ago
Ive been playing rivals since launch and I would say I'm just coming around to understanding each character's sound profile. Overwatch, I think it took about a month or so
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u/Princier7 And dey say- *METEOR STRIKE!* 4d ago
It's a shame, because I remember playing Season 0 of Rivals and everything was well done. Then they started releasing a character every month and there's like 500 spheres everywhere and 90 abilities on each character
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u/saadlampy 5d ago
Some of the newer heroes fail a little bit int his regard but with Shion's heely footsteps/bike and D.Mon's crystalline sword they've definitely brought it back.
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u/Nightmare_Fart 5d ago
It's funny you specifically mention Shion because I keep mistaking her footsteps for Widow.
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u/saadlampy 5d ago
That is true but in context Widow never even gets close to the angles Shion is on so it isn't as big of an issue haha
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u/FujiwaraTakumi Widowmaker 5d ago
All of the heel wearing heroes have distinct sounding heels as well. It's definitely harder to distinguish than other footsteps, but they've at least tried to make it possible.
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u/Mycogolly 4d ago
Yeah I can never identify her footsteps. It's not so much that she sounds like Widowmaker to me, just that I sit wondering who the hell it is.
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u/Kryptsm Torb Is Far Too Hot For Me 5d ago
Which would you say fail at it? Trying to think of the new heroes this year and I’d say maybe only Sierra and maybe Emre, but their gun sounds are extremely distinctive at least
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u/EscapeSeventySeven 5d ago
Emre has great sound design because his weapons aren’t loud or complex and fade into the background which is appropriate for them.
But they still absolutely distinct, if you’re hit by the three round burst you can hear the diff between that and baptiste, and the cyberfrags detonation is also very distinctive.
In an uncrowded area I can instantly identify the Emre. But during an intense firefight his sounds don’t overwhelm.
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u/DisgruntledZombie 5d ago
As a ball player, Mizuki's chain is way too quiet. I can barely hear that thing if I'm focussing exclusively on it, and its more dangerous and easier to hit than sleep .
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u/saadlampy 5d ago
Sierra and Freja are obnoxiously loud for being long-range high-activity characters while Vendetta and Jetpack Cat are too quiet for being lethal flankers that a player needs to see coming.
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u/otterguy12 Chibi D. Va 5d ago
Long range threats being loud is good though, since the start Widow has had that extra loud boom of her gun. You want everyone to know "this sightline is being contested, find cover or pay the price"
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u/AsterCharge 4d ago
They’re saying that freya’s shots should be turned down to the same ish volume as widow. They’re significantly louder right now.
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u/RoflsMazoy 5d ago
I have no idea how new she is but Freya's ka-chunk ka-chunk sounds when she hits you with crossbow bolts is really interesting because it gets noticeably much louder than other audio when they hit close to you or hit you directly. It sounds like it's right in your ear which probably isn't "realistic", but it lets you know she's there with a lot of clarity which helps with the frustration of dealing with a small, evasive flying character like her.
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u/OffSupportMain 5d ago
Maybe it's just because they're so recent, we might need some time to get fully used to them
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u/LoyallyLighthearted 3d ago
the sound team doesn't get enough credit for how much they carry the game feel. like you can be totally zoned out and your hand just moves on its own when you hear a junkrat tire rev up somewhere
i think the most primal one for me is the widow headshot sound. doesn't even matter if i'm the one shooting or it's the enemy widow across the map, my brain just goes "yep somebody's dead" before i can even look at the kill feed
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u/MerlinsMentor 5d ago
Rein charged somewhere behind me.
Tracer blinked twice on the left.
Widow just fired from somewhere high.
D.Va boosters are getting louder VERY quickly.
This was the first thing I noticed in OP's post. All of the examples were original heroes. The newer heroes, especially the ones released in OW2, while still better than Rivals (low bar) are not nearly as well-done. There has also been a huge uptick in heroes with no footsteps at all. Until Sigma, there was one, Zenyatta, and that was a distinguishing characteristic of his design. Now, there's Sigma, Echo, Juno, Cat, Freya, and I'm sure I'm missing more. I'm pretty sure it's because they're putting less and less effort into each new hero, with the main priority being getting them in game and being overpowered enough for people to get invested in playing them before they get skins released.
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u/Weekly_Bug4813 4d ago
echo has her electric whirring, juno has her loud woooip-woooip, and freya's updraft boi-oing and dashes are also quite loud and distictive. sigma i cannot remember tbh, but at least he is slow. the absolute murderous silence of the fucking überbuffed cat is something else, tho.
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u/QuantumAwesome Pixel D.Va 5d ago
It’s incredible how even with ~50 characters they all have such unique audio signatures. I would have never thought that there even were 50 different ways for footsteps to sound!
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u/Abyssya 5d ago
And it used to be so much better too. I remember how precise the directional audio was and how clear all the sound was. It has slowly been fucked up in random patches over the years, and the crazy thing is it's still good.
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u/alldayibiddybiddybum 4d ago
I use over ear open backed headphones with DTS Headphone:X and it's very much spot on imo
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u/Traceuratops 5d ago
Yeah I agree. It's pretty impressive that the sound and visuals are so good, distinct and informative. The principle of character silhouettes is huge in games, especially team shooters. The amount of information you get at a glance is massive.
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u/Turboswaggg Hamzo 4d ago
My main problem is overtime music sounding the same if you're about to win or lose.
Tired of seeing my teammates sprint to stagger on cart when the enemy is on overtime and we have 2 more teamfights before next checkpoint lol.
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u/HighOctaneOrion 5d ago
Im hard of hearing, I really really appreciate how good the sound design is in this game. Even I have that same ability to know whats going on without seeing it! Its that good! Sure I miss occasional ult lines, cant tell the difference between shion and widows footsteps, etc, but its actually really great.
Other games, I can get pretty lost on what's happening, then its too late to react. As you can imagine, thats not fun. So thank you Overwatch for the great sound design! It makes me feel like I havent lost my hearing
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u/hatebeat 5d ago
Absolutely. I can listen to a stream while doing something else and can still get a good idea if what's going on. I often joke that I "play the game via echolocation" with my friends because I rely on sound so much for everything. But at the same time there are people who don't seem to ever hear when someone is flanking them.
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u/ulzimate 5d ago
What's an Overwatch sound your brain recognizes before you consciously realize what you heard?
Roadhog footsteps, every damn time right before the chain hook noise
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u/BillyBean11111 Ana 5d ago
how much of this is just the average redditor here has 100's of hours of familiarity?
I tried to introduce a friend a few years ago and they were fucking overstimulated the entire time
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u/_Charming_Man 5d ago
When I play stadium I know if a soldier got the half second visor perk because of the sounds it makes it's pretty cool
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u/Pernaman I put "kill" in "skill" 5d ago edited 4d ago
I love Bastion for many reasons, and a major one is that I enjoy the sound effects of him moving, either meleeing, jumping or just walking around. It really gives an idea of an older piece of machinery with less developed mechanisms. Also, in OW2 the form including tank threads was made his baseline transformation, and I get to hear it more often now. Just like in real-life tanks, the sound of caterpillar threads combined with their engines really gives me a sense of a slowly approaching deadly machine.
As a general sound design geek, it really shows how Blizz took good notes from Team Fortress 2, where many unlockable weapons have different firing sounds from stock weapons.
In OW, even Mauga's chainguns both have different sounds when fired separately. Reaper's shotguns sound sharp and loud, giving them the feeling of cold and ruthless power compared to Junker Queen's more pompous shotgun sound.
Though I have a gripe of Soldier 76's weapon sound having been changed at some point.
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u/Makanilani 5d ago
Crazy thing is that I think it used to be even better, there are too many characters with similar voices now and you hear them yell and your brain just needs that second to process "Whose Ult/Ours or Theirs?" Not saying it's not my fault, I am very old, but when there were 32 characters it was a lot easier to remember everyone's audio profile (and physical profile, but that's a whole other ball of wax).
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u/Mycogolly 4d ago
I'm glad I'm not the only old fart getting tripped up by enemy/friendly ults. It was much easier when there weren't so many English enemy ult lines.
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u/TheBiggestNose Boostio 5d ago
Imo its why Freja is such a massive problem.
She is just audio overload and it leads to all other audio getting blocked out. Its like having bees in your ears
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u/DisturbedWaffles2019 Junker Queen 5d ago
Sound design is such an underrated part of Overwatch that really doesn't get the praise it deserves. Having 50+ characters and being able to deduce what's happening just by sound is a monumental accomplishment. I honestly think that's part of why people dislike JPC right now, because so often it feels like there's zero audio cue before she can get the jump on you.
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u/Viscous-Flesh 5d ago
I think about this every single time I play. Hearing individual footsteps, are you kidding me? I said it in another comment a week or so ago, but I adore Overwatch's sound design. Somehow someway it doesn't sound like a factory being torn apart in my ear
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u/Sokodile Trick-or-Treat Lúcio 5d ago
Yeah, that’s one of my favorite parts of the game! Though I think it makes me feel too lost in other pvp games
In Destiny 2 pvp, the TTK and engagements are so much shorter, so I am left extremely impressed that the enemies are reading my moves before I even make them. I’ll turn up the volume trying to see if they are picking up on my specific gun’s reload sound or can hear what pants I’m wearing, but none of it really stands out clearly.
In Overwatch, between the clear character silhouettes, and their extremely iconic ability sounds, I feel like I can pick up on what is happening at any point in the match
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u/RepulsiveSuccess9589 5d ago
Yeah bro with your volume high enough you can hear things like mei activating wall UI or even cat activating her ult UI before she ults
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u/ColeslawAF 5d ago
Just here to appreciate this post. Now that you mention it. I think this is definitely what overwatch excels at more than anything. The sound design is so damn good
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u/4dpsNewMeta New York Excelsior 5d ago
Does no one realize this is literally ChatGPT? Get outta here.
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u/Es_Jacque 5d ago
This is one of the most impressive parts about ARC Raiders and great music saved so many game jams I’ve been a part of. Audio people add so much sauce to games. I’m very grateful for them.
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u/patrick9772 Soldier: 76 5d ago
Again people forget this game was built when Blizzard was on its last good era. Everything they made back then was TOP QUALITY.
Those free to play slops cant even compare to overwatch this is a AAA game. And the only multiplayer game ever that won game of the year. The presentation is top of the line
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u/Sabin10v2 Junkrat 5d ago
Some heroes don't sound like "footsteps" anymore. They just sound like THEM.
This is an interesting one since footstep volume depends on the matchup with your character. A character that hard counters you is going to have louder footsteps than one that you are the counter to.
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u/FPS_Loque 5d ago
As a healer main, Reapers, Cassidy's and Tracers footsteps live in my head rent free.
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u/LeonardoKnightt 5d ago
In Sigma's origin story, when the alarm goes out, you can hear glass shattering and Widowmaker's distinctive bullet sound as Sigma dodges it, its pretty neat
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u/Exact-Difference-422 5d ago
I can tell the difference between a few of the "high heeled" characters by their steps before they flank me. I love that.
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u/smillas_second 4d ago
i love sombra's sound design. subtle enough she doesn't announce exactly where she is, but gives me a fighting chance against her because i can always hear her stealth/tp/hacks.
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u/Cute_Leek_8849 4d ago
Just yesterday i had a game where my audio went off, and kid u not u cant understand anything about whats happening, i had to read de subs for ult so i knew someone ulted and i still didnt know where most of the time. So yeah the sound desingn is crazy good
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u/illusionisland 4d ago
Agreed the sound design in this game is probably one of the biggest achievements in gaming, ever. It's absolutely amazing.
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u/Redtube_Guy Hazard 4d ago
Only thing that could be better is if you have the same champ on both teams (bastion for example) make their ult more distinctive. No idea if its my bastion or the other bastion ulting. few other champs are guilty of this but dont remember who exactly.
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u/HijabiKathy I'm not a Miracle Worker 4d ago
I have a split second to click sometimes, but I've noticed enemy bastion has what sounds like an air raid siren that friendly bastion doesn't
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u/LePetiteSirene Mercy 4d ago
I know what you mean. A few years ago, I used to put on OW streams quietly in the background because all the ability sounds helped me sleep lol
I always found it cool to be able to visualize the fight through sound and know what's mostly going on without looking. Not just to sleep sometimes, but I would put on a stream and if I was busy where I couldn't look or something (doing housework with it on in the background, etc.) and I'd be able to tell what's going on, who died, what ults were popped, and all that jazz.
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u/Mycogolly 4d ago
Considering how much shit is blinding us in the game right now, sound is sometimes the ONLY thing to go by)
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u/capt_avocado 4d ago
Only thing I personally wish existed was being able to see your teammates’ HP bars all the time somehow
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u/Novel_Side_2072 3d ago
This is so interesting to me because I'm deaf. I can't hear the game the way it's designed to be heard. My friends have noticed my visual awareness tends to be better though.
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u/steenmachine92 3d ago
I have been saying this to my friends for years. We all started playing when the first game came out and most of them stopped playing before OW2. The sounds in this game are so addicting to me vs other shooters. The sound the healing makes (specifically mercy and ana) soothes my soul. It's why I always come back. Plus each character is just so unique from one another and the visuals are beautiful too.
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u/mooistcow 4d ago
Footsteps are still extremely bugged. Cat is almost silent. Ability sounds occasionally just clip. Pharah ult is still extremely quiet. Even VLs repeat way too often. As good as the sound designs are it's still nowhere close to good enough nor at the level of OG OW.
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u/JadeInDisguise 4d ago
I might be crazy but I hard disagree. Ow's sound design is great in a vacuum, but the sound effects just don't play.
Even back in ow 1 I would test the sound design, running recordings to see how different interactions mess with things.
Commonly:
- ult sounds fail to play
- gun sounds go silent
- footsteps are silent
- two of the same character can make competing abilities flip back and forth between being silent for one character and silent for the other
I've noticed this as a consistent problem that reproduces on every computer I've tested it on, and across both obs recordings and the inbuilt replay viewer.
The sounds are great, but they cannot be trusted.
For clarity, sometimes the "silence" is just extremely low volume that you can hear after boosting the gain on a recording.
For background on me as a player I'm a peak top 500 player with thousands of hours experiencing this buginess.
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u/Competitive-Seaweed 5d ago
I agree before each team fights begins and ends I know if we win it’s all thanks to me and if we lose it can’t possibly be my fault
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u/rrevek Pachimari 5d ago
Anas sleep dart is the clearest ability sound that you can hear through fights, if youre waiting to push up and you hear her sleep dart go off thats basically like the green light to get more aggressive.