Mauga Q&A – Overwatch 2 Team Goes Through the Latest Hero’s Design Process

wccftech.com:

At BlizzCon 2023's opening ceremony, Blizzard announced Mauga as the 39th hero to be added to Overwatch 2 with the upcoming Season 8. A damage-based tank hailing from Samoa, Mauga was available to try both at home and at the event itself; we played a few games and discussed our first impressions here.

Later, we had the opportunity to join a roundtable press interview with a few members of Blizzard's Overwatch 2 development team to discuss the entire design process of creating Mauga.

As a reminder, Season 8 will be released on December 5th across all platforms. To unlock the new hero, players will have to either buy the Premium Battle Pass or level up the standard Battle Pass to 45.

One thing that stood out to me was even though the character is a tank, there were a lot of support-style skills. That stuck out to me because of how vital tanks are and how they can kind of be inaccessible for less skilled players because they're so vital to the team. As you were designing this new hero, did you design him to be a more approachable tank? And how do you go about designing tanks when they're so important to the success of the team in Overwatch 2?

I think that for Mauga, a lot of his design is based on his weapons first because he has giant chain guns. You can actually use both close up and everything.

A lot of newer players, the main way they'll play is to try to get in with his Overrun ability in which he charges right in, uses both chain guns, and tries to mow people down. When we think about how he can actually be a tank for his team and help his allies and defend everyone. His abilities are much more around doing damage, right?

Cardiac Overdrive is this big lifesteal aura that he puts out for his whole team and if they're in