Overwatch vs Paladins. Who is Copying Who?

21 May 2017

Throughout last week on the PlayStation Store, Paladins was front and centre on its home screen. A new hero based shooter, free to download, although still in its beta phase. I'd already seen a trailer for it, thought it looked great with similarities to Overwatch, so I hit the download button.

After just playing the tutorial, I couldn't believe how similar it is to Overwatch. After playing a few more hours and watching some YouTube videos, it is ridiculous how similar some aspects of the two games are. Which begs the question, who is copying who?

I initially thought Paladins was completely ripping off Overwatch. The latter launched in May last year to huge critical success, and its player base is growing phenomenally due to developer Blizzard's consistent updates to the game. I thought Paladins was very new, especially as it's only just released on consoles and is still a beta version. But to my surprise the PC version is in the same state. It's been available through an open beta since 16th September last year, and a closed beta began in November 2015. Overwatch also had multiple betas running in 2015, which now makes it awkward with which game came first.

Both games are unquestionably hero based shooters, with slight differences in game modes and what you can buy with micro-transactions. But it's the characters, and particularly their abilities that are so similar it's genuinely unbelievable. Some are identical.

The video below shows me playing through the Paladins tutorial for the first time. If you've played Soldier 76 in Overwatch, how similar is this character!? Not to mention the tutorial itself is incredibly similar to Overwatch.

Going into this game completely blind, I was first staggered by the two character abilities. Both with 'cooldown times' and mapped to the same controller buttons as Overwatch. Secondly the 'Ultimate' ability. Exactly the same term and controller button! Then of course there's the Payload, which again is almost identical to Overwatch, but this game mechanic has been used in other games such as Team Fortress 2.

Dialling into more detail, this character's sprint ability is the one to focus on. I can just about pass everything listed above, but this sprint function is absolutely identical to Soldier 76 in Overwatch. You can sprint in just about any first person shooter for the last 10 years at least, and most of those are military based. I thought it was a pretty novel idea in Overwatch for one character, of military background, to have a fairly normal ability in sprinting. The Paladins character here, Viktor, is exactly the same. The only character who can sprint and is military based. The way he carries his assault rifle too - identical. And the fact this ability has no cooldown - identical!!

I thought this has to be too much of a coincidence. But then I explored the other characters and could not believe the similarities I found. Particularly on character abilities.

The videos below by Eph1n3 showcase these perfectly. Part 1 shows the worst three offending characters in the two games, with my thoughts below.

Reinhardt and Fernando. Both are tank characters suited in armour, and both have a huge god damn blue rectangle shield with curved corners! Both can shoot a burst of fire from their melee weapon, and both have a charge ability to ram opponents.

Pharah and Drogoz. Both characters can essentially fly and are equipped with a rocket launcher with six rockets. Both have an ability to launch themselves in the air (which looks to be the exact same thrust and height), and both have the same limited hover ability.

Widowmaker and Kinessa. Both characters are equipped with a multi-functioning gun that primarily hip fires as a sub machine gun, and secondary fires as a sniper rifle. I'd never see a weapon handle like two distinctly different guns before playing Widowmaker in Overwatch. Now there's an almost identical copy. Scoping in for longer also boosts the damage for both characters, and both have a throwable mine that deals damage to enemies over time.

Part 2 shows more. I would say some of these are taking inspiration rather than direct copying. But there are still some big offenders in here. My thoughts below.

McCree and Androxus. Androxus does initially look like Reaper but his weapon is so close to McCree's. Both are equipped with a revolver, with the ability to rapidly fire all remaining bullets in the clip. Again I'd never seen an ability like this before playing Overwatch. The reload animation is also identical.

Torbjörn and Barik. First of all, these two are the closest in visual appearance it's quite ridiculous. Both are dwarf engineers, and both have the ability to build a turret! Why? Any other character could have the turret ability, but no, it had to be the dwarf... Both of their primary weapons are also similar.

Junkrat and Bomb King. Very different looking characters with different weapons which I appreciate. But the Ultimate ability... Both characters have a rolling bomb that the player can control and detonate for massive damage.

Hanzo and Cassie. Since this video Cassie's weapon has been changed to a crossbow. Then Paladins introduced a new male, Asian character called Sha Lin with a bow. Not similar to Hanzo at all...

Mei and Evie. Very different characters overall but one ability is identical. Both can instantly turn into a block of ice and become immune to all damage for a short period of time. This idea must have been copied from one game.

Roadhog and Makoa. A tortoise and a pig seem like very different characters, but both have an incredibly similar hook ability and shotgun for a deadly 1-2 punch. Paladins call it an 'anchor' and a 'cannon' but I'm not having that.

D.Va and Ruckus. Two more characters that look far too similar. Both are smaller characters inside a mech suit. Both have dual firing machine guns, and both have energy shield abilities to block incoming damage.

Soldier 76 and Viktor. Last but not least the two characters from each game's tutorial. Both have a traditional assault rifle with an identical ordinary sprint ability.

So there you have it. Too many similar characters and abilities to count. I'm convinced some must be copied from one game but it's so difficult to tell. Both games had betas running in November 2015, which is the first time the public could play these games. At that time Paladins only had 8 characters available (read here). Whereas all 21 heroes at Overwatch's launch were available in Blizzard's invitation-only Beta Test Weekend.

This means for the debates over Reinhardt and Fernando, Torbjörn and Barik, D.Va and Ruckus, it's impossible to know who came first. But for all other character comparisons above, there is a very strong case that Paladins has copied Overwatch.

As Paladins (and more-so Overwatch) grew in popularity through 2016, this lead to many allegations that Paladins developer Hi-Rez Studios have copied elements from Overwatch. IGN wrote a news story on this, where the Hi-Rez COO said that "the game that deserves the most credit is Team Fortress 2". TF2 is now considered as the original first person hero shooter, developed by Valve and released in 2007.

The unique aspect of Team Fortress 2 was its classes and characters. There are nine characters that fall into three classes: Offense, Defense and Support (see Team Fortress 2 wiki). How close does this sound to describing Overwatch? This creates a fun three-way argument between TF2, Overwatch and Paladins.

There are many videos out there trying to dissect this brawl, but the best I've found is from YouTuber Objective Takes. This is fairly in depth and shares my views the closest.

There are a few screen grabs to highlight from this video, starting with the following quote from Jeff Kaplan ("of the Overwatch team"), where he welcomes the comparisons of his game with TF2.

The classes and game modes of Overwatch are incredibly similar to TF2 (some may say copied). That can't be denied. But these aspects of a game are much harder to innovate, especially for a multiplayer shooter. Which is why I'm not questioning the classes and game modes of Paladins either. It's the characters and their abilities that should differentiate each game. They should all be different, particularly for Paladins and Overwatch - two games launching at roughly the same time.

It's clear that Blizzard has taken inspiration from the cast of TF2 (as described in the video), but none are so close that serious allegations of copying arose. Take Junkrat and the Demoman as an example.

Compare that with Barik of Paladins and Torbjörn of Overwatch.

I genuinely laughed out loud when I saw Barik for the first time. It's crazy. It just can't be a coincidence that both characters where developed in complete isolation and they happen to be so similar.

The reason I'm siding with Blizzard is because they are simply a bigger development studio with an incredible catalogue of massive games. The Diablo series, the Starcraft series, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and many more. Why would they ever need to copy characters from another studio? I'd never previously heard of Paladins developer Hi-Rez Studios, although their most popular game to date is Smite - a well respected multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) from 2014.

Having said this, there is one more character comparison to bring to the table (which is also mentioned in the Objective Takes video).

Skye and Sombra. Both characters are flirtatious purple-dressed females, and both have a stealth ability where they can turn invisible for a short time and gain a speed boost. Skye is an original character from Paladins from November 2015. Sombra was a new hero added to Overwatch in November 2016. A full year later.

This just adds fuel to the fire when a strong case can be made for Paladins copying Overwatch. Why would Blizzard introduce a character like this? If she was just a different primary colour this allegation might not be brought up.

So the question overall remains. With Overwatch and Paladins, who is copying who? The response from creative leads at both development teams is they take inspiration from Team Fortress 2. And that is certainly true. But as I showed with the direct comparison videos above, and the tutorial, they must have been looking at each other's games in late 2015 and implemented some of the exact same character abilities. Particularly for Paladins, as nearly triple the number of characters were publicly playable in Overwatch than those in Paladins, in November 2015.

Approaching the full release of Overwatch in May 2016, there was so much hype around the game, everyone seemed to know it would be another hugely popular multiplayer title from Blizzard. Their reputation with past games has easily proved this. Therefore surely Hi-Rez Studios wanted to 'borrow' some ideas from Overwatch and implement them into their characters in Paladins. Surely?