Overwatch is set to bring its latest hero addition into the fold, this time introducing everyone to D.Mon, the calculated leader of the MEKA squad and teammate of D.Va. Just before this tank makes her debut, though, we got a little early look at her and got to interview a few Blizzard developers about her creation. Here are the most important tidbits we took from our chat with lead hero producer Kenny Hudson, narrative designer Eleni Rivera, and lead character concept artist Daryl Tan.
She Came to Play
While D.Mon is the second Overwatch hero to be sporting a MEKA suit in matches, she is not just a mere copy of D.Va, who has been in the game for the past 10 years. D.Mon is designed as a melee tank, so she could probably be more compared to Reinhardt, but a lot of inspiration for her playstyle comes from FromSoftware’s Armored Core series and Gundam.
Hudson: “Armored Core was a part of it, for sure. Definitely movement, a little bit in the ultimate. We have a lot of mech nerds on the team. Andre, who is the gameplay designer who designed the kit itself, is a huge Armored Core fan, and then I’m a Gundam fan, and so we were constantly butting heads about where we should pull inspiration from for certain things.
The sword comes from probably watching a lot of Gundam, whereas the horizontal slide, the movement, [how you keep your head forward] was kind of Armored Core inspired.”
And while D.Mon ended up being a sword and shield-focused melee tank with a side gun, there was a time in development where the sword and gun were switched around. Hudson says that the gun was her primary fire and the sword was an ability. However, this made D.Mon sit back a little more instead of taking up space in the fight, and having the sword on a cooldown didn’t feel right, so they swapped them and everything came together.
When it comes to what role in the tank field she plays, it seems that the Overwatch devs just really wanted D.Mon as another melee option to add to Reinhardt.
Hudson: “We wanted to expand on the melee tank side of things. Reinhardt has been an insanely fun character for 10 years, and we wanted to do another kind of take on that and give those players who like to play up close and personal with their tanks more to choose from.
D.Mon’s going to kind of have the same counters as either Rein or Doomfist or those other kind of melee tanks — or semi-melee tanks, in Doomfist’s case — where verticality is going to be the counter, but you’re going to have really good horizontal movement and the ability to kind of flank a little. You take up more physical space and maybe set the rules of engagement a bit more with D.Mon.
We really wanted to explore what happens when you give a melee tank a little bit more mobility.”
Standing Out on Her Own
With being the second female Korean gamer MEKA squad member to come to Overwatch, we had a lot of questions about how D.Mon stands out on her own, and doesn’t just become a D.Va copy. For Daryl Tan, that kind of stuff is baked into how she acts in her animations.
Tan: “We all are passionate about all the little details we add on to D.Mon. So, how she interfaces with her mech was something that we really worked on for quite a bit. We worked with animators — like, our animator Steven did an amazing job posing her in so many awesome poses that really sold her look and feel to us, and how she’s able to wear that exosuit and execute all her actions, right?
It really calls back to animes that we were really inspired by — the mech animes — where because they’re inside a cockpit, they’re not able to extend their arm all the way through to execute a move, but, like, there’s still that motion happening there. So it’s like, the pilot will train different muscles to be able to execute their expertise, and when we think about all that kind of stuff, and we try to integrate all those ideas into the mech and how she interfaces with it.”
“D.Va and D.Mon are both in the MEKA Squad, so they naturally, organically have that visual link to each other, right? They both wear the same type of bodysuits, and they also both pilot mechs, and so that’s where the similarities are. We did our best to make them both visually unique and distinct from each other. D.Va is more hunched and guns forward, like a very aggressive pose, whereas D.Mon is more upright when she uses the sword and [shield], which is the fantasy we were trying to shoot for.
That really helps us distinguish them from each other right from the kit. Organically, it also shows D.Mon’s more athletic nature. We also made sure that her cockpit design and everything showcased her being able to execute her moves physically. Like, you see her swing her sword in her cockpit, and the mech is doing the same thing, right? So that’s where, um, I would say it’s a pretty big departure visually from D.Va, and I think that makes her also stand out from D.Va.”
“I think one thing that was really cool, that I really enjoyed, was how we did her re-mech and how it was different from D.Va’s. We wanted the fantasy of all her armor pieces slamming back onto her as she re-mechs and lands on the ground. So the goal of that is to make it distinct from D.Va.”
Even looking at her kit, though, some may say D.Mon is Overwatch melding another version of D.Va, Reinhardt, and maybe Zenyatta when she uses her ultimate. We asked how the team makes sure a hero with so many pieces you can find in other spots on the roster can remain unique. Kenny Hudson believes it comes down to the smaller details.
Hudson: “We ask ourselves, how do we make this unique to this hero? It’s also the way they interact with each other. From how long they’re up, how you activate it, how it plays. So, if we look at Zenyatta’s Discord, it gives you a lot less extra damage than the ultimate for D.Mon would, and D.Mon only gets it on the ult; that’s an example.
How much movement you can use and when you can use it is very different than D.Va, right? Like, you press it on D.Va once, you can press again to cancel. With this, you have to press and hold — how the player interacts with it, how much fuel you have, even the perks that give you more fuel when you do certain things that players will see later. It’s more from a place of, how do we make this unique to the hero without taking something away from the rest of the cast?”
What About the Other MEKA Squad Members?
Ten years after the original Overwatch launch, D.Mon is just the second of five MEKA squad members to be playable in the game. With the remaining trio of Casino, King, and Overlord out there, it seems that it’s going to be some time before more are brought in.
Rivera: “At least from a lore perspective, when it came to making D.Mon, it felt like the right call. And it’s obvious that, looking at the entire roster of the Mecha Squad, it is something that is natural. What does each character bring to the table in terms of story?
At the time, it was just so clear that it was D.Mon. In terms of the future, we’re not sure what we’ll be able to do. But I do think that we’ll still chase the goal of bringing interesting characters that people resonate with and that they gravitate towards and want to play. Sometimes we reach into the vault of people that we already know, and then the vault of, ‘Let’s create something new for the players to enjoy.”
Whenever it comes time to bring those other MEKA squad members in, how they appear might be a little different than how you envision. We asked about the possibility of the others possibly being damage or support characters in the future, and Hudson says the bulky mechs make that a challenge.
Hudson: “One of the challenges with putting MEKAs in other roles — it’s a challenge that we’re always kind of exploring and asking ourselves, and we definitely asked ourselves with D.Mon — is Overwatch relies on silhouettes and being able to understand who you’re playing against from far away at a glance. That’s what makes it really special: knowing who you’re playing against without having to squint.
Mechs are just by nature bigger than the rest of the cast, and so if you suddenly had a mech on the field that’s a support, but it’s as big as a tank, that kind of muddles the read a lot and could lead to some player frustration. That’s not to say that there aren’t other ways to kind of accomplish that, but for D.Mon specifically, it just made a lot of sense, especially when you look at the old concept art of the sword and the shield that you’re going to be able to glance at this and tell that it’s a tank.”
Other Tidbits We Learned
- According to Rivera, D.Mon is a hardcore gamer who prefers first-person shooters. Her ultimate, called Limit Break, is not a reference to Final Fantasy.
- In the past, we have heard that D.Va can cause headaches because of how she was programmed into the game. When creating D.Mon, Hudson says Blizzard was able to make her one mesh, whereas D.Va is made of three. He believes making assets for D.Mon in the future will be a lot easier because of it.
- Rivera says that if D.Mon were a streamer with a webcam, the camera would be focused on her hands playing the game rather than on her face.
- D.Mon is more focused on being a team player than D.Va. Her personality is much cooler and more confident compared to her predecessor.
- Someone asked if D.Mon would be getting her own LE SSERAFIM skin, and Rivera refused to confirm anything, but said down the line she would be getting some “really great skins.”
