Overwatch's universe feels cohesive and deep but League feels disjointed and shallow

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and I have no formal training or education in this topic.

Overwatch's universe feels really neat. It feels really alive. And after coming back to League, and looking at League's universe and Kled... it just feels miles apart in terms of presentation. I wanted to express why I think OW is an example of a universe that League should aspire to be and what OW does right and what League can learn from it.

Before we start that, I want to go into why OW is a good model for League. Both games have a lot in common. Both are multiplayer only games featuring a bunch of champions/heroes fighting each other on a map. Like League, the matches in OW really have no bearing on the plot in the game. Both feature a diverse cast of heroes with different backgrounds. Overwatch is about an organization meant to keep the peace. League, pre-Retcon, was pretty much the same premise with the Institute of War. Finally, both games make use of diverse media (videos, comics, music) to present the worlds these champions/heroes live in.

So what does Overwatch do really well?

• There's a consistent theme.

This is probably the biggest praise I can heap onto Overwatch. It's like Team Fortress 2/The Incredibles. There's a sense of Pixar or Big Hero Six. That's a lot of what I feel with Overwatch. The cartoon-y, Saturday morning feel of the show lets it hit comedic strides and darker tones.

• There's a sense of place.

The world of Overwatch is very clearly defined. You've got techno gangs. You've got civil unrest because of societal changes with the robot things. You still got ghettos and pristine cities. It also helps that OW is set in an alt. future Earth which gives people a lot of mental images when you say words like Egypt, or the Omnic invasion of Russia or something. Still, the world comes into its own. Any of the promo story vids showcases the world in something similiar to ours. League doesn't have that same sense of place. Demacia and Noxus are places - and the culture is so generically described as Demacian's Rigid but Good and Noxians Strong but Bad. Now I know there are nuances to this dynamic, but it doesn't change that Demacia and Noxus are really just caricatures of what they should be.

The nuances in League aren't well explored or developed. Most of time it's in a gigantic wall of text short story in an expanded bio. Like, Azir's harem sounds neat - too bad that's literally just a few lines in his bio and he makes no mention or reference to his harem in any other media. Too bad we don't have a sense as to what the dynamics and personal relationships are of Azir Birdman and his twenty wives/concubines. Do they like each other? Do they stay out of each other's way? Are these wives/concubines treating each other well?

Then you OW. You got a vid of Tracer watching a gathering trying to unite humans and Omnics living together peacefully despite the backdrop of war and poverty. There's even suggested robot x human relationships. There's a monk robot dude (yeah, I can imagine League making a champ off that same premise) calling for peace and gets assassinated.

This 4 minute video, most of it dominated by action, fills us in on so much of the world. We know there's a conflict. We see the results of this conflict - the poverty, the damage, the scarred relationships. We see people tired and wanting it to end and we also see there are people who don't want this conflict to end. So much of the world is explained and developed.

It feels like there's an actual vision going on.

• Characters actually interact with each other.

This is a massive problem in League. Virtually all of the League champions, especially the newer ones, live in bubbles away from each other. There's over 120+ champions in League yet we've only seen just a handful of interactions. Some good, some bad. Most of these interactions happen in short stories. Contrast that to OW where you got interactions in comics, videos, etc... You know Tracer and Winston are friends. You see pictures of the heroes in OW celebrating holidays or graduations.... it feels like these heroes are actual characters and not shadows of characters like Kled. Kled has personality. He's a Noxian nationalist. But hell if I know what his relationship with other Noxians and non-Noxians really are. Does he drink with Darius and Draven? Does he flirt with Katarina?

That'll probably have to he answered in some developer Q&A which is a shame. In OW, we see pictures and files (sometimes littered in the maps themselves) of characters keeping tabs on each other or hanging out for Halloween. We have strong evidence from the GAME ITSELF to suggest there's relationships going on in the backdrop. Which brings me to the last point...

• Characters feel like actual characters.

Okay. I get it. League of Legends is about LEGENDS. That's why we have all these mythical creatures like Aurelion Sol and Kalista to legendary beasts like Rek'Sai to legendary warriors like Kled recently. Unfortuntely, these characters aren't developed well. They're like an inch deep. They basically have some kind of one-track personality and that's it. Rek'Sai mad. Kalista mad. Jihn Mad. Azir SHURIMA. These champions have pretty much nothing going on in their lives. All that drives them in their single minded vengeance or goal. They don't feel like actual realistic or complex sentinent beings. Now in some cases, like Bard, it's understandable. But Riot just keeps pumping out all these flat one dimensional characters out. They're so ridiculously powerful and arrogant it's hard to find them interesting outside of aesthetics. There's so much potential for interaction to build some sense of depth, but it's hard to imagine any of these characters ever interacting with others in a meaningful way. Hell, Burning Tides and Shadows and Fortune had the most champion-to-champion interactions and focused mainly on the mortal champs like GP, MF, Lucian, and Olaf.

In the end, OW's world is a lot more neat than League. It's got laughs. It gots darks. It goes heroes. It feels much more vivid and interesting. It feels like OW had a unified vision behind it. League just looks like a mish-mash of concepts thrown together and being forced to work rather than feeling like a cohesive, united universe.