Overwatch’s Unusual Journey From Esport to LEGO Set

March 17, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

It may surprise you to learn how few video games have made the leap to physical LEGO® theme sets.

Despite the major overlap between fans of both hobbies, only about a half-dozen video games have been brickified. That includes LEGO Minecraft, LEGO Super Mario, the mini-packs of LEGO Dimensions (Sonic, Midway, Portal), the recently announced standalone Sonic set, and LEGO Overwatch®.

There are always challenges when taking any popular standalone franchise and bringing it into the child-friendly, creativity-empowering world of LEGO theme sets. And Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch is a prime example of how that process can work, highlighting a central issue with some existing entertainment properties.

Guns and colorful LEGO building bricks don’t usually mix.

In fact, the company goes to great lengths to avoid representing modern weapons in any real-world theme sets. So, when the company’s talented designers started contemplating recreating key elements of the Overwatch video game with bricks, they were faced with a problem: How do you turn a hero shooter into something that meshes with the LEGO Group’s family-friendly toys?

The solution came by examining the game’s rich backstory and characters, which have evolved to the point of existing beyond the gameplay itself.

“When you start talking to people at the LEGO Group about what world this game lives in and what context it lives in, it’s a franchise born within a game,” said the LEGO Group’s Sten Funder Lysdahl. “And I think in many ways we can draw similarities to other franchises which also have guns. When we dive into it, I think Overwatch is a very colorful and inclusive word. It’s a fantasy universe with speaking gorillas and hamsters and so forth.”

Lysdahl said that doesn’t mean that the LEGO Group didn’t discuss and examine the issue internally, but it wasn’t a massive concern.

Ultimately, the LEGO Group and Blizzard Entertainment decided to work together to create a series of Overwatch theme sets. That work, Blizzard’s Mike Hummel said, started in 2017 with high-level discussions. That then led to both teams visiting each other’s campuses.

The Blizzard team and the LEGO Group team sounded equally excited about their trips, getting a chance to dive deep into the rich and colorful history of each company to examine not just the unique aspects of their creations but the surprising similarities as well.

For instance, Blizzard Entertainment, like the LEGO Group, goes to great lengths to maintain physical archives of their history.

“We do have a team that’s dedicated to maintaining artifacts from all the Blizzard games,” Hummel said. “The group also runs the library that we have at our headquarter campus in Irvine. And all of those things are kept in a similar process. Every year at BlizzCon, we march those out, and we let the fans interact with them.”

The next step was for both companies to decide how to go about whittling down the 32-character roster of characters and many colorful settings and set pieces to the few that would be turned into boxed theme sets by the LEGO Group.

One of the early characters selected was Bastion, who was actually brought to Blizzard Entertainment as a prototype before the companies agreed to create the kits.

Hummel said he remembers seeing it unveiled at the presentation and being antsy to get his hands on it to see if it transformed like the Bastion character in the game. Ultimately, the group settled on a number of iconic characters and locations and then got to work.

The idea, Hummel said, was to ensure that there was a diverse selection of characters and locations for players to build with those first sets.

Some of the challenges the LEGO Group designers faced in bringing the characters to life included making sure they nailed the scale so that the minifigures, when appropriate, could fit inside their larger equipment or armor.

D. Va and Reinhardt, in particular, presented unique challenges, but the LEGO Group managed to nail the look and size of the creations, Hummel said.

The designers also made sure to sneak a bunch of easter eggs and surprises into their designs, Lysdahl said.

“We also added a lot of detail, I don’t know if you noticed it, but we have other references to other Blizzard games in there,” he said. “There’s a nod to Diablo. There are some posters that are in there that are a credit to some of the beautiful animations that are in the game. And there are stickers around the Junkrate & Roadhog set to make it really come alive and feel authentic.”

Ultimately, the LEGO Group and Blizzard Entertainment worked together to release eight regular sets: Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Bastion, Junkrat & Roadhog, D.Va & Reinhardt, Wrecking Ball, Dorado Showdown, Hanzo vs. Genji, and Tracer vs. Widowmaker.

Lysdahl said that the work between the two teams resulted in a good friendship between the companies and that that relationship continues today.

Hummel declined to say definitively if there were any new Overwatch or even Overwatch 2 LEGO theme sets coming, but he did say that the two companies continue to discuss the possibilities.

“Our strategy for future releases remains unchanged from the launch of the program,” he said. “We continue to look to the LEGO Group and Blizzard communities to guide us. We are listening to their recommendations. We’re watching the custom models they continue to create. And that’s really what’s going to guide us into the future.

“We are definitely still talking with each other. We are looking for new opportunities.”

This article originally ran on LEGO.com as a summary of episode one of the weekly Bits N’ Bricks podcast, which you can listen to here.