Hero shooter

Hero shooters are a variation of multiplayer first- or third-person shooters, where players split among more teams and select from pre-designed "hero" characters that each possess unique attributes, skills, weapons, and other passive and active abilities. Hero shooters strongly encourage teamwork between players on a team, guiding players to select effective combinations of hero characters and coordinate the use of hero abilities during a match. Hero shooters take many of their design elements both from older class-based shooters and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games.[1][2]

The origins of hero shooters can be traced back to early tactical shooters that featured class based playable characters in multiplayer modes. Games like Battlefield 1942 and Team Fortress Classic featured specific roles that a player could select that would come with their own unique abilities and sometimes specific weapons that were not available to the other classes. While the majority of tactical shooters were the main games in the genre that featured some form of class based mechanics, other shooters also featured the same gameplay style and had their own take on the system such as Star Wars: Battlefront[3] & Conker: Live & Reloaded.[4]

It wouldn't be until the release of Team Fortress 2 in 2007 that the main framework and inspiration for the subgenre would be established. While Team Fortress 2 did feature the same class base system as its predecessor, it made a huge departure by making each specific class its own unique "character" along with specific personality and appearance to them. This made the roles more fleshed out and feel more like a real person rather than just a nameless playable character.[2]

The subgenre would not see its official "birth" and rise in popularity until the release of Overwatch in 2016. Heavily inspired by Team Fortress 2 and MOBAs, the game featured unique characters that all had their own unique back story and abilities that were specific to them. What marked the difference between hero shooters and traditional class based shooters was the emphasis on the story and world that the games were set in and the flesh out characters that players would control. Rather than just being nameless nobodies, each one had a whole story behind them that fit into a bigger narrative as a whole.[5] This rise in popularity was soon followed by a flood of similar games like LawBreakers and Paladins. Current popular hero shooters include Overwatch, Apex Legends, Valorant, Rogue Company, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege.

• Character class