Blizzard Cancels 'Overwatch: First Strike' Graphic Novel

Blizzard announced during the weekend that they will no longer pursue "Overwatch: First Strike" Graphic Novel. The graphic novel was originally slated to be launched this month.

Cinema Blend says that Blizzard cannot afford to produce extra projects for Overwatch. Lead Writer Michael Chu says the game has not yet reached a certain level of popularity which allows the game to have its own "Overwatch: First Strike" graphic novel.

The team originally planned to produce a 100-pager "Overwatch: First Strike" graphic novel. Chu made the announcement on "Overwatch's" website. He first gave a little background about the graphic novel. There was even a detail about the involvement of Ludo Lullabi and Micky Neilson doing the freehand penciling and the scripting, respectively.

Chu said that the graphic novel should have been very helpful for gamers to get all the details of "Overwatch's" back story. Since the game was released online, the developers can only do so much story-telling through trailers, through extra infos posted on the website, and through in-game descriptions.

"While we are grateful to the team for the fantastic work they put into it, we've ultimately decided to take the story in a different direction," were Chu's exact words, as reported by Euro Gamer. Even when Blizzard cancelled "Overwatch: First Strike", Chu is hopeful that the company is looking for other innovative ways to tell the details about the game.

"So for now the early adventures of Gabriel Reyes, Jack Morrison, Ana Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Torbjörn Lindholm (and more!) wait for another day. But we know that this is a story that you are excited about, and it's one we still plan to tell," Chu reassures. According to Polygon, Blizzard is not a beginner in terms of graphic novels. In fact, they have already created nine comics for "Overwatch" which are all downloadable in their website.