Technologies

‘High-Risk, High-Reward Personified’: Overwatch Devs Talk Upcoming DPS Hero, Vendetta

Overwatch’s new sword-wielding gladiator should appeal to players who want the tension of feasting on enemy backlines or dying in the process.

Next weekend, you can try out Overwatch 2’s next hero ahead of her official release with season 20 of Blizzard’s online multiplayer hero shooter in December. Or, at least, you can race the other DPS player for the honor.

Vendetta is a sword-wielder in a game where almost everyone else has guns. She’s not the first melee-ranged hero in Overwatch: We’ve always had Reinhardt bonking enemies with his hammer, and Brigitte’s rocket flail is similarly close-range. And before Doomfist was moved over to the tank role for Overwatch 2, he was the first melee-focused damage hero. But it’s still an ambitious thing to put a hero with very limited range into a game focused on shooting firearms.

In group interviews with the media, Associate Game Director Alec Dawson said one of the goals behind Vendetta was to «make sure there’s a play style … that players haven’t seen before and one that might be really attractive for a whole new subset of players.»

She’s also a fascinating addition from the narrative side of things. Vendetta’s father, Antonio, was killed by Reaper as part of Overwatch’s black ops branch, Blackwatch, in the playable Retribution mission. Her story trailer and hero name make it clear she’s out for revenge, and it seems like both Overwatch and their enemies, Talon, might be on her hit list.

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Vendetta’s trial weekend comes two years after Activision Blizzard was acquired by Xbox-maker Microsoft. Since the acquisition, Overwatch 2 has ramped up bold experiments such as changes to health and projectile sizes, and the addition of perks as part of the core gameplay loop. Meanwhile, Xbox continues to balance its hardware ambitions, like the Xbox ROG Ally, against its general push to expand Xbox Game Pass (including a hefty price hike). We’ve also seen the gates between Xbox and PlayStation lower, as Xbox brought longtime Xbox exclusive Gears of War to PS5.

Ahead of Vendetta’s hero trial, I spoke with Dawson and Bryan Bedford, a senior character artist for the game, about the new hero, her abilities and what it’s like designing such a distinct hero.

Vendetta abilities

Dawson and Bedford described Vendetta as a «high-octane» character who’s highly mobile but also very dependent on her abilities. Here’s a quick rundown of what those abilities do.

Passive: Onslaught

If you played the Haunted Masquerade mode, you may have gotten a taste of this ability already. When her attacks connect, Onslaught gives Vendetta boosts to movement and attack speed, allowing her to stay on top of and quickly dispatch targets. One of her minor perks, Relentless, allows her to stack those bonuses up to three more times.

Primary fire: Palatine Fang

Look, it’s a sword. You swing your sword. But there is a small combo element to Vendetta’s primary: two horizontal swipes followed by an overhead slash that’s narrower but hits for critical damage.

Alternate fire: Warding Stance

Vendetta draws her sword across her body, reducing incoming damage, including melee damage. The block is tied to a resource meter that drains as you negate damage. You can also trade some of that resource to send out a projectile, giving you a potential finisher for enemies who escape your reach. It can also be used to trigger Onslaught and start gaining stacks before enemies are in range of your sword.

Ability 1: Whirlwind Dash

This ability, bound to Shift on PC, causes Vendetta to lunge forward and swing her sword in a circle, potentially hitting multiple enemies simultaneously. I imagine this to be a good way to build Onslaught stacks against groups of enemies.

Ability 2: Soaring Slice

This ability, bound to E on PC, lets Vendetta throw her sword into the air and dash to it. In the gameplay trailer, we see her use it to dodge Junker Queen’s ultimate. Soaring Slice also skips her primary fire to the overhead swing part of the combo, allowing you to drop down and immediately deal critical damage to an enemy.

Ultimate: Sundering Blade

Vendetta’s ultimate doesn’t care about your defenses. «It’ll go right through armor. It’ll eliminate overhealth. You can’t block it with a barrier,» Dawson said. On paper, that makes it an effective counter against support ultimates like Lucio’s Sound Barrier and Lifeweaver’s Tree of Life, which provide significant overhealth to their team.

Here are all of Vendetta’s abilities and perks laid out together.

How Vendetta fits into Overwatch’s roster

The devs said Vendetta is designed for dive compositions, which aim to use their abilities to quickly close the distance on their opponents and burst them down. But the team also gave her some perks to help her function in other compositions, especially up-close brawl compositions. One of Vendetta’s minor perks, Siphoning Strike, gives her lifesteal on overhead swings, allowing her to stay in a fight longer, and one of her major perks, Raging Storm, doubles up her Whirlwind Dash ability.

I asked Dawson and Bedford about the challenge of balancing melee-based DPS in a hero shooter, where it can feel like a razor’s edge separates them from feeling useless versus overpowered, and asked what the team’s «safe side of strong» philosophy looks like for a hero like Vendetta.

«It’s a tricky problem, especially for her,» Dawson admitted, saying the team spent a lot of time figuring out how to tune her Warding Stance, mobility and lethality. But he also pointed to the hero’s ability-focused nature as an area for counterplay. «You have to be very, very cognizant of your cooldown management…While there’s a lot of mobility, there’s gaps in that mobility as well.»

If a team can turn on Vendetta, she’s easy to shut down, Bedford said, but a smart Vendetta can also gauge that overcommitment to get back out. He pointed out that an enemy Zenyatta is an enticing target for Vendetta, but his Orb of Discord, which increases incoming damage, is particularly threatening to her.

The tension of either getting a kill or dying in the attempt is «exactly what she’s there for,» said Dawson. «If you enjoy that type of frenetic gameplay, I think she’s for you.»

Vendetta will be available to play from Nov. 26 to Dec. 1 before joining the roster in season 20.

Technologies

Google Upgrades Maps Features With More Gemini and Faster Photo Uploads

Google Maps strengthens its crowdsourcing efforts for its 500 million contributors.

Google announced three new features for Maps on Tuesday that should streamline sharing your experiences. Despite being a strong maps application itself, Google relies on everyday users to contribute their reviews, photos and videos so others doing research can make more informed decisions about places they plan to visit. With the new updates to Google Maps, you can access your photos faster to contribute to information about places you’ve been. You can also choose to have Google’s AI model, Gemini, caption your photos and more quickly check the contributions you’ve made in the past.

New photo and video recommendations

It’s not hard to share photos or videos for a location on Google Maps, but the app will now offer photo and video suggestions from your saved images — if you give it permission to do so. The new feature will appear on the Contribute tab at the bottom of the maps app. When scrolling through the view, you’ll see photo and video recommendations or the option to upload other photos.

How the specific photo and video recommendations are determined isn’t clear, but the new feature will likely use a photo’s geolocation if that setting is enabled in your camera’s settings.

A Google representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This feature is now available globally on Android and will expand to iOS in the coming months.

Gemini will auto-caption your photos

Google’s giving your photos some Gemini power by automatically analyzing and captioning them once you’ve selected them to share. This could be helpful in situations where you have selected several photos you don’t care to caption.

If you don’t like what Gemini comes up with, you can edit or remove the caption completely before publishing your photos to Maps.

Gemini captions are available in English on iOS and will expand to other languages globally and Android in the future.

New ways to view your contributions

You can now show off your prior contributions to Google’s Local Guide community program.

When you contribute, you gain points, and the more you contribute, the more you can level up as a Local Guide. All your points and badges are now prominently displayed on your profile. Google’s also adding gold profiles for high-level contributors, so you know you’re reading reviews from experienced users.

The new contributor updates are rolling out now on Android, iOS and desktop.

Technologies

This New Health-Tracking Pet Collar Is Like a Smartwatch for Dogs and Cats

Tractive announces two new smart collars armed with GPS tracking, AI-powered health monitoring and other tech tools.

Our pets can’t speak up and tell us how they’re feeling, or why and where they are hiding. Tractive, an Austria- and Seattle-based tech company that creates GPS tracking devices for pets, announced on Wednesday two new smart collars that, according to the press release, «will redefine pet care for millions of families.»

Is your pet stressed, breathing unusually or scratching too much? Much like the basic health-tracking features you can find on a smartwatch, the collars — the Cat 6 Mini ($79) and Dog 6 XL ($89) — are designed to track this behavior and communicate the issues to help maintain your dog or cat’s quality of life.

«Pets can’t tell us when something is wrong, but their bodies can,» Michael Hurnaus, CEO and founder of Tractive, said in a statement. «With cutting-edge sensors on every tracker, learnings from millions of pets and AI-powered insights, we’re turning one of the world’s largest pet data platforms into clear, simple information so pet parents can act sooner and care even better.»

When it comes to tracking collars, dogs have usually been the target pet audience for such devices. Tractive’s new Cat 6 Mini collar aims to provide the same service for your feline friend. You can use it to monitor your cat’s respiratory rate and resting heart rate and identify any health concerns early. It’s expected to ship on May 31.

The Dog 6 XL collar, an upgrade from the company’s previous dog wearable, is designed for dogs weighing over 55 pounds. It’s more durable for outdoor use and offers up to four weeks of battery life between charges. It comes equipped with a scratch-monitoring system that flags unusual scratching behavior caused by allergies, skin irritants and other stressors.

You can also use the app to access your pet’s travels and mark safe zones regarding walks, entries and exits. An AI-powered health hub displays your pet’s overall health stats and also acts as a GPS tracker in case your dog or cat goes missing.

How would a veterinarian interact with the data collected on the device?

A Tractive representative told CNET, «In our experience, veterinarians are most interested in baseline resting heart and respiratory rate, so it’s less about monitoring these vitals in real time during recovery from anesthesia/acute care and more about understanding if the baseline is changing day to day to identify the onset of new conditions or manage existing ones.»

Even though the collars use a SIM card and require a strong cellular connection to work properly, they can capture activity, sleep and health data while offline. However, without connectivity, the devices «ultimately will not provide any utility,» the representative confirmed.

You’ll need to download the accompanying app and select a separate subscription plan at an added cost. The one-year plan costs $120, the two-year plan costs $168, and the five-year plan costs $300.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for April 9 #767

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for April 9, No. 767.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle could be tough, unless you’re an artist. Even then, some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: In the paint.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hand me a brush.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

COME, PATS, SPAT, SLOE, MEAN, LEAN, MANE, RATE, PEER, LATE, RATER

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

FRESCO, PASTEL, ENAMEL, ACRYLIC, TEMPERA, WATERCOLOR

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is MEDIUM, the art term! To find it, start with the M that’s four letters down on the far-left vertical row, and travel straight across.