Paranoia Fuel / Overwatch

Everything can be hacked. And everyone.

Been here all along!

— Sombra

Overwatch offers rich lore and gameplay... many of which can be used to utterly wreck players' nerves.

---

Story and Lore

• Talon's kidnapping and brainwashing of Amélie Lacroix, now known as Widowmaker. It definitely makes one think about living in the world of Overwatch, knowing that it's possible to abduct someone, torture them until their will is broken, and then use science to make them into a living weapon who feels little emotion outside the joy of killing. The idea that any innocent person, like Amélie, can be turned like this, is definitely a horrifying thought.

Gameplay

• When you hear an enemy announcing their ultimate, especially if the damage is delayed, you will almost certainly want to run:
  • Widowmaker's lets the entire enemy team see you through walls with little more than a quiet "No one can hide from my sight" in French. You still don't know where Widowmaker is, and even if she dies, the effect doesn't end until fifteen and a half seconds have passed, meaning that unless you keep track of the time, which isn't easy to do in the midst of a battle, you don't know when it's safe to come out again. Worse still, Widow can track your movements, meaning she could be waiting to pop a shot in your head the moment you turn a corner...
  • McCree's ult has him declaring "It's high noon..." What's worse, seeing him when you hear it and having about a split second to get behind cover — if there's cover — or not seeing him and not knowing if he's about to pop an instant-kill shot into your head? And of course, there's the worst situation where you heard the ult and dived for cover and sigh with relief... only to see a glow of death staring right at you.
  • Junkrat's ultimate is a spiked explosive remote-controlled tire preceded with him shouting "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" And then you hear the tire roaring and getting louder the closer it rolls towards you, virtually guaranteeing death if you're in the blast radius. Worse if you don't know where it's coming from.
  • Hearing Hanzo shout "Ryuu ga waga teki wo KURAU!" will have you panicking over which direction to run in, and if those roaring dragons will fly through one of the walls you're running beside.
  • Mercy's ultimate:
    • Before the rework, there's a reason why she was always gunned down first by any flanker, because if she wasn't and her team was killed first, at any given moment she could resurrect her team. They would be revived with full health and cooldowns up while your team would still be recovering from the skirmish. It doesn't help that it charges up very quickly. A 6v6 fight could have easily become effectively a 6v11 fight because of Mercy's ultimate.
    • With Mercy's rework, you get an all new type of paranoia fuel. Since her rez is no longer an ultimate ability, but rather a cooldown-based one, you now have to wonder if the enemy you just killed will pop back up, ready to continue the violence. Her new Valkyrie ult also means extra rezzes, having to worry about a highly mobile healer that can aoe heal, AND she now has infinite ammo.
  • If you hear "Warihum quwitak!" by an enemy Ana in the middle of battle, you'll likely be searching for just who got turned into a super-powerful wrecking monster. A popular choice is Reinhardt or another Tank, but you better run and hide if it's accompanied by "RYUJIN NO KEN O KURAE!!", because said monster is a hyper-agile, hyper-powerful Cyber Ninja who just got turned into a Lightning Bruiser ready to slice and dice your entire team, and is now even harder to pin down. Likewise if it's accompanied by "I've got you in my sights," because that means you're about to be filled with so much super-powerful aimbot lead.
  • Sombra's ult. If you happen to be in its blast radius, all of your abilities will be gone for a short time. Oh, and it also completely disables shields and barriers.
  • Doomfist's Meteor Strike. You hear him suddenly and loudly call the name of the attack and disappear from view. You don't know when or where he will come down. Suddenly a big red circle appears out of nowhere and he crashes down in a huge explosion, killing anything in the blast radius. And to make matters worse, he's likely to combo it with something like a Mei, Reinhardt, or Zarya Ult, meaning if you're caught by any of them, you're doomed.
  • Moira's Coalescence. Imagine your team assaulting an enemy tank with just a sliver of health left, when suddenly a beam of energy starts undoing damage dealt to your opponent while shredding your team apart.
• When you find that you're the only one defending an objective and there's no ally in sight. Worse, there are rare circumstances that nobody is around, neither allies or enemies, making it easier but scarier to hear for nearby footsteps.
• Playing as Mercy in general. Due to her ability to keep her teammates alive and resurrect them, she routinely gets targeted first, to the point of enemies using their ult just to kill her alone. So yes, if you are playing as Mercy and hear an offensive enemy ult, you can bet it's targetting you. Oh, and all the flankers and snipers are targetting you first as well. Good luck!
• Sombra's Thermoptic Camo means she can sneak up on you undetected, and if you're low on health, her Opportunist passive makes the job easier for her as she can find you and finish you off just when you think you're safe from the enemy.
  Sombra: Been here all along!
• Mei's Snowball Offensive is one of the most nerve-wracking game modes due to a combination of the facts that everyone gets only one shot, reloading can only be done by sucking in snow piles (which usually spawn in open locations, take 2 seconds to reload, and prevents you from moving while doing so), but also everyone dies in a single hit. Couple with the (unintentionally or not) eerily empty atmosphere, never has sitting in a spot to gather snow and hurl snowballs been so pants-crapping.
• Symmetra and Zarya's weapons both make an absolutely hellish buzzing noise when they're charged. If you hear that, run or risk getting melted.
• Hearing the opening bar of Symphony No. 5 in Uprising, as it means that a beefed-up Tank Bastion, which can one-shot most heroes on higher difficulties, is coming your way, and since they love to hit your flank, they can appear almost anywhere. Worse still, they can appear at almost any time — sometimes they'll show up almost immediately after the audio cue, while other times thirty seconds or more can pass with it nowhere in sight.
• A bad sniper is the laughingstock of the enemy team and a frequent target of harassment within their own team. A good sniper will make their enemies dread crossing any sort of open space.
• Displacement abilities in general can be a nightmare when applied to the right scenarios:
  • Lucio's soundwave can become this in Control maps, where there are plenty of walls to ride and cliffs to knock people off of. Skilled enemy Lucio players will knock your entire team off the cliff and make you scared to enter the location of the objective.
  • Orisa's Halt! pulls all enemies a short distance into it, which is more than enough to force a hero out of cover, into an incoming ultimate, or off into a death pit. Even heroes like Lúcio can be pulled away from a wall ride to their doom.
  • Reinhardt's charge is one of the strongest non-ultimate abilities, dealing 300 damage to its pinned target if he reaches any kind of obstacle. That's a death sentence to more than half the heroes in the game, meaning it's extremely dangerous to allow him to get too close or let him out of your sight for too long.
  • Roadhog's hook must be avoided at all costs for many heroes, as it stuns them, before pulling them right into point-blank of his scrap gun. Players are forced to keep an eye out in open areas or risk an instant death. Even after Roadhog's damage has been nerfed so it's not an almost guaranteed kill, this means instead that you are now stranded with the enemy team, or worse, leaving you hanging right over a death pit.
• If the enemy team score a "TEAM KILL" against your team^note when all 6 members of the team is dead and not respawned yet, ensuring about 10-30 seconds of peace for the enemy team, your team is put at a serious disadvantage. Even worse when the enemy team on Attack on Objective B or at the payload destination, or on Defend with <10 seconds left, a Team Kill means you've already lost the game.^note Or the round if playing on competitive. Worse if the enemy team is winning and getting their final score against you and your team.

---