It’s a point I’ve made before: As fun as it is to explore the world of scrappy independent titles — and I’ve certainly devoted many columns to them — it can be refreshing to jump back into the realm of AAA — meaning the biggest budget and most highly publicized — games.

“Overwatch’’ is the definition of an AAA game. Developed by Blizzard, the powerhouse behind series like “Diablo’’ and blockbusters like “Hearthstone’’ and “World of Warcraft,’’ it’s a new, highly anticipated multiplayer shooter for PC, PlayStation 4, and XBox One. Maybe you’ve seen the commercials. I’ve only started to scratch the surface, but this is an extremely impressive game so far.

“Overwatch’’ is a class-based shooter, meaning you can play different kinds of characters whose abilities vary wildly, from their levels of agility to their weapons. The game has 21 characters, and there’s a gentle learning curve to each. Some are classic shooter characters — you basically just run around and fire away at things — and newcomers can pick up on them easily. Others require experimentation and practice before they can be deployed effectively in competitive matches, but once you get the hang of them they pack a wallop. All the characters have ultra-abilities that slowly charge up during a match, and some of them are truly game-changing (one resurrects a team’s dead characters; another sends out a giant dragon).

The 21 characters are grouped into four broad classes — offensive characters that are good at attacking, defensive characters, support characters (that can heal, for example), and tank characters that tend to move slowly and which can absorb a huge amount of damage. Twenty-one is a lot of characters for a first-person shooter, and as a result Blizzard throws open the door to a dizzying array of tactics and strategies, to synergies that probably haven’t even been discovered yet.

So while some of the characters are easy to jump into, even at the low levels at which I’m currently playing, it’s clear that some folks — probably those who spent a lot of time with the game in its beta incarnation — have developed advanced techniques that laid waste to my disorganized squads. “Overwatch’’ is a game that will reward the hundreds of hours its fans are likely to put into it, and once its e-sport scene has fully blossomed it will be amazing to watch what professionals can do with the diversity the game offers.

Aesthetically, “Overwatch’’ is gleefully arcade-y — it borrows and expands upon the cartoony style of “Team Fortress 2,’’ one of the most successful class-based shooters ever and an obvious influence (one turret-building character is basically the engineer class from “TF2’’), and some of the menus and character screens feel more like a 1990s arcade cabinet fighting game than a cutting-edge multiplayer shooter. That aforementioned AAA polish? It’s there throughout — not just in the graphics but in the complexity and smoothness of the gameplay.

In other words: I love you, scrappy indie teams, but you’d never have the resources to pull off something this big and loud and fun.

Jesse Singal can be reached at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com.