For that reason I know that Kiriko is right up my street, and I’ll be playing her with a passion when launch rolls around, but knowing that potential to experiment is no longer possible unless I decide to grind my life away or make an investment kinda sucks, and takes away the free cadence of content I’d grown used to with the first game. This may be the price to pay for no loot boxes and a modernised progression system, but this feels like a teething pain instead of the game Overwatch 2 really wants to be. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong and the payoff will be worthwhile, but right now I’m not so sure.
I’ve been excited for Overwatch 2 for a very long time. Overwatch is one of my favourite shooters in history, as well as being my absolute favourite online game ever made. I’ve been excited about the potential a story with some of my most beloved characters in video games could have for donkey’s years, as well as the opportunity to run PvE gauntlets with my friends and all of the other mystery inherently surrounding Blizzard’s highly anticipated sequel to one of the most iconic hero shooters around town. 5v5, though? Nah. I’ll stick to current Overwatch for competitive, tha
Tanks, meanwhile, are divided into main tank and off-tank categories. The former includes Reinhardt, Orisa, Winston, and sort of Sigma, whereas the latter subset is occupied by Zarya, Roadhog, D.Va, and sort of Wrecking Ball. The "sort of" clauses here are because the more recent tanks added to Overwatch’s roster are mostly aligned with one category, but adopt minor inspiration from the other one. Ultimately, though, the main distinction has to do with whether or not the tank has a shield, which directly affects their ability to function as a main tank, which in turn refers to how effectively they can use their status as a team anchor to control engagem
Let’s put our thinking caps on here - we’re not getting Overwatch Ground War, meaning that we were never going to see some kind of enormous, mayhem-filled match type. Although I’d like a battle royale mode for Overwatch, that’s not looking particularly likely either. I’d assume the maximum number of players you could ever reasonably expect would be nine, increasing the standard 2-2-2 formation to a beefier 3-3-3, or any other strategic permutation amounting to the same sum of overall heroes. So now we’ve got a possibility window spanning one to n
I know some other games do this. Valorant and League of Legends are both successful, and both require heroes (agents and champions, respectively) to be unlocked from the off. But crucially the original Overwatch did not, and that was a major part of the appeal. This unlocking system was at one time commonplace in the fighting genre, until studios realised this was no fun and served no purpose. Overwatch 2 seems to be deliberately making the game less fun in the hopes of ensnaring players to keep playing until their favourite hero is let out of jail. A more confident hand would give you the heroes from the start and trust that it’s good enough for you to stick aro
Blizzard needed to change its release model to make more money and get with the times, and there wasn’t really a way to do that without throwing a number at the end and making it free-to-play across all platforms. I don’t mind this direction at all, and think it will result in a much better game when all is said and done, but something about it does irk me.
Despite my praise for the designs, Overwatch is not a game with in-depth characters - it’s all skin deep. Any attempt to flesh them out usually comes through fine print in the lore, promo reels, or external material like comic books. I understand why fans want these great designs to be built upon further, and I appreciate that a hero shooter all about utilising powers and fast PvP play is not the ideal genre for deep, interconnected stories. Overwatch has two queer characters, which is more than most triple-A games, but it’s hard to give it too much credit when their queerness has been so completely downplayed. It’s often lauded for its diversity - it even once had a GLAAD nomination - but that fact is its two queer characters are white, cis, and straight passing, while there are more playable animals and playable robots than there are playable Black women. That’s not too much of a stretch though, given that there are zero Black women in Overwatch’s heaving roster right now - Sojourn will join in Overwatch 2, but that feels too late for a game with playable 32 charact
Overwatch 2 DLC|Https://Overwatch2fans.com/ 2 is right around the corner, and even though it shouldn’t really exist , there’s an air of excitement around its launch. The first Overwatch completely reinvented the online shooter space when it launched in 2016, and deserves to be spoken about in the same breath as gaming’s all time greats. It was fresh, fast, and fiendishly compelling, but the very fact a sequel exists highlights how much Overwatch has fallen off the pace. The latest revelation about the hero roster only underscores this furt