Resurgent Overwatch Finally Offers Players Hope

If you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, then what about a third chance?

That’s where Blizzard finds itself regarding Overwatch, which launched its most ambitious update on Tuesday, as well as outlining its ambitious plans for the future in last week’s Spotlight video.

The original Overwatch launched in 2016. Its rebirth as Overwatch 2 came in 2022, and, with this week’s update, the game’s official title has reverted back to just plain Overwatch. Considering all the goodwill that has slowly melted away over the last decade, it’s understandable if many people don’t want to give this new-old version of the game the time of day.

But if they were ever going to, if they were ever into Overwatch in the past, now’s the best time to give it another shot. I’ll first list some of the tangible, content-related reasons, but there’s more to it than that, which I’ll get to closer to the end.

The story so far

Let’s get one unpleasant thing out of the way first: There is no more plan for robust PvE. That was supposed to be the entire reason for a sequel, and it failed utterly. A watered-down version of the original plan was released a couple of years ago, and it went nowhere. If that was your only reason for being excited about Overwatch 2, then you’ll still be disappointed. Sorry.

With that out of the way, there are likely a number of other reasons people abandoned Overwatch during its “2” era. For the most part, Blizzard has addressed those concerns, not with promises but with tangible action.

Unlocking heroes. While new free-to-play accounts still need to play a certain number of matches to unlock all heroes, you no longer need to progress through the battle pass or spend real money to unlock newly added heroes. That was a controversial point in OW2’s early days and was (rightfully) seen as removing something that had always been the case in OW1 – new heroes were free and instantly available – to charge money for the privilege. The new system has been in place since April 2024.

New heroes have been added to the game every two seasons – about four months – since the launch of Overwatch 2. That changed with Tuesday’s update, which added five new heroes, with five more planned throughout the next year. With one tank, two damage, and two support characters, that’s enough to make a full team of new heroes with one patch, unless you prefer 6v6 gameplay.

Wait, what?

6v6 is back. While it seemed to make sense at first, removing a tank from team composition and focusing the game around a 5v5 experience has had its positives and negatives. The single remaining tank player is often the focus of abuse – both from enemies and allies – and tank synergy, like Zarya bubbling Reinhardt, is dead in 5v5.

In response to all this, Blizzard brought back a 6v6 game mode, utilizing all the new heroes on the new maps. While it doesn’t offer all the functionality of the core OW1 mode, you can still hop in and make a go of it, even if only for nostalgia’s sake.

New modes. When PvE was still in the works, Blizzard showed off various upgrades you’d be able to buy for your heroes as you progressed. The skeleton of that system was adapted to the main game in the form of perks, upgrades you pick for your hero twice during a match that offer greater power or alternate abilities.

Even more transformative is Stadium, a new game mode that pits two teams in a best-of-seven contest where they score points during a match and then choose from a wide array of upgrades between rounds, some of which are truly mind-boggling. Flying Reinhardt? Three hyperspheres for Sigma? Self-healing for Genji? (Maybe that will finally shut him up.) The variety of different builds makes every game unpredictable and exciting, provided you can handle the chaos.

The future is now

Considering all the tumult that the game and its parent company were embroiled in around 2020 to 2022, it’s fair to think that the direction of the game suffered. Game Director Aaron Keller admitted as much in a recent post: “After we pivoted away from PvE content, it took some time for us to find our footing and refocus on what we truly wanted Overwatch to be.”

The lack of content, game director change, failure of the Overwatch League, underwhelming rebrand, gutting of PvE, and larger concerns, like Blizzard’s sexual harassment lawsuits and the COVID pandemic, sapped players’ wills and sent plenty of players in search of alternatives like Valorant and, more recently, Marvel Rivals.

I’ve always been skeptical of game developers (and, well, people in general) who make a promise, break it, and then say, “Don’t worry, next time we’ll mean it, trust us!”

Why should I? That was the situation I was in when Overwatch 2 launched. My interest waned soon after, and I pursued other interests. It was going to take time and the proper fulfillment of promises to bring me fully back into the fold.

That’s generally come to pass. The roadmaps have been executed as outlined, new heroes and new content have been added regularly, and the recent update has invigorated not only me, but the entire community. The game peaked at over 164,000 players on the day of the new patch, up from the previous high of 75,000 it clocked in August 2023. Anecdotally, I’ve played with a few people who have said, “I haven’t played in years but came back this week.”

Three years ago, the promise of 10 new heroes in a year would have left me so skeptical that Winston could have heard my sigh all the way up on the moon. Now, I’m fully on board and have actual hope for the future of the game, something I couldn’t have said in 2022.

Speaking of the future, Blizzard’s been going heavy on the lore videos and narrated comics lately, which has got some people theorizing that something bigger is on the horizon. That’s one possibility I won’t quite hold out for yet, but the notion of an Arcane-like series featuring Overwatch characters is tantalizing.

That’s how it should be, honestly. The first few years of Overwatch were times of promise and joy, when there were no limitations on what it could become. We might not reach those heights again, but we’re about as close as we ever have been, and fans finally have reason to believe.