Overwatch 2 preview – more like an annual COD sequel than a big Dota 2 patch

What, actually, is Overwatch 2?

Overwatch was a triumph – a new mixture of previous genres that took over gaming. Characters custom-made by the kings of surface-level appeal to create a massive fandom. A development team that had just failed to make the Next Big Thing – Blizzard’s much-rumored Titan MMO – created a story about a team of heroes having hope in the face of darkness and, whoops, made the only game that mattered for months on end.

Then it all went a bit wrong. The endless wait for the Overwatch League to take off, which some would argue is ongoing. The absolute dearth of story content and a big focus on events and their loot boxes and skins. Blizzard’s now years-long battle with itself to treat employees right rather than have mass firing rounds, to treat women right rather than be hit by lawsuits and global hatred. Story head-honcho Chris Metzen left. CEO Mike Morhaime left. Game Director Jeff Kaplan left.

Overwatch 2, then, needs and wants and is trying to do it all again – big hype, new heroes, a limited beta on the horizon. However, as Blizzard once put it, times change. Jumping into a closed alpha of Overwatch 2’s tweaked gameplay does not have the same appeal as, late in 2015, getting our first hands-on of Overwatch. An added hero here. A rework there. You jump on a cart or a point, you wait for the objective to complete, you have frenetic, fast-paced battles with colorful characters inside well-developed, beautiful maps. 

It isn’t 2016, this gameplay isn’t revolutionary. You aren’t six years younger. The world is a trashcan. 

The biggest change is the move from 6v6 to 5v5, featuring two damage, two support, and a tank. If you’re an adept, long-time Overwatch player with a small group of friends you rotate with or even aspirations of professional play, this is obviously titanic. A shift towards the Dotas and League of Legends that always felt like a bigger influence on Overwatch than the oft-compared Team Fortress 2.

For a game that was, for a long time, the FPS haven of the casual player, it feels an odd decision. An inevitable one perhaps, given the game is already molded around professional play – you can’t ever put the meta back in the bottle – but I’m not sure why I would pick Overwatch over Valorant, or League of Legends, or Dota 2. Those games are far more suited to hyper-competitive gameplay and stylings, built from the ground up to be so. It strikes me as likely to leave OW2 in an odd place, as friendly and enticing as ever, but immediately setting you in rigid roles once in-game, and unlikely to attract the players that made it so popular in the first place.

Which brings us to the main confusion – what, actually, is Overwatch 2? A pseudo-expansion pack? A full-blown sequel? Now completely detached from its PvE, story-based offerings, which remain mostly mysterious and certainly unfinished, it’s taking the role of a particularly large patch. While the yearly mega-updates to Dota 2 or League of Legends never quite go as far as changing the number of players on each team, the introduction of new heroes, new maps, and new modes are all in-line with that.

Of course, it is fun. Blizzard games are many things, but fun is their number one priority. When you’re on evenly matched teams, having a close back and forth over points and payloads, the game still moves like it always has. It still has some of the best gunfeel and you still feel useful and skillful when you make a big play, get a large killstreak, or enter a flowstate with your chosen hero. Unlike its competitors, games are fast and a little more carefree, they’re moreish in a way MOBAs don’t manage and more immediate and instantly up-tempo than the likes of Valorant or CS:GO.

You’ll still find yourself drawn into ‘just one more game’ and wanting to learn new characters and their intricacies. Whether you put in five minutes bunny-hopping around as Lucio or 500 hours learning every possible way to fly as Mercy, the game accepts all skill levels and all degrees of dedication to improvement. There will be a massive difference between the general public of the eventual release and the highly disparate group of influencers, journalists, and pros that the closed alpha gave me access to, meaning an even smoother ride too.

However, what we’re looking at is half the promise, and a confusing one, as stated. This could be the hyper-competitive multiplayer arm of a game millions will pick up for the co-op fun, or the main draw to a game that also happens to have a languishing but fun-enough co-op side-gig. Or anything in between. It’s hard to recommend it, or even comment on it, from the angle of someone who isn’t already deeply invested – much like it would be for one of those particularly large patches to well-established games.

The new stuff is certainly promising. Sojourn, a hero now three years and counting in the making, has a hyper-lethal railgun straight out of Quake. It’s a little out-of-sorts dropped into the Pixar surroundings, but you’d probably say the same about a ninja, archer, or minigun-toting robo-centaur. While it wasn’t particularly fun being one-shot from half the map away when a particularly proficient aimer activated her ultimate, it does feel like something fresh in Overwatch’s arsenal, and another solo playmaker that rewards skills and aim akin to Genji and his ilk. It was my fault for not staying behind cover anyway.

Overwatch has always tried to appeal across the board to players, from skill level and potential to how the heroes look, sound, and feel. While its failures to be the champion of diversity it clearly wants to be are well documented – sameface and samebody women, alongside a distinct lack of color in the cast – it certainly tries a lot harder than any triple-A game before it and most since. Sojourn feels in fitting with what’s come before while being something new and, again, at least trying to fix some of those problems. Then again, she is still conventionally attractive and cuts an hourglass figure. Make your own judgments on that.

Unfortunately, none of the incoming visual redesigns for other, well-established characters, were present in the game at the time of writing. I don’t know if slapping a beard on Soldier 76 or taking Reinhardt’s helmet off is going to have a significant impact on the game, but it might help to dispel that patch feeling, and give a little bit of that new-and-fresh that’s sorely lacking.

Mechanically, the hero updates have been fun to play so far. Bastion was always a favorite, throughout their many iterations, and this one feels closest to actually being a part of the wider game rather than a cheesy or ultimately bad pick. They’re mobile and enjoyable, and still able to tear down a barrier or rout an enemy team from the right vantage point. They also show that Overwatch polish with a smooth and fun transition between different combat modes and even camera angles for the ultimate, artillery mode. Once they get their cool new hat for Overwatch 2, they’d make an excellent main.

Other major updates are to Orisa, who has a cool new spear, Doomfist, who traded an uppercut for a defensive move, and Sombra, whose hack has been redesigned. While Bastion was in much more dire need of changes (to become a character that felt playable in the game, anyway), it does seem odd that these four – highlighted in marketing and used as big selling points to returning players – are so minimally altered. Again, for the invested, it will be significant, but there are Dota patches with this level of changes for over half of its 123 heroes.

That’s not to take away from the gameplay fun of those updates, and more isn’t always better, but it all feeds back into wondering just what you should be excited for, especially as a returning – or even brand-new – player. Dare I say, all this bears more resemblance to a yearly Call of Duty update than the meaty offerings we might expect from major expansions or balance patches of other contemporaries.

So, what is Overwatch 2? I still don’t know. It’s certainly an attempt to reinvigorate a diminished fanbase. It won’t – and, let’s be honest, nothing could – return the game to the glory days of being the only thing that mattered. It doesn’t have to, and being fun is enough. But will it take time out of whatever game you’ve moved on to since the original? Will it return a playgroup that has since become accustomed to victory royales or savage raids to its folds? Right now, I don’t think so.

Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.