Image Cropping
Image Cropping
Age Verification Failed
Sorry, you're not eligable to view this content

Go Back to Home Page
Age Verification
Please enter your date of birth
Month
Day
Year
Enter your username.Your password will be send to your registered e-mail address.


Overwatch 2’s Update Roadmap Revealed 

Starting October 4th, players will receive 3 to 4 new heroes and maps per year 
by Joe Wilcock on June 19, 2022   



Overwatch 2 looks set to launch the hero shooter back into the limelight after years of playing second fiddle to other, more popular games. In its prime, Overwatch was one of the biggest and best PvP FPS games on the market, but it has since fallen behind, making way for titles such as Valorant and Apex Legends as they became the dominant hero shooters. The diminishing returns on Twitch views clearly show Overwatch's dip in popularity:
 

Statistic: Average viewers of Overwatch on Twitch worldwide from January 2018 to April 2022 (in 1,000s) | Statista
(Find more statistics at Statista)


Blizzard's Overwatch sequel seeks to put the franchise back on its pedestal. At the Xbox + Bethesda conference, seen at this year's Summer Games Fest, it was revealed that Overwatch 2 will be going free to play in an attempt to stay competitive in a now saturated genre. However, the game director, Aaron Keller, insists that "the decision to go free-to-play wasn't based off of other games doing this, this is based off of us wanting to be able to provide as much content as we can seasonally to players".

Commencing on October 4th, players can expect to receive seasonal updates, a battle pass and an in-game store which will include up to 3 to 4 new heroes and maps a year. Each season will last for 9 weeks and will alternate between offering a hero or a map, apart from the first two seasons which are plentiful in their offerings. The first season will offer 3 new heroes, 6 new maps, 30+ new skins, a new game mode, new mythic skin and their seasonal battle pass. Season 2 then falls into the expected pattern, gifting players 1 new tank hero, 1 new map, 30+ new skins, new mythic skins and the battle-pass. 
 



Speaking about the upcoming sequel, Keller commented on the difficulty of sacrificing content for Overwatch in order to get its follow-up developed:

"It has been a really fast paced year where we have had to do a lot of things to turn this massive ship that was going in one direction to go in another direction in order for us to be able to fulfill one of our key values for the game, which is to be able to continually update it"

Overwatch 2 desperately needs to keep to these "key values" if it's going to set itself apart from its predecessor. As it stands, there are only 2 new heroes that will enter the fray, Sojourn and Junker Queen, the latter of which was shown off at the Xbox + Bethesda conference recently. Lead hero designer, Geoff Goodman, spoke about the possibility of the roster being perpetually updated and what that would mean for the experience.
 

"That's honestly something we talk about all the time. There's obviously a lot of production issues, like how fast can we make heroes and be happy with them and make something we really like. But also, there's other questions like, well, let's look at ourselves 10 years from now, how big should the roster actually be?"

There's a lot of different games that handle it in different ways, and I think a lot of that is just whatever feels right for the game … So as long as people are playing the game and loving it and wanting your heroes we're definitely down to make more. If we end up in a situation and we have 150 heroes at the end of the day and people are still jazzed to play and we feel like we can still make really cool heroes then we'll keep going."

- Geoff Goodman, Lead Hero Designer


Overwatch 2 will launch its beta on June 28th before its early access release on October 4th. 

The beta will be available for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. Registration for it has already launched, for more information see the website.
 


Check back with DailyGamer for more Overwatch 2 news.


 
 

Comments


Comments (0)
Sign In to Comment
Member Rewards
Powered By: Image