In Overwatch 2, players will take on the roles of the world’s heroes in cooperative missions that challenge them to team up, power up, and stand together against an overwhelming outbreak of threats around the globe. Players will also battle each other in the next evolution of competitive Overwatch play, which carries forward existing players’ accomplishments and loot collections and features the current complete Overwatch roster, a new generation of heroes, new internationally recognizable maps that widen the scope of the world, a new Push map type, and more.

In the sequel’s action-packed cooperative Story Missions, players will experience the advent of a new Overwatch as Winston, Tracer, and other members of the original Overwatch join forces with a new generation of heroes. Players will take an active role in the Overwatch saga as a new global crisis unfolds through a series of intense, high-stakes four-player missions. As the story progresses, players will team up as different sets of heroes and fight to defend the world from the omnic forces of Null Sector, uncover the motives behind the robotic armies’ attacks, and come face-to-face with rising new threats around the globe.

The battle continues in Hero Missions, where the Overwatch team will be called upon to go beyond their limits as they deploy across the planet, defending cities against robot invasions, taking on elite Talon agents, and battling the villainous forces laying siege to the world. In this highly replayable mode, players can level up their favorite heroes and earn powerful customization options that supercharge their abilities in co-op play—such as altering Reinhardt’s Fire Strike to ignite nearby enemies or modifying Tracer’s Pulse Bomb to cause a devastating chain reaction—granting the extra edge they need against the overwhelming odds.

The Overwatch team put together a live broadcast to showcase changes coming to PvP in Overwatch 2.

The core Overwatch PvP experience will shift from six players per team to five players per team. In the standard PvP game modes of Overwatch 2, each team will contain one Tank, two Damage, and two Support heroes. This evolution introduces a major shift in the way that the team approaches all aspects of the game, from map design to the dynamics between roles and how they interact as a team.

At the heart of this change lies the change in mentality surrounding the role of Tank, previously discussed during BlizzConline, towards one more focused on brawler-style gameplay. This shift from focusing on the protection of your team to in-your-face battling is anticipated to have impacts to the flow and pacing of the PvP experience. During the livestream, we got a firsthand look a new secondary fire mode for Winston and changes to Reinhardt’s abilities.

That said, Tanks aren’t the only role undergoing adjustments to account for this shift to five-versus-five. The livestream gave us a live look at the new Role Passives, introduced during BlizzConline. In its current iteration, these new passive abilities will have Damage heroes moving slightly faster than other roles, Support heroes regenerating health automatically after staying out of combat for a short period, and Tanks taking reduced knockback and providing less ultimate charge to opponents who damage them (compared to other roles).

On the level of hero-specific changes, we showed off updates to Mei’s Endothermic Blaster, which will slow and deal damage, but not freeze enemies in Overwatch 2. Other heroes like Bastion are being reviewed and reworked from the ground up, which will result in major changes to how the hero plays. This shift will result in rebalancing and adjustments across the board – We’ll aim to give you a sneak peak on how things are coming for some heroes later this year.

WAYS TO PLAY

Overwatch 2 introduces new ways to play the player-versus-player experience you’re familiar with today. During the livestream, we got a fresh look at Push, an Overwatch 2 game mode where players will clash to take control of a robot that starts in a central location and “push” it toward the enemy team’s base. First introduced during BlizzCon 2019, it’s undergone a number of updates now that team structures have changed!

In addition to Push, the team is currently working through introducing an additional new game mode to Overwatch 2. We don’t have any details we’re ready to share just yet, but we can’t wait to share more ahead of the Overwatch 2 launch. During the livestream, we also confirmed that the Assault (known colloquially as “2CP”) will be leaving the Competitive playlist in Overwatch 2, to be replaced with a new game mode. We intend to still have the existing Assault maps available for play in some capacity (Custom Games, etc) with the release of Overwatch 2.

EXPLORING NEW MAPS

We visited five maps and saw live gameplay footage from the Overwatch developers! After seeing Rio de Janeiro’s story mission during BlizzCon 2019, we got our first look at Rio’s Escort PvP map. As introduced during BlizzConline, we also got to explore New York City (Hybrid) and Rome (Push)! Finally, we revealed the never-before-seen illustrious Monte Carlo (Escort)!

NEW LOOKS

Building upon the ever-growing roster of new looks coming with Overwatch 2, we revealed Torbjörn’s new look! Plus, we got to see other new hero looks in action during the livestream, including McCree and Widowmaker.

These new looks also bear important changes to the UI and HUD for some heroes, including Mercy and Zenyatta. Check out the livestream to see how we’re improving these displays to better communicate important gameplay details.

To help realize these missions, the sequel also introduces significant engine upgrades that support larger maps for co-op (PvE) play, as well as the wide variety of new enemies and factions that players will encounter on their missions. The game also introduces visual enhancements designed to bring players’ favorite heroes—and their new looks for Overwatch 2—to life in greater detail.

Overwatch 2 also represents the beginning of a new era for the series’ world-renowned competitive 6v6 play. In addition to carrying forward all of the original game’s heroes, maps, and modes—as well as existing Overwatch players’ accomplishments and loot collections—the sequel adds multiple new playable heroes to the ever-growing roster; widens the scope of the world with even more maps and locations; and adds a new Push map type, in which two teams compete to make a robot (that happens to be pretty good at pushing things) push the map’s objective to their opponent’s side.

Overwatch 2 also renews Blizzard’s commitment to continue supporting the existing Overwatch community. Current Overwatch players will battle side-by-side with Overwatch 2 players in PvP multiplayer. In addition, current Overwatch players will be able to play Overwatch 2 heroes and maps, ensuring the core PvP experience remains dynamic and vital for today’s community in the Overwatch 2 era.

More details on Blizzard’s plans, including some of the new heroes joining the fray, will be announced in the future as development continues.