These days, I’m lucky enough to work in games, and that means even if I don’t get a game code, I know that I’ll be able to write about a game and make money off it. In 2016 when Overwatch released, that wasn’t the case. I’d buy new games, beat them, overwatch2fans.com then flip them at a second hand shop and use that money to buy another game, and so on. That’s a big part of why single player games, with a definitive ending, matter so much to me. The Witcher, The Last of Us, Horizon, Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and every FIFA from 09 to 19 all entered my life that way. Countless others, too. Despite this, I still have my old Overwatch disc, gathering dust on my shelf as it dwindles in value and my play time trickles up by a few measly minutes every six months or so. There’s just something very compelling about Overwatch’s existence that never quite translates to its gamep

I can buy skins outright, but they used to be earned through chance, so the value of each skin is twisted in a way that the community is going to take a long time to reconcile. In reality is it no different to how things are done in games like Apex Legends or Fortnite , with the very best skins costing around $15-$20, but we were used to earning them in a much easier way, and thus it feels unfair. For someone like me with more skins than sense, I feel like a dragon sitting atop a mountain of gold unaware of how they stumbled across such riches. I’m serious, using the new values assigned to skins I think my account is worth thousands. Yet it’s also worthless.

Seasonal events in Overwatch became major occasions to look forward to. Christmas, Halloween, Chinese New Year, and several others were transformed into virtual celebrations that had our favourite characters donning gorgeous new outfits and performing charming emotes and victory poses that I couldn’t wait to unlock. It was a game I spent hours upon hours with in university, playing alongside my housemates to earn loot boxes and praying we got the skins we wished for. Spoilers: We never

Seasonal events still have a place in Overwatch 2, but they simply can’t exist in their current form. In the years since 2016, we’ve seen the emergence of Fortnite, virtual metaverses and the battle pass, with the latter point going on to define all of the biggest multiplayer games on the market. Blizzard needs to take these inspirations into account when crafting the upcoming hero shooter to ensure it can stand alongside the big hitters in the modern landscape. Since right now, it feels downright archaic in compari

For example, you can utilize Reinhardt's new ability to stop his charge. Reinhardt would have to slam into a wall or let his blast charge run out before stopping, but now it can be stopped manually. People would previously fly enemies off the map, but now you can stay alive as you take someone off the edge and stop to prevent sacrificing yours

Where a lot of hero shooters have characters that either riff on Overwatch or age old tropes, Overwatch’s originality makes it easy to project onto. They still aren’t perfect - we won’t be able to play as a Black woman until Overwatch 2 - but they’re head and shoulders above the competition in terms of what I look for in the genre, even though I never play

Paladins, a free-to-play shooter which took a _ lot _ of inspiration from Overwatch, has a battle pass, and it functions brilliantly. Now imagine this with Blizzard’s budget. I used to be filled with excitement when Overwatch introduced new seasonal events, hoping that my favourite trio of heroes would receive skins I could flaunt on the battlefield. Now, I’m just indifferent, rolling my eyes as the same optional modes, the same skins, and the same aesthetic are rolled out again and again to keep us ha

Before I make a case for every number that’s not five, allow me to explain why five is so astronomically stupid. Each of Overwatch’s three roles can be subdivided into two smaller positions within them. For example, supports can be main or secondary support - consider Mercy and Zenyatta’s healing capacities, respectively - whereas DPS is usually separated into hitscan (insta-registration of bullets) and projectile (anything fired has an arc with its own distinct velocity and trajectory). You can also make a case for builders and support DPS as opposed to traditional damage-dealers, but the main distinction has to do with impact registration and how that pertains to team compositions and map layo

However, Overwatch has always felt like one of my favourite games even though I so rarely play it. While other hero shooters feel loaded with generic characters, Overwatch’s cast feels full of life and heart. Overwatch 2 - which really might have been a mistake , considering most online shooters use the season model - will apparently include a campaign mode, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Obviously, I love single player games and prefer PvE to PvP, but Overwatch won my heart as it is. There’s something about how vibrant the characters are that makes me think I want to see their own journeys, but I’m not sure if I actually trust Overwatch 2 to pull it