Farewell to Overwatch

Overwatch isn’t going to be Overwatch as we know it after 2nd October. It’s being turned off in anticipation of the release of Overwatch 2 on 4th October 2022. Giving the game a blackout whilst they prep the servers, and all the changes they likely need to implement to their infrastructure to accommodate the new game.

It’s weird, because you don’t very often see the first game of a series essentially get canned, to make way for the second one. Overwatch 2 appears to be more of an upgrade than a sequel, and I suspect it’s more to consolidate all the new features, migrate all the newly merged cross play accounts, content etc.

Still. It does make Overwatch feel like it’s going to be killed off, and that’s kind of weird.

 

Overwatch

What Overwatch was to me, is a weird one. At one point, around 2017, it’s all I played for a long long time. I never hit amazing ranks or anything, but the game itself was hitting a perfect spot for me. An exceptional shooter that saw several attempts as competition shortly after release.

The 6v6, role-based gameplay just worked for me. I love playing an objective in a competitive game, and when your team “clicks” Overwatch is one of the best games in the market.

Tied-in with a robust, memorable cast of heroes, abilities and playstyles to accommodate almost anyone. It all just felt right for me and even though Overwatch 2 is basically the same game, the changes coming (5v5, hero changes etc), mean it won’t ever quite be the same.

I’m happy and keen to see what Overwatch 2 brings, and wonder if I’ll find myself in a similar pocket of joy after a few months of everything being ironed-out.

That doesn’t mean I won’t miss what Overwatch was.

I think Overwatch 2 is a weird choice, although, as I’ve written over at FullSync.co.uk, it’s a sensible move to grow the player base and well, make more money.

 

Don’t forget your stuff!

With Overwatch 2, comes cross-play. This is a great move by Blizzard, and means that all the stuff you unlocked in Overwatch, will be coming over with your account. Better still, if you played the game on multiple accounts, you can merge them all and bring everything you had.

I recently tweeted that it would be a good time to make sure you’ve opened any loot boxes you might have on different platforms. With my Switch and Xbox One, I had 14 boxes each to open, and currency to spend. With as much unlocked as possible, I’ll be bringing the most stuff over with me.

Rare skins, favourite emotes. Everything. Especially pleased, because when I originally played on Xbox One, I erm…….invested in loot boxes, more often than I perhaps should have.

All of Overwatch is brought over into Overwatch 2, but the changes impact the core gameplay. May as well look pretty whilst I get to grips with changes to some of my favourites!

 

Overwatch 2

So yeah……Overwatch 2 is coming, whether we want it or not. It’s free, but the game we all paid for is no longer available. But it is, technically, because it’s in Overwatch 2.

I’ve largely kept away from updates and hype. Especially as messaging around battle passes, unlocking heroes etc has reached fever-pitch. No point in engaging with it all until there are facts and we can see it all with our own eyes. Sure, chasing hype trains and positing hearsay would be good for traffic, but it’s not really worth my time or yours.

Lets just see how it goes. 5v5 ruins the VasDown dynamic, what with us being a team of 6. So that’s a negative straight away. Perhaps it makes all the difference to the gameplay, and I can have a blast on my own with randoms? We shall see.

Goodbye Overwatch. It’s been….expensive, fun and if anything else, interesting.