Overwatch 2‘s announcement at the recent BlizzCon 2019 is the most exciting and anticipated among all Blizzard’s games. The sequel to the original release is yet to have its release date or any other details regarding its gameplay. But fans are already brewing concepts and speculations to hero changes the game will bring.
Expected to bring Player vs. Enemy into the light, Overwatch 2 is set to the same universe as Tracer and Winston’s. Contents are expected to be a full story mode and a replayable coop mode. It has also been revealed that players can customize their favorite heroes through a new skill-tree that gets more powerful as they level up.
During its announcement, one particular talent shown is Genji’s Dragonblade. While it is usually a melee attack, Overwatch 2 will introduce an option for the ultimate to be a long-range projectile. This clip alone sparked an interest to the whole community.
A user named cal-nomen-official, the fan posted on r/Overwatch his concepts for tanks Orisa and D.va. For the African-made Omnic tank, at level 1, it has an exciting idea that incorporates Sigma’s toolkit. Coined Mobile Barrier, Orisa’s shield hovers in front of her instead of being rigid to the ground. At level 50, the user highlights her Fortify ability. An option for Immovable Object is available, which will deflect all melee attacks and stunning the enemy players.
The Reddit user visualizes D.va’s changes for the PvE environment as well. Level 1 is focused on AoE damage with either Game Over or Landing Zone. The former deals 50 damage to nearby enemies for each mech pieces that were destroyed, and the latter harms for 100 during her Call Mech. At level 50, though, at this concept, players’ only viable option is the Defensive Dome. Albeit sounding a bit too overpowered, the proposed idea makes Defense Matrix be 360 degrees in a 7.5-degree radius. The bread-and-butter of multiplayer titles is how balanced the playable characters are. With 360 degrees Defense Matrix, D.va has very little potential counterplay for other tanks.
The same user said that his greatest fear is that the sequel will only have chosen heroes to be redesigned. “I wanted to see how hard it would be to make talents for all 31 heroes,” he said.
When Jeff Kaplan, Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment and the lead designer of Overwatch, was asked regarding the expected release date of Overwatch 2, he could not provide an exact answer. “I have no idea. Like, just let us make it great. We don’t have a date in mind,” he said during the interview. He also emphasized that the progression shown during the announcement is just part of what it could be. “It’s also likely that progression could change a lot by the time that the game is released,” Kaplan added.
The Overwatch 2 team is expected to “go dark” during the game’s development and will focus on making the game better. Neither Blizzard nor Kaplan is a stranger to the skill-tree centric heroes. World of Warcraft, where Kaplan started as a game developer, had a talent for different specs since its release in 2004. Though it changed quite a bit, WoW’s vanilla talent tree is very similar to what the Overwatch devs showed at BlizzCon. Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s attempt at MOBA, also has the same feature.
