Overwatch 2 is now official. After days of constant leaks, Blizzard finally announced the sequel to its popular hero-shooter today at BlizzCon. While the information has been coming in a drip-feed these past few weeks, we can now actually start seeing what the game will have to offer, and where players will be playing them at.
From the moment Overwatch 2 was unveiled this morning, it was clear that Blizzard is placing a greater focus on PvE gameplay this time around, with the cinematic trailer emphasizing heroes working together to defeat hordes of enemies. In addition to full-on story driven missions, the game will also sport Hero Missions where players will be able to level up heroes and unlock powerful new abilities for them.
At the end of the day, though, Overwatch is a PvP game at its heart, and the sequel won’t change that. There will be plenty of new player-vs-player content for fans to look forward. In revealing it, Blizzard confirmed a few parts of Overwatch 2’s leaks, namely that the new competitive mode, Push, will take place on a new map set in a futuristic version of Toronto, marking the first Canadian map to appear in an Overwatch game.
The gameplay trailer for Overwatch 2 only offers a glimpse of this new map, with a brief shot showing what appears to be a wide courtyard, an ice rink in the center with a red maple leaf painted onto it, and a giant statue of a hockey player in futuristic gear.
Along with the Toronto map, the trailer showed similarly quick shots of other multiplayer maps that will be coming to Overwatch 2, including a few European-looking maps next to wide rivers and one Asian-style map with a giant ring-shaped object floating high above it. It remains to be seen if these maps will also be for the Push mode or one of Overwatch 2’s other multiplayer modes, all of which will be available for both Overwatch and Overwatch 2 players.
Anyone interested in seeing more of the Toronto map and Overwatch 2 in general should check out Twitch, YouTube, and other streaming websites, as Blizzard is letting BlizzCon attendees try out the Push mode and some of its story mode and stream it for non-attendees to watch.
Overwatch 2 is officially in development.