Normally, the release of a hefty amount of content would be a cause for celebration and unannounced days off work. But when it comes to Overwatch 2, there’s a certain amount of emotional baggage and psychic grudges that look at such patches and imagine… what would have been.
The good stuff first: Overwatch 2: Invasion dropped last night with three new world-spanning story missions, a new playable support hero named Illari, the Flashpoint PvP mode, an Underworld coop mission, and a new player progression system. Oh, and also you can get all of this through Steam if you don’t like Blizzard’s Battlenet launcher.
Blizzard talked up the game’s 38th hero: “What sets Illari apart from other support heroes is that she has a very damage-focused kit, so that you can heal your team while dominating the opposition. Her solar rifle fires a beam of sunlight that can do powerful burst damage at long-range, or use it to heal allies around you.”
However, this update arrives amid a year when Overwatch 2 fans have been soured about the broken promises that Blizzard made about the sequel, especially in regards to its PvE offerings and Hero Mode. Game Director Aaron Keller claimed in an interview that the previous intent to grow the game into an MMO “was a little blind” in light of the established playerbase’s expectations. This resulted in the “difficult” (and only belatedly announced) decision to keep the game more of a team-based shooter it’s been since Overwatch’s original launch.
The players, of course, are letting Blizzard know what’s what; following the game’s launch on Steam last night, the game has racked up 35K reviews that sink the game into “overwhelmingly negative.”
