Overwatch 2: new features and surprises to come, the game director tells us everything

Since its arrival in free-to-play, Overwatch 2 is a real hit, but still divides the players. The dynamism of the game is finally back thanks to regular new bursts of content. The community has never been so active and the FPS enjoys a resurrection that was more expected. However, some players remain disappointed with the lack of real innovation.

Aaron Keller, game director on Overwatch 2 surrendered to Geek Diary to reveal a few secrets about the many surprises that await players in the coming months. Surprising revelations that paint a beautiful picture to satisfy shooter aficionados.

Journal du Geek: Has the switch to free-to-play affected the development of the game? Many new players are embarking on the adventure, and they should be satisfied as much as the veterans.

Aaron Keller, game director on Overwatch 2 : We are happy to see all the new players discovering Overwatch. Recently we found that over 40 million players have logged into Overwatch 2 and you’re right, a lot of these players are new. What excites me the most about this is that there are all these people who are lucky enough to experience this incredible game for the first time.

These players bring the game and the community back to life. This enthusiasm reassures us and confirms that the decisions we made over the past year in order to launch the game as an ever-evolving free-to-play game were the right ones. The community always wants more, and this economic model allows us to listen to them and respond to their desires, which we will continue to do.

This shift in strategy that we have undertaken allows us to have more resources to continue producing amazing content for the game. The team has truly grown over the past year. We now have over 300 people actively working on the project.

Does the seasonal format cause difficulties for the development teams? Respecting these deadlines imposes a much more substantial rhythm than on Overwatch 1.

We have a lot of effort to put in to be able to produce the amount of content that we want to offer to players. Season 2 is a good example of the kind of thing we like to do as a team, there’s the new hero, the new mode, there will be three events with Winter Wonderland, Battle for Olympus and the New Chinese year.

Of course there are a lot of surprises waiting for players in Season 3 which is coming very soon and we can’t wait for the community to discover them. It’s hard for me to stop talking about all the things that are on the way, but we already have plans set for well after Season 6.

For after season 6? This season will take place at the end of 2023! How far have you already planned the content from Overwatch 2 ?

Running such a game requires a lot of organization. In fact, we’re already working on our big maps for Seasons 11 and 13. We’ve been playing our Season 8 hero for a while now and we’re working on our Season 10 hero. ahead of the content we develop, it reduces the pressure on the teams. It’s always a lot of work, and the teams have managed to adapt brilliantly over the past year, but the fact that we plan so much for the future really helps.

With the arrival of season 2, the balancing of the game begins to be more and more mastered and this must take a long time. How much time do you spend creating and balancing a character?

Everything we create takes a different amount of time to develop. Maps and heroes are the elements that take us the most time to build and imagine. Sometimes we create heroes with very advanced constraints. For example D.Va or Ashe. They have two full 3D models in their kit. For these heroes, the development time is particularly long.

Whereas on the contrary, we can build characters that have a big impact on the game, but do not require as much development effort. Ana for example, the first character we released after the publication ofOverwatch 1, was one of those easier heroes to develop but still has this huge impact on the game. We also have this effect with our PvP maps. Depending on the type of gameplay and their size, this greatly affects the production schedule.

For most of our creations, we will continue to play them regularly internally, even if they are considered ready, because it is important that they are as balanced as possible once published, and that players can feel that they are unique and fun. It’s also one of the reasons why we have to plan so far in advance: we need that time to be sure that what we release has the level of polish that players expect from us.

Speaking of maps, are Assault maps like Hanamura and Volskaya coming back in the future?

Assault maps have been removed from rotation and will not return to Overwatch 2, at least as we knew them in the first Overwatch of the name. These maps are playable in Arcade and Custom Games for now. I love Hanamura, I think it’s one of the most beautiful maps we’ve been able to develop.

We are discussing different ways to bring these cards back and reuse their graphics to build new experiences for players. Seeing these maps return might be satisfying, especially for players from the first game, but if we did, the maps, design, and mode would be different.

Can we conclude that the map rotation system will continue to allow these changes and new additions?

We aim to continue to introduce changes to our maps over time. Sometimes we will change the time of day on the map, or the art direction. Sometimes it will even be level design changes. Whether new places to hide and even close or add new routes for convoys.

We want players to feel that the game is always evolving and introducing something new every season. We want there to be a unique identity for each season. When I look at some comments online about map selections for rotations, I see this is a divisive issue among players. We listen to comments and complaints.

But in the long run, the many maps coming to the game and the seasonal variations should form a very cool experience for players. We’ll see what people think in future seasons.

Finally, the most anticipated experience remains the famous PvE mode. How will this one manage to stand out from the events that we have already seen like the Archives mode?

With Overwatch 2, we’re always going to be building new things for the game, and PvE is a very broad genre of content. We already have many PvE types on the game. We have released a new PvE mission with Junkenstien Wrath of the Bride. It’s a great type of mission and we have plans to create more of that.

These are very fun one-time events, but the big vision we have for PvE ofOverwatch 2 is more like a big linear story that we want to tell through a campaign mode. It tells about the second Omnics crisis and how Overwatch is dealing with it.

The opportunity to do something on this scale requires doing a lot more to the flow of missions and mode than you would for something like Archives or Junkenstein. Unfortunately I can’t go into the details of these additional things, but I think our vision for this campaign is much bigger than what players are used to seeing with regular seasonal events.