For as much bad as there is in the video game industry right now, sometimes, we need to look on the brighter side. At the end of the day, hope that things will get better might be what keeps us coming back. For someone like me who has had complaints with Overwatch 2 lately, I think Season 10 shows a glimmer of hope for the game’s future.
Learning to accept Overwatch will never be more than it is
In recent weeks, I wrote an article about how corporate mismanagement turned a former Game of the Year into a continual output of disappointment. I essentially was talking about how my faith in the game had finally been broken after the rumored cancelation of PvE. Over years of promises being broken and constantly getting bad news about the things I was excited about, I finally accepted that Overwatch is what it is. That said, I will try once again to look on the brighter side here. Even with Dr. Harold Winston’s powerful, “Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be,” quote from the Recall animated short, I think there are some things we just have to accept for the future of Overwatch 2 from now on.
At this point, I’ve come to terms with the fact that Blizzard has likely completely abandoned the aspects outside of the gameplay that I love. Pretty much, I don’t expect the story ever to move forward. I think it will always be at a standstill, as it has been since 2016. We started getting progression during the Invasion story missions, but there appears to be no interest in pushing more. We’ll never get an animated series. Maybe we’ll get one short every other year, but besides heroes talking to each other before each match, we’re not moving anywhere from a narrative perspective. As we have seen with the additions of Mauga, Illari, and now Venture, we are back to OW1 levels of adding in characters who could highly impact the battle between Overwatch, Talon, and Null Sector, but all we will get are teases. I’ve accepted that, but at least the Overwatch 2 Season 10 PvP looks like it will continue to improve.
A healthier future for Overwatch 2
In Overwatch 2 Season 10, we are continuing to see good changes to the state of the game overall. While there will always be naysayers, I think things are in a much healthier state. All new heroes are free and available to everyone right off the bat. No more battle pass requirement giving people who paid a leg up. That change was long overdue. Mythic skins now having their own currency from the battle pass to choose what aspects you want to unlock is also a great change. I know the pricing on the mythic currency in the store if you want to buy it is outrageous, but if you just go through the battle pass, you get everything as you did before for the same price. Spending $80 for a skin is 100% another scummy ActiBlizz move, but just play normally after buying the battle pass for $10, and you get all the same content anyway.
Mirrorwatch is the Overwatch 2 Season 10 event, and it’s the most interesting arcade mode we have seen outside of the April Fools changes. Similar to that joke event, Mirrorwatch alters abilities that heroes have, but we also get to see what if the roles were reversed. What if the heroes we know were evil and the villains were the good guys? Seeing Mercy, Ana, and Tracer as evil characters with new abilities that do more harm than good (sometimes to themselves) is such a cool concept. Some of this is likely another case of scrapped PvE skill trees being repurposed for this mode, which has my full support. Skill trees were so exciting to many people because our favorite heroes could have new utility to change how we approach problems. If we’ll never get that in a story aspect, getting it in these events is a good secondary option.
I’ve seen some people say that they would like Mirrorwatch to be a permanent mode or, at the very least, be in rotation in the Arcade. I could get behind that, but I want to see them continue to add to it. There are a lot of heroes that aren’t included in the current mode, so if we could see these alternate versions of everyone with new abilities, I would enjoy it a lot. One of my biggest complaints with OW1 was that the events completely lost their luster. They were the same thing over and over again. They’re not always winners, but I want to see the team continue to experiment and see what they can come up with in the future of Overwatch 2.
Where can PvP go from here?
While there have been speedbumps along the way, I have generally enjoyed the changes that Overwatch makes to its heroes. Last season, we saw the change to the DPS passive that reduces healing on your target momentarily, self-healing for everyone, and an increase in hitbox size. For as much as the community made a big deal about how it would “ruin” the game and completely take out teamwork, I would say overall, it has been a positive change for the game. Getting kills on an enemy feels great, but it isn’t too easy to the point that you feel you were gifted it. Plus, the slight self-healing doesn’t make it too difficult to kill an enemy that is getting their health back.
The thing with always online PvP games like Overwatch is that it will never be perfectly balanced. There are dozens of heroes with varying abilities and stats. Throw them on all of these different maps, and there will be times when some have an advantage over others. By no means is Overwatch 2 Season 10 in a perfect state, but between the new Clash mode incoming and the promise to focus on various issues like ximming on console, I have faith that the future of Overwatch 2 will continue to make some good changes, even if it will never be more than a singular PvP game.
