‘Overwatch’ Drops ‘2’ From Name As Part Of Major Revamp, But Devs Say They’re Not Admitting Defeat
In reversing course on perhaps the most ill-fated decision they’ve ever made when it comes to the once-reigning hero shooter, the Overwatch has chosen to mark its next, revamped era by officially dropping the ‘2‘ from its title – but contrary to popular perception, the dev team says this move is in no way, shape, or form an admission of defeat.
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Announced on February 4th, said revamp will see the Overwatch team re-doubling their efforts to deliver on their live-service experience, with their plans for the next year set to include the introduction of ten total new heroes, the telling of a years-long, “multi-faceted, fully-connected story”, updates to the game’s general UI and gameplay modes, and a number of new skin collaborations (the first of which will see a handful of the game’s cast taking on the appearance of Sanrio’s Hello Kitty characters).
And rather than continuing on under the tainted name of Overwatch 2, the failure of Blizzard to do ultimately change anything about the base game except reducing the amount of players on each team by one still radiating off the brashly added number, the game will return to its original, sequel-less moniker.
To this end, asked during a follow-up press conference as to whether or not they viewed this renaming as a sort of ‘white flag’ regarding their sequel efforts, the Overwatch dev team argued that while they were well aware of where they fell short, they wouldn’t describe the final results as a complete a total failure.
As recapped by Eurogamer‘s Robert Purchese, speaking to the question of “What would I change if we could go back?”, Blizzard live service head Walter Kong firstly declared, “Probably not call it Overwatch 2.”
“But when I look back at that period, I do think that it was a positive period for us, because we made an important transition. We made a transition to an ongoing live game, and that wasn’t easy. It was really, really hard.”
“It was a necessary period of challenge that we had to get through to get to where we are today. I don’t think we could jump straight here. Just thinking back to what we experienced during those years makes me feel a bit exhausted, but it is what’s allowed us to take Overwatch into the future.”
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Likewise, game director Aaron Keller told Purchese during a subsequent one-on-one that, in his view, “It’s a tricky question.”
“From our player’s point of view, they’ll tell us, ‘Hey, Overwatch is in the best state it’s ever been in.’ And a lot of times we even hear like, ‘Overwatch has finally earned the two.’ So I don’t think this is us trying to admit there was a failure here, especially when we start hearing from the community that we’ve earned it.
“But for us what this is saying is that because Overwatch is this forever game, we don’t want our players worrying about when it’s going to get replaced by Overwatch 3.”
Notably, when asked whether or not a potential Overwatch 3 was even in the cards for Blizzard, Keller asserted, “Never is a big word to say,” Keller says in our interview, “but our intention is to continue supporting this game, this competitive hero-based, team-based shooter, for as far into the future as our players will continue playing.”
Further pressed as to whether this revamp held any hope for a revival of the original Overwatch 2 PvE plans, the director unfortunately, albeit unsurprisingly, admitted, ‘No’.
“I think when you you talk about the PvE missions by themselves: as we developed them, and especially as we released a few of them, we didn’t see a lot of excitement from players for those missions “and we realised that where we ought to be putting our resources in this game is on that core competitive PvP experience, and that is what we’ve been doing for the last few years. I don’t think I could say that PvE is forever off the table for Overwatch, but it is definitely not something that we’re focusing on right now or looking to get back to anytime soon.”
An attempt to breathe new life into the original king of the hero shooters, the Overwatch revamp goes live on February 10th.
