Over­watch 2 Beta

MISHAWAKA – This past week has seen the Over­watch 2 beta re­leased via Twitch drops, giv­ing over one mil­lion view­ers ac­cess to this build of the game. I got to play a few games thanks to the ac­cess of a friend of mine, and there are a few changes I no­ticed in my short time.
It is worth not­ing that I was, at best, an Over­watch fan when I first tried the orig­i­nal game. I started play­ing on the PlaySta­tion 4 in 2017, a year af­ter its re­lease, and I was im­me­di­ately hooked. The char­ac­ters, world-build­ing, game­play, vi­sual pol­ish, and ac­tive de­vel­op­ment made it one of the most fun mul­ti­player ex­pe­ri­ences I have had.
How­ever, over time, I grew out of touch with the game. Sure, there was a spell where there was still new con­tent com­ing out, but very lit­tle of it was ac­tu­ally new; most of it was re­cy­cled sea­sonal events from pre­vi­ous years. Every Over­watch player could tell that the game was start­ing to get stale, but it was still fun enough to keep the play­ers that had spent so much time on it in­vested. This did not in­clude my­self; my last time spent with the game was at the end of 2018, right be­fore Su­per Smash Bros. Ul­ti­mate came out. Then, in 2019, the trailer for Over­watch 2 was re­leased, and play­ers flocked back to the game out of nos­tal­gia and an­tic­i­pa­tion.
Though up­dates were given on the game’s de­vel­op­ment, it was of­ten to men­tion that it was be­ing pushed back. Luck­ily for those starved for con­tent – and I mean se­ri­ously starved, to the point where a tweak to the el­e­va­tor speed on some maps in the first game was the hottest news for a while – an open beta was an­nounced a month ago, and play­ers are fi­nally get­ting their hands on the game, how­ever un­fin­ished it might cur­rently be.
I apol­o­gize for tak­ing so long to get to the com­par­isons be­tween the first and sec­ond games (i.e., the point of this piece), but I fig­ure Over­watch play­ers are used to wait­ing for the good stuff. So, from the out­set, Over­watch 2 looks al­most iden­ti­cal to its pre­de­ces­sor in terms of art style. The ob­vi­ous changes in­clude changes to the time of day on some pre­vi­ous maps, light­ing tweaks, char­ac­ter de­sign up­dates, and new maps. From what I ex­pe­ri­enced, most of the move­ment feels the same, and the gun­play does not dif­fer too much.
My first game was the new Push game mode, which sees two teams start on op­po­site ends of a map with a large track in the cen­ter. The fail state of this game mode is let­ting the pay­load be pushed all the way into your base. This game type ne­ces­si­tates the abil­ity to switch be­tween of­fen­sive and de­fen­sive playstyles at the drop of a hat, not least be­cause team fights get re­mark­ably hec­tic right around the ro­bot, who will not move un­til the op­pos­ing pres­ence is elim­i­nated; there were plenty of times where I could not tell who had con­trol of the ro­bot.
Most of my time spent with the beta was oc­cu­pied by play­ing heal­ers, much like my time with the orig­i­nal Over­watch. How­ever, play­ing heal­ers in this game feels much more re­ward­ing than be­fore. Due to the change from teams of six to teams of five, heal­ers are more im­por­tant than ever to in­crease the longevity of their team­mates. To say the heal­ers are the lifeblood of the team sounds ob­vi­ous, but it did not al­ways work that way in the pre­vi­ous games. Tanks were the main en­e­mies to over­come in Over­watch, but in Over­watch 2, if the sup­port play­ers die, the team will fol­low shortly af­ter.
One change I ap­pre­ci­ated is how most char­ac­ters can rea­son­ably en­gage in solo com­bat with­out be­ing ter­ri­bly out­matched. Heal­ers au­to­mat­i­cally re­gen­er­ate health over time, tanks take less dam­age, and DPS char­ac­ters move more quickly. I was play­ing as Ana, a sup­port char­ac­ter, and found my­self fac­ing off against So­journ, the new DPS char­ac­ter, and nei­ther of our teams were around. In Over­watch, I would have had to al­ter­nate be­tween try­ing to heal my­self and elim­i­nate her at the same time, but now, if she does not im­me­di­ately fo­cus me down, my health would come back on its own, slowly. Fun fact, de­spite be­ing three years out of prac­tice, I still man­aged to beat that player one-on-one, so go me.
Some­thing I thought was a mi­nor change when they re­vealed it but has since be­come a huge bless­ing is the re­vamped sound de­sign. Each weapon, and al­most every abil­ity, al­ready has its own, new sound pro­file, and they all have mul­ti­ple vari­ants de­pend­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment they are used in. Play­ing on Watch­point: Gibral­tar, I heard three dis­tinct vari­ants: open, out­door area; large, in­door area; and echoic, nar­row, out­door area. My first thought when I fired Ana’s bi­otic ri­fle was that it sounded chunkier, if that makes any sense.
Fi­nally, and this is the most im­por­tant part, the game is just as fun as the orig­i­nal, if not more so. Noth­ing feels out of place, even with all the char­ac­ter re­works and new con­tent; as far as the beta is con­cerned: so far, so Over­watch. I have every con­fi­dence that the game will be worth the years-long wait for all Over­watch fans, and I can­not wait for all of them to ex­pe­ri­ence it.