I hope I'm not the only one who saw Blizzard's reveal of Stadium, Overwatch 2's big new round-based mode played in third-person, and thought "Get this nonsense outta here." The FOV shift struck me as a change you'd come up with to make something seem more different than it actually is. Overwatch is a first-person shooter, damn it—the ideal POV for digital shooting! What is this, Marvel Rivals?
Then I played some Stadium at Blizzard HQ yesterday. Overwatch 2 surely doesn't need a third-person mode, but it does feel surprisingly good. I played some Soldier 76, Mercy, and DVa, and it's safe to say not every hero's behind-the-back camera works equally. Soldier 76 moved as naturally as his Marvel Rivals clone, The Punisher, and the higher FOV helped with my decision-making with Mercy. One time as Mercy, the third-person camera even saved my life because I could see a Reaper teleporting behind me.
D.Va felt a bit clunky—her mech is so big that it takes up a lot of the screen (a problem Blizzard never planned for in 2016), and you can't even see her guns firing because of where they're placed. There are some kinks to work out (or not work out, and hope people don't mind), but honestly, after an adjustment period, I wasn't thinking about the camera change. I was just playing Overwatch 2—a supercharged version of Overwatch 2 that's far less predictable and kinda broken (in a fun way, so far).
Before we go any further, it's worth going over exactly what Overwatch 2 Stadium is and what it definitely is not, because I played it and still found it confusing next to all the other changes announced today.
Stadium is...
✅A third "primary" mode in Overwatch 2 next to Quickplay and Competitive
✅Played in third-person by default, but first-person will be an option
✅A best of 7 round-based format with randomized, shortened objective modes
✅Overwatch with a MOBA-like item store: Farm currency, buy upgrades, try not to snowball the other team
Stadium is not...
❌The mode with perks: The new hero perks coming to Quickplay and Competitive are a separate system to Stadium's item store. I said it's confusing!
❌"A Counter-Strike mode": It's round-based and has a buy menu, but Stadium is still unmistakably Overwatch with extra stuff.
❌Ready yet: Perks are coming out with Season 15 on February 18, but Stadium won't be ready until Season 16 in April.
My first round of Stadium started with an in-game store sporting tons of icons, concepts, and stats that haven't existed in nine years of Overwatch. Stadium's cheapest upgrades modify stats usually exclusive to the domain of MOBA sickos: Attack speed, ability power, cooldown reduction, weapon power. During the excruciatingly long 80-90 second buy phase, my eyes widened as I juiced Soldier 76's Pulse Rifle to shoot faster, evolving its steady hum into the roar of a minigun. Blizzard later told us it extended the buy phase for our preview event so we could take our time picking powers, which is good to hear—by our second match, we didn't need more than 20 seconds to choose some starter gear.
I'm impressed by the variety of items in the store. There's enough going on that the game defaults to a "Starter Builds" tab for your first few matches, offering two complete builds centered around different playstyles. In my D.Va match, I went all-in on her Defense Matrix and rockets, choosing a power at level 1 that turned DVa's one defensive ability into a factory that produces more offense: "Fire one rocket for every 50 damage absorbed by DVa's Defense Matrix." That one paired well with a later power that increased her rocket explosion radius by 500%. I'll never forget the dumbfounded looks of Reaper and Soldier 76 as they dumped everything they had into the matrix and ate a bunch of mega rockets to the face.
Shopping spree
A lot of the store (the official name is the Armory) is straightforward upgrades to base stats. The main attractions are each hero's 12 unique powers that significantly boost or modify an ability. DVa's rocket factory is one power, as is a Solider 76 power I picked up that briefly activates his ultimate every time his secondary attack deals damage. Everyone picks a free power on rounds 1, 3, 5, and 7 if the match goes that long. You can't buy powers or swap them out once you've picked one, which is probably to ensure snowballing doesn't get out of hand.
In my best match, and the one that ultimately won me over on Stadium, I followed one of the Mercy starter builds and picked up two really cool abilities: One that grants lifesteal to heroes Mercy boosts with her blue beam, and another that chains her beam to the last two heroes she's healed for a few seconds. I've understood how to play Mercy for nine years, and with just two modifiers that whole script was tossed out the window. Now I had to tactically manage my beam targets to prioritize the best healing chain, and with lifesteal, her blue beam can provide enough healing that I hardly ever had to switch to yellow.
Hopefully all of that makes sense—the point is Stadium powers are all about breaking Overwatch wide open, which is fun, a little scary, and not without issues. For one, you're locked into the hero you choose at the start, MOBA-style. There's no pick-and-ban phase, so there's no way to react to the enemy's hero choices. This led to one really bad matchup between our DVa and their Zarya—a one-sided matchup for Zarya that led us to a 0-3 mercy rule defeat. Blizzard later told press that this specific matchup has been tweaked in a more updated build, but didn't get into how.
I think the idea is that you'll always be able to "build" your way out of a bad matchup, but that sounds a lot easier said than done when one of DVa's primary abilities is entirely useless against Zarya's beam gun.
That no hero swap thing gets to the heart of something inherently awkward about Stadium: So much original design work has gone into developing all these cool abilities and strategic economy, but it's all still wrapped around the vanilla Overwatch experience. Jumping between five to seven different maps and modes over one match was a lot. My longest match was around 30 minutes, but it felt longer because of all the starting and stopping. A shorter buy phase would make a difference.
Stadium is larger than an experiment, but its introduction couldn't feel more opposite than when Blizzard declared 5v5 was the future of Overwatch and we'd just have to get used to it. This version of the Overwatch team, with years of failed experiments behind it, is much more relaxed about the whole thing. If people love Stadium, it'll put more resources into it.
Stadium is immediately fun, but I have no idea if it'll be in my regular rotation a year from now. Either way, I'm just happy that Blizzard is finally taking big swings with Overwatch 2. Better late than never. I plan on booting it up for the first time in almost a year when Season 15 drops on February 18.
