It's almost like all the popular shooters got together and decided that what they really need is a little bit of nostalgia. Fortnite brought back its original map last year, Apex Legends is doing the same thing right now, and tomorrow, Overwatch will rewind time in its own throwback mode.
Blizzard calls it Overwatch: Classic, a limited-time mode in Overwatch 2 that will attempt to recreate the original Overwatch experience as it was the day it launched. It won't be a 1:1 remake—maps, UI, and sound effects will remain as they are in Overwatch 2—but the heroes will all play like they did eight years ago: D.Va's exploding mech will take her out with it, Torbjorn will hand out armor packs, and Mercy will once again be able to resurrect her entire team at once.
"We want to capture the charm of what it was like to play Overwatch on release," lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson said in an interview with PC Gamer. In other words: teams of six Symmetras frying their foes with a wall of laser turrets and deleting people around a corner with Hanzo's Scatter Arrow. "It can be a little chaotic," Dawson said, "but I think that's what makes it really special."
Overwatch: Classic, which will run until December 2, will also see a return to the original game's 6v6 format. Teams can have any number of heroes from each role, and for "the first few days," won't have a limit on how many of the same hero people can play. Team compositions will be as chaotic as they were back in 2016.
Despite returning to the larger team sizes, Overwatch: Classic isn't part of Blizzard's upcoming 6v6 tests. Those experimental modes will be more focused on gathering feedback on hero balance and queue times. However, the development team will still be collecting data and listening to how players react to having more players in a match.
Overwatch players are hungry for goofy modes that shed some of the sequel's hyper-competitive hero design.
"I think that when players are asking for 6v6 they're asking for something different than Classic," game director Aaron Keller said. "At the same time, this will be the first time that we have released a format that is 6v6, so this is a great stress test for our engine."
The announcement post says Overwatch: Classic will be a regular event that will "feature heroes and balance from popular moments in the game's history," but Dawson and Keller made it sound like the next one is still up in the air. "It really depends on how players actually latch onto Classic," Dawson said. We could see a return to old metas, like the three tanks and three supports 'Goats' meta from 2018, or remixed snapshots of the past, like a mode with every hero in their most overpowered state. Dawson said the team has "a few in mind that might be very exciting or very terrifying for players to go back to."'
Overwatch players are hungry for goofy modes that shed some of the sequel's hyper-competitive hero design. A surprising amount of players flocked to Junkenstein's Laboratory, a mode where you can equip talents that alter how hero abilities work. "Roughly 35% of the hours [spent] in Overwatch were in Junkenstein's Laboratory the day it launched," Keller said. It was popular enough that Blizzard put out a balance patch for it and kept it around for an extra week.
"We want to make sure that players who love the world of Overwatch, who love our heroes, have something that's a little bit less stressful, a little bit less locked in," Dawson said.
Overwatch: Classic is set to go live on Tuesday, November 12.
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