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Progress through change?

This is the music review. Here you can find the music-review.

Now that my brother has stepped in to fill the vacant games review slot with his article on The Guild 3 it's time for me to write something game-related again. At least that was my thought when I sat down in front of my Word document. But what about? I haven't touched any new games for a long time, the shortcut to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has been sitting on my desktop for weeks and has about as much chance of being clicked on as I do of getting hit on in the club.

But I'm looking for a job at the moment, so I have a lot of time on my hands, as you can see from the flood of music reviews. Why is that? And how am I spending my time right now anyway? It was with these questions in mind that I realized that I'm actually playing a new game: Overwatch 2, the first season of which is coming to an end this week, giving me the perfect basis for a review of the status quo. But why didn't I think of writing about Blizzard's heroic epic right in the first place?

For that, you have to look at the history of the hero shooter, founded by Overwatch in 2016, a great full-price game from a time when there were still traces of hope for old-fashioned Blizzard quality. Accompanied by a fantastic MCU-level soundtrack (this way for the music-review), the game offered 21 heroes with different abilities and play styles at release, divided into the categories Tank, Damage and Support.

However, the game was relatively simple and the modes straightforward. King of the Hill and Payload were already familiar from other genre representatives such as Team Fortress 2 while other game options such as Deathmatch or 3vs3 could be tried out in the rotating arcade mode. At first glance, this seems restrictive, but the large and varied map pool meant that the games didn't get boring so quickly. After all, it was expanded over time and the roster of heroes was increased to over 32, which meant that there were always new possible combinations in the 6v6 matches.

Another source of motivation were the cosmetic customizations for the heroes, which could only be obtained through loot boxes. You couldn't buy a skin you wanted directly. Instead, you had to earn loot boxes or buy them with real money. This may sound like a money-making scheme at first, but on the one hand it was purely cosmetic content that had no impact on the game. On the other hand, you got these boxes at regular intervals, which meant you were always unlocking something. Personally, I never paid for them and as the game tried to avoid duplicates in the boxes, sooner or later there were numerous epic and legendary skins for me. And with the money from the duplicates I could also buy something if I really wanted it.

The core of Overwatch however, was team play. Soloists could rarely win on their own (except for high-flyers, of course), the rock-paper-scissors principle worked. While the tank draws fire and protects his team by keeping the enemy busy, the healers keep him alive in the background. At the same time, the damage dealers flank the enemies or support their team in other ways. It's great fun, which is enhanced by the clever use of abilities. Skill, tactics, communication and cooperation - everything was spot on here.

At least that was my experience with the game, which is why I enjoyed playing it for a long time until a new Battlefield-game came along and the players, myself included, migrated away. A few years ago, if you wanted to get a taste of Overwatch again, you would stare at waiting times of 10 minutes for certain roles in matchmaking, only to be flattened by some cracks who had spent years perfecting their skills.

That, in a nutshell, was the predecessor. When Overwatch 2 was announced, Blizzard promised to do everything from scratch and focus on PvE. A campaign that went deeper than the numerous, albeit isolated, story events that could be played from time to time in Overwatch 1 . At the same time, the game progress from the first part was to be carried over and the multiplayer was to be integrated into the second part. After some back and forth, it was finally decided what would happen: The Overwatch servers would be shut down and the progress carried over into Overwatch 2 . The PvE mode was to be added later, and the loot boxes were history. In their place came a Season Pass, as is probably mandatory these days, through which we level up milestone-style and unlock things in the process. Matches are now played with ten players by default instead of twelve (one tank is omitted) and last but not least, the game is now free2play.

Brave new world

Sounds pretty good to the inexperienced gamer: lots of heroes, a progression system, free2play - so basically Overwatch for free? Wrong, because not all characters are available to newcomers at the start! You have to work hard to earn and unlock them, but you can also buy them for real money. The same applies to the content from the Battlepass, as there is only something for non-payers in about every sixth level. So if you don't want to spend money, you don't just get a skeleton of the really cool cosmetic customizations, you also have to do without a large selection of heroes at the beginning - and that's bad in a team shooter that's all about adjusting your strategy and adapting to your opponent.

Now I'm not a fan of loot boxes in general, if only from a user perspective. I even wrote my bachelor's thesis (in German) on the subject because it fucked me up so much at the time. They encourage young people in particular to spend money (like gambling) and are therefore used by the gaming industry as a chance-based carrot to motivate players to invest time and money.

That's why it's all the more ironic that I found the loot boxes in Overwatch the most harmless: cosmetic customizations that have no gameplay impact are fine for me. And the fact that you could unlock them almost non-stop (I think three games resulted in one box) and had the chance to get legendary skins, emotes or even just in-game currency through them, I actually thought the system was really fair. Otherwise, only store users would have been able to enjoy the visual variance, but this way everyone had a chance.

In the successor, the surprise boxes have been replaced by a battle pass that only gives you a fraction of what you would have gotten for the loot boxes in the same amount of time. Of course, I understand that as a free-to-play title, the game has to make its money back somehow, but Overwatch was also successful as a full-price title and probably made a lot of money through its in-game store. But a lot isn't enough these days it seems, so the carrot is replaced by a pistol and pressed against the player's chest rather than waved in front of them.

Grinding for content

Would a price tag have saved the game? Probably not, because then far fewer people would have bought it. And the real reason why Overwatch 2 doesn't need to be bought isn't even the other form of monetization. I assume that Blizzard was forced to offer the game for free. The reason for this is the lack of new content. If you were to be mean (and many review sites on the net were), you could describe the game as a patch, a content update rather than a real sequel. Too much has remained the same for that. Apart from the changes mentioned above and the two in the title, you might still think you're playing the original.

But, and here comes my big but that I've been waiting for after this rant: that's a good thing. I liked Overwatch, sunk hours and days into it, played with my friends and had a good time for the most part. The fact that the game is now experiencing a renaissance of sorts makes me very happy and is reason enough for me to have already put several hundred hours into the first season. The gameplay simply still works and many of the smaller adjustments, such as the removal of stuns or the abilities of some heroes, give the well-known a new twist.

As someone who was skeptical about the reduction of players per match and the limitation to one tank per team, I now think that the move has done Overwatch 2 good. Where in game 1 you were left waiting for the ultimate bars to fill up only to unleash the one game-changing clusterfuck on the opposing team, individual actions are now rewarded much more. If the tank falls, you have to retreat, the sometimes lengthy positional play of the predecessor is a thing of the past. Of course, this can be a bit of a bummer, but I don't think the teamwork aspect suffers as a result. On the contrary, as a tank, for example, you are now even more tied to your team and can't simply leave this responsibility to your classmate.

Hope rests in the future

So let's move on to the conclusion. Overwatch 2 has its weaknesses, as it is a six-year-old game that has now been re-released with a few changes. The Battlepass is crap, the PvE mode, which was a selling point, is missing. A new game mode (which is really fun), a handful of maps, three new heroes and a few adjustments to the veteran warriors are cool, but there are no fundamental changes to the predecessor. However, this also has its advantages. Because Overwatch was great in terms of gameplay and still is today. If FIFA or CoD don't have to reinvent themselves with each annual installment, why does the Blizzard shooter have to?

My hope is that publishers and developers will rethink the concept in light of the negative response to the points I mentioned. The announcement that they want to deal with the topic gives me hope - but only in Season 3. Season 2 is coming up next and offers a new hero. You'll probably have to spend weeks to unlock it, or spend the money now to have an advantage over the other players. The thought of that pisses me off a bit. But well, maybe everything will get a lot better ... at some point. As is always the case.