Overwatch 2 Released: A Trip Back to the Original’s History

With the official release of Overwatch 2 to the public, the first game’s servers have shut down, ending the long, tumultuous life of the original Overwatch. Although some items will be carried to the next game, we can’t help but look back at the original game and compare it to the ‘successor’.

Overwatch 2, according to most, is really the same game as the original, just with changes on various gameplay aspects, UI, character reworks (both visually and gameplay), and the addition of a few more heroes. There is a story mode coming to the game later down the line, as well as a battle pass that players would need to pay for, should they want what is kept behind the premium ones. Though it does feel like the same game, one aspect that split the community was the change in the number of players in a match. The original game was a 6v6 PVP, but the sequel only allows for 5v5. While this may not seem like much of a change, it affects the meta and gameplay of Overwatch, with one less slot meaning that players will need to adapt their team composition to win. And as for why the original game’s servers had to shut down, it was to make way for the sequel as to not divide the playerbase, and presumably to save running servers for both games.

As a guy who only experienced the original Overwatch this year and played about more or less two games, it was quite chaotic, to say the least. Having played more of its ‘competitor’, Team Fortress 2. I do recall the days when the first game was new; everyone was hyped. It was something original, something fresh, something that was much more fun than your average shooter. The only competitor to it was, you guessed it, TF2. Funnily enough, the latter gained what the community deemed its worst update two months before the launch of its competitor, bringing competitive mode (which, in an ironic twist, ‘died’ faster than Overwatch), and other changes which most did not appreciate for good reasons. The hype did continue after the launch for Overwatch, and things were looking to be promising. Sadly, it slowly faded away from the limelight for various reasons.

Though the TF2 community still boasts of the state of Overwatch, the former game isn’t doing well at all either, with the worsening bot problems this month. Although it did not last quite as long as many would have expected, six years is pretty good for a game’s lifetime, and hopefully, the sequel could bring back the life that the first generated before its six-year run.