A New Event
It’s been a few months since Overwatch last put out an event, which was the rather excellent Chinese New Year. All the buffs, changes, and new characters is fine, but sometimes you just need a new something to dig your teeth into for a few weeks. Given that spring has just started recently and Easter won’t be too far off from when this announcement happens, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if we got an Easter themed event to run for a few weeks.
Well, the latter would be likely, if it weren’t for the fact that Blizzard already said that an Easter event wasn’t going to happen. However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t have some kind of event to be done. It hasn’t been too long since the season of spring officially started, and it’s also not like the studio really needs a reason beyond “we want to!” Sure, there’s no real big or important holidays until May, but considering how big this game already is, just another event for it is a holiday in and of itself.
Yet Another Mode
Currently, Overwatch has four modes, not counting Competitive: Assault, Escort, Arcade, and Control. (Hybrid mode doesn’t count because it’s literally mashing the former two together.) There’s also the weekly Brawls which certainly spice things up, plus the holiday modes, so another mode couldn’t hurt to mix things up. Even if it’s just for a while, a new mode would help liven things up in some capacity.
Exactly what Blizzard could do is sort of up in the air; those mad geniuses could come up with anything and still blow us away. It could be a hybrid of the Halloween horde mode and Escort, or it could be selecting the most popular custom game and letting it run for everybody for a week or two. Each map in the game has a specific mode tied to it, and since the tease is relating to King’s Row, there could theoretically a brand new mode related to it and only it. Maybe they’re planning on adding modes for specific maps?
Given that the newest Overwatch comic is focused on the titular group heading to London to deal with a hostage situation, perhaps that could be the new mode? One team goes for AI hostages, while the other group is Omnic versions of other characters and has to stop them? Think less “escort mission” and more Capture the Flag; once a player gets near them, they have the hostage and just have to make it to the designated safe zone.
Skins, Skins, Skins
This one seems like a bit more of a stretch, but also not. Overwatch is defined by its characters, and being a multiplayer game, there’s nothing more fun than dressing up these costumed weirdos in even weirder outfits. Since everyone loves to take pictures of these guys and put them up on social media, what’s a few more skins and poses to add to the mix? After all, it won’t really hurt anyone, and will keep them trending on Twitter for a couple days.
Now on one hand, they don’t need to do all of this teasing just for some skins and poses. On the other hand, this game is big enough to where they can handle future developments however they well please. If they want to build up hype for new skins like Genji’s prototype body as seen in the recent comic, or the blue and gold that Mercy, Tracer, and Torbjorn are seen wearing at the end, they’re totally gonna do that. Who knows, maybe the other characters will receive some London-themed outfits as well, or ones related to the Omnic hostage situation.
Overwatch Gains Another Hero?
The wait time for previous Overwatch characters has been at least four months, but who knows. Maybe Blizzard will decide to give us a new character a little earlier than what players have become used to. They can dictate the rules of how things work in this universe, and if they decide to put out a 25th one early to get a better feel before a full scale release, that’s their call.
As far as who? Well, the “Uprising” comic reveals that the ones responsible for the hostage situation in King’s Row is an Omnic group known only as Null Sector. According to Reyes, Morrison, and Ana, they aren’t treated too well over in the UK and combined with the lack of rights and citzenship granted for constructing human cities, they’ve taken matters into their own hands. While Ana labeling them terrorists probably doesn’t earn them the right to be called a “hero,” a Null Sector character wouldn’t technically be any worse than the actual three terrorists responsible on the roster, or the two irradiated criminals from Australia.
A Null Sector character also gives us another Omnic character to be a part of Overwatch’s cast, which has been heavily skewed towards humans so far. Not to say that we don’t love Bastion, Orisa, or Zenyatta, because we do– but there’s no reason that another Omnic can’t be a part of the cast. What makes them interesting would be how much more chaotic and geared towards violence they are compared to the other three, who are all much more passive, either by choice or design from the developers.
New Map!
Finally, there’s also the possibility that we’ll be granted with a brand new map for Overwatch. Well, “new” may be a bit of a strong word–given the focus on King’s Row, that’s a misnomer. However, this thing that Blizzard’s teasing may open up a new part of the area in order to justify all the hype. Either it’s a heavily contested area where the titular group made their daring stand against Null Sector, or it’ll be the place where the terrorist group was holding the hostages.
Each map in the game has a mode that it supports, so the question then becomes what mode(s) this “new” map could support. If there’s not an additional mode that comes along with it, will the area be focused on Escort? Attack? Both? Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see what the area looks like visually; each map tells a story about the overall lore, and if a new section of King’s Row is what’s happening here, it’s sure to appeal to everyone, from regular players to the lore hounds.
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