when Overwatch 2 After the announcement, Blizzard made a key difference that set the title apart from the first game: PvE. The developers made a ton of story missions that made their way into the game in the sequel – and rightly so! For the first time, you will challenge Null Sector in the lush, vibrant world of Overwatch. The game’s exciting and complex story is no longer hidden in animated shorts, manga, or weird ARGs.
However, at launch, all of this is lost. Blizzard told us that Overwatch 2’s PvE content will be rolled out gradually in 2023. It will drip to players as part of the game’s seasonal model, with new elements dropping periodically, giving us a sense of this ever-growing world of change that heroes call home. If you’re keen to find out about all the unique hero talents, or how the progression system will work, or what all these so-called replayable quests are, you’ll have to wait.
still you? Well, maybe not. The Halloween Horror event (starting October 25th and running through November 8th) brings a new co-op limited-time mode: Bride’s Wrath. The excellent sequel to Junkenstein’s Revenge is a long-standing Halloween tradition from Overwatch’s first installment, a precursor to the much-anticipated but now-delayed PvE content in Overwatch 2.
Patterns are fun. very interesting. It makes the archival event or the original Junkenstein’s Revenge look amateurish by comparison. Bride’s Wrath feels more like it was built to support Overwatch and its mechanics – it’s not just a cheap add-on that you can play once a year for about two weeks just because Blizzard wants to give you something extra Lets you log in and increment the number.
It’s designed to give you a better understanding of the newest additions to the Overwatch roster. Fire up Bride’s Wrath, you can choose from Junker Queen, Ashe, Sojourn, or Kiriko, and you’re thrown into a reimagined, Halloween-themed version of Eichenwalde. Separated from your team, you’re forced to fight a horde of Zomnics (zombie Omnics, naturally), then group up with your friends for a self-made ending. This is actually quite scary. It’s whatever you want. It has some interesting take on the hero as a small boss. It’s a proof-of-concept for a new era of cooperative content in Overwatch, and in its setting, I daresay it’s even reminiscent of some of Bungie’s better Destiny 2 experiments.
What a shame…everything else. If you’ve been to this site recently, you’ll know our take on Overwatch 2’s monetization, lack of loot boxes, and how it handles Battle Pass. None of them are good. In some cases, it’s pretty bad — and Blizzard should be ashamed. Halloween Horror removes all the goodwill generated by the sublime Bride’s Wrath mode by continuing to use the game’s vile monetization techniques: you won’t earn any skins for playing that mode. Sure, you can get nameplates, some weapon talismans, sprays, voiceovers, and XP boosts – but you won’t get any Overwatch coins. The progress you make on the Battle Pass is negligible at best.
Awesome Kiriko and Junker Queen skins are expensive. It’s a slap in the face to show them in mode, only to be directed to the store and asked to drop 2,600 or 1,900 coins for them, respectively. By the way, that’s about $30 or $20 in real money. Or, if you don’t want to pay…well, you’re screwed. Even if you’ve completed all of the challenges to date and haven’t purchased any other items in Overwatch 2 to date, you won’t have enough currency to unlock any set of gear. Not to mention both.
For every positive thing I liked about Overwatch 2, Blizzard seems to have found a way to piss me off—and, it seems, the entire player base—in response. You also can’t ignore monetization; it’s everywhere. On every screen in the game, there is more or less a funnel trying to get you into the store – hunting you down until you enter your card details and then earning $10 for every 100 coins you buy.
Even at seasonal events, a place that used to be the celebration of all Overwatch, where the community would come together and throw in hours of new content, Blizzard managed to keep fans down. I just hope all the money the whales who supposedly fuel this game put into the standalone Executioner Junker Queen skin is worth it, Blizzard.
I hope you pull together when the right story missions come out.
Want to learn more about Overwatch 2? Maybe you’re interested in all the hero’s quirks, or maybe you’re more interested in unlocking one of the best features of PvE in PvP.
