Without being hyperbolic–and as someone who has been an on-and-off again Overwatch fan since the original game’s release back in 2016–I don’t mean it lightly when I say that I believe Overwatch has never been better.
I’ve critiqued the series quite a bit throughout the years. In my Overwatch 2 review, I wrote at length about how it felt “detached from the principles and charm of the original,” was seemingly struggling to retain its identity, and how its new monetization models felt disingenuous and “at odds with the spirit of the original Overwatch.” Harsh words, yes, but I meant them. I was frustrated by what one of my all-time favorite games had become, and worried that I’d be chasing the same bliss I felt playing in 2017 endlessly and to no avail.
So, with all that said, how did we get here?
I recently had the opportunity to discuss the state of Overwatch 2 with game director Aaron Keller and associate game director Alec Dawson in an exclusive interview for GameSpot, and it seems a lot of this dramatic turn-around boils down to two things: an increased emphasis on responding to player feedback, and a sharp pivot away from the “conservative” mentality the Overwatch 2 team once clung to. The result is a vastly improved game that is taking big swings with more efficiency.
Be it Stadium mode, Perks, the inclusion of heroes with never-before-tried mechanics, map voting, hero bans, or one of the many other tweaks and additions made to the game, Blizzard is not shying away from shaking up Overwatch 2’s core gameplay loop; Season 18 is no exception. And according to Keller and Dawson, all these changes are just the beginning of the studio’s push to “explore how big” Overwatch can become.
GameSpot: A lot of changes have happened this year in Overwatch 2, so I would love to start by unpacking that with you both. How do you think things are going? How are you feeling about the overall health of the game?
Keller: When you look at the way that 2025 has gone for the game, we’ve done a lot of big releases. Earlier this year, we released our Perk system, which was a pretty substantial game mechanic that changed the way moment-to-moment gameplay can happen. It gave players more strategic choices that they could make over the course of a match and put more emphasis on what a hero can do and [fulfilling] that power fantasy.
In Season 16, we released Stadium. It’s probably the biggest new game mode we’ve ever introduced to the game and there was a lot of player excitement there. We’ve done a lot of other things, too. We introduced hero bans this year. We introduced map voting this year. We’ve introduced a new hero as well, with another one soon to come.
A lot of players are now telling us that this is the best state that Overwatch has ever been in and we think that some of that is because we’re making bigger changes to the game than we typically would have in the past. If you look back on the history of Overwatch, you could say that maybe we’re a little bit conservative, but we have a new mindset and a new vision for how we operate the game. [We want] to be taking bigger swings and bigger bets with Overwatch, and I think you’ll see that when we get to Season 18.
That’s great to hear. Touching on that, I would love to hear a little bit more about what’s coming tomorrow in Season 18.
Dawson: We look at Season 18 as sort of the next steps for a number of the big swings we’ve taken this year. There’s around 60 new Perks that are brand new–every hero gets [a refresh]. Quick play is coming to Stadium, and then you have four new heroes coming: Brigitte, Winston, Farah, and then Tracer.
A lot of what we’re doing in [Season] 18 [stems from] evaluating what’s in the game currently and evolving it in some way and/or even revamping it. Our progression system is a great example. It’s been one of those things that’s been in the game for a bit now, but there’s a lot of screen space that players weren’t really caring about; a lot of bars going up, a lot of things you’re leveling up. We want to simplify it–make sure it’s a lot more visible, make sure it’s a lot more surfaced.
Keller: We are doing a total revamp to our progression system. When you looked at our progression system before, it kind of just felt like there were just a bunch of bars going up all the time. It was pretty complex and so we’ve simplified it. But the exciting thing about it is that, not only is it easier to understand, but it has a lot of cool new rewards too.
There’s a whole rewards track where you’re updating things like emotes and Play of the Game [intros]–even loot boxes and legendary loot boxes. There’s a whole Ascended State where you get a really cool icon with VFX on it that lets you and other players know just how much time you’ve put into each one of your heroes. We have a new Hero [Skill Rating] system coming out, so you’re going to know how good [you are] not just at a [particular] role, but how well you play each of your heroes in Competitive. You can see which ones you’re better at, and which ones you’re worse at. We also have a new advanced hero info panel, where you can look up stats on what all of the different heroes do.
We’re bringing Stadium to Quick Play, which is one of the biggest requests that our players have for the mode, and that’s coming with cross-play enabled. We have four new heroes coming to Stadium, a new game mode, Payload Race, and two brand new maps for it. You mentioned Wuyang, our new support hero, is coming, and we have changes to Roadhog too. Lucio Ball is back–this time in third-person–and there’s mouse and keyboard support coming to console.
We even have [things] on the cosmetic side. Kiriko’s getting this skateboard emote [that lets her] travel around the maps riding a skateboard. The Mythic [Character] skins and Mythic Weapon skins are really cool this season… It’s a huge update to Overwatch. This is going to be one of the biggest seasons we’ve ever had for the game.
Is this the biggest update in terms of sheer content? Because I feel like, based on what you’re saying, I don’t know if there’s ever been an update quite this big.
Keller: I don’t want to jump into hyperbole and say like this is the biggest one coming, but man, it’s… it is big.
Dawson: There’s truth to that, though, to some degree. I think our team has been getting better and better about structuring our seasons to where, now, we can create some really big beats. Season 9 felt like a big change in the game, and then they went to Season 12 which had Juno and a bunch of competitive updates. 15 and 16 [added] Perks and Stadium. And now 18, is another massive update for Overwatch. We’ve been getting a lot more efficient and a lot better at planning over time, which has led to these big moments for Overwatch. [We can now] decide, like, “Hey, how do we want to change the game for the middle of the year?”
I can sense that. Even with your newest hero, Wuyang–he feels extremely different.
Keller: Yeah, there’s a lot of unique mechanics and abilities with Wuyang that I just think it’d be great to touch on. He can surf on his own private wave and cruise around the map. He gets this speed boost with it, too, and is able to jump over gaps and things like that. He can use his staff to create this wave of water in front of him that knocks down enemies, and can turn himself or allies basically into ticking time bombs by imbuing them with water. But what I’m most excited about with Wuyang is his primary fire. He shoots out this orb, and you can kind of do it rapid fire, but at any moment, you can also take control of it and steer it, turning it into a guided missile. Even if they take cover, you can actually bend it around a corner. There’s some skill expression here. It takes a little bit of practice to actually be able to do it, but once you get it, it feels so satisfying.
Dawson: I think he’s one of the best support heroes we’ve ever made. He’s an example of what a support is in Overwatch 2, where you can have a ton of impact through your offense and can make game-changing plays. Wuyang is dynamic in the sense that he has to go from offense to defense quite quickly. All of your attention is gonna be on the primary fire, landing some of those shots, and tracking people down, but then you have these defensive options that you’re going to [need to] be really timely with. His guardian wave is this big wave that gives healing and gives heal boosts–it can change the fight instantly.
I think players are going to really love him. I know we’re not supposed to play favorites, but he’s a joy to play with and I think he’s really special.
I think he’s also one of the first heroes where his skills and powers feel almost more magical rather than technological, right? I feel like Overwatch historically has always leaned more into tech rather than magic. Was that a conversation that had to be had when developing him?
Keller: Oh yeah, and we have those conversations all the time. We had those conversations a lot with both Hanzo and Genji, you know, because when they summon the dragon, that feels like a pretty magical thing there as well. We do have our own internal explanations for that that we’ll actually get into at some point with our players, but we’re not quite ready to yet. I guess all I can really say right now is that Overwatch is a science fiction game, and so there is an explanation behind the way those work.
At this point, do you feel like you’re still fighting that initial nature of being conservative? Like you both said, for a long time, Overwatch was more conservative. Are you still fighting that hesitation or is it like, “Nope, we’re all in”?
Keller: I think the team has left a lot of the hesitation about being conservative behind. The question for us really is, how big do we go with releases for Overwatch? Because there’s two sides of this coin. There’s an active player base that really appreciates the way that the game plays right now, you know. But we also see that, anytime we do make a big release for the game, players respond to it really positively.
So we want to keep going big. I think what we want to do is explore how big we really can go for Overwatch. And I think as we hit seasons like 18 here, and we see players’ excitement, that gives us the confidence to know this isn’t just the right direction–this is something that we can expand on in the future. We can keep pushing the boundaries of what a release for Overwatch can be.
With the implementation of Stadium, did you see a spike in people playing Overwatch 2? If so, how is retention following that?
Keller: There was a huge spike of people jumping into Stadium when it first came out. I think we went public at one point saying that over 50% of play hours in Overwatch were in Stadium. And when we do have new modes for the game, we do always see that initial burst of excitement and then it’ll kind of taper off after that. And Stadium did taper off, but not to the extent that our other modes have. It’s still, I think, our third most popular mode in the game right now, just behind Quick Play and Competitive.
Dawson: We view Stadium as one of the main ways to play Overwatch, and Season 18 as almost Stadium’s 1.0 launch. A lot of players are clamoring to have Quick Play in there. They’re clamoring for something that’s a little bit more brief and doesn’t have a rank associated with it. So with Quick Play, it’s a best-of-five round structure and you power up your hero even faster as well.
And then the other main piece of feedback from players is, “Hey, my favorite hero isn’t here.” So we’re continuing to release new heroes into Stadium. We’re going to be doing that throughout the rest of the year and there’s four this season who I’m really excited about. Tracer in particular. I think… She’s a little wild.
Keller: I’m super excited about Winston jumping into Stadium. I love playing as him and using his mobility. Sometimes with Winston, you just feel like you’re holding down primary fire a little bit too long to actually be doing what you want to do. [With Stadium], you can really juice his gun and it feels so satisfying.
How did you land on those four heroes and what are some other heroes who you see people clamoring for and are on the docket? If you can’t say right now, can you share what gameplay styles you’re focused on bringing in?
Keller: There’s a lot of things we look at when we’re looking at heroes for Stadium. First and foremost is how well we feel like we can make a really cool set of abilities for them. We want every hero in there to really double down on “hero fantasy.” We want to make sure that comes across to our players.
For the first few seasons of Stadium, we really tried to have at least a few heroes per role. Eventually, I think we’re going to have to break that pattern and start moving into other patterns. I think we’ll start seeing, you know, maybe different numbers of heroes coming to Stadium with different role ratios.
We want to make sure that heroes that we know a lot of people play are available there. Like Alex said, you know, we have a lot of people saying things like, “Hey, I’m just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for my hero to join the cast.” So we want to make sure that we’re opening up that funnel.
There’s also a few heroes we’re avoiding, you know? Like Widowmaker, who is a controversial hero that’s designed around a one-shot [kill]. I think that there’s probably some learnings we need to do with how we build those heroes–how we build counters for some of the sharper mechanics.
There was a recent IGN article in which you said that you’d “dropped the ball with story in Overwatch 2,” and I thought that was interesting to bring up this far removed from the announcement of PvE being dropped. So do you have plans to course-correct going forward?
Keller: Yeah. When you look back at the history of Overwatch, there are moments where there was more or less lore–where we were developing more or less story for players. And one of the things that we hear from our community–and we’ve been hearing it a lot lately–is that they just want there to be more of that in the game. That it feels like we’re doing less of it.
So I think I’m actually really excited for the Wuyang hero trailer to come out and for people to get a glimpse at that hero and maybe how they tie into the bigger, broader universe. It’s something that I can’t really go into a lot right now, but I’m excited for players to be able to get in touch with more lore over the coming seasons this year.
Based on that, do you plan on having more heroes come from similar factions or the same countries? I know that, for a while there, there was more avoidance since you’re trying to represent a lot of different backgrounds. But at the same time–and with the lack of PvE–do you find yourself thinking “Well actually let’s add this person’s best friend and have more storytelling through voice lines?” Or “Let’s try to add folks from the same factions.”
Dawson: Yeah, there’s a delicate balance to it. We don’t want to make it feel like heroes are appearing out of nowhere and like [players always have] this brand-new thing to learn. I think we’ve created a universe over quite some time that is very rich with tons of different characters from different factions, and we want to lean into that more and more.
Even some of the things you saw in the Freya story trailer earlier this year link back to some of the things we’ve already built in the world. We want to make sure that we’re pulling from that world because there are characters that people have only gotten glimpses of, that they love, or that could end up as heroes one day.
Keller: As far as where our heroes hail from, we do still like to spread heroes out across like all over the globe. That’s a really important value that we’ve got. We do like our heroes to feel like they represent Earth, but not in the strictest sense. We don’t have 40% of our heroes from China and India, which is maybe what a true representation of the global population would be.
Has the team considered any other avenues for more large-scale storytelling? I’m sure you see the success of series like Arcane and Castlevania on Netflix, and I wonder if that has been something that you’re interested in pursuing.
Keller: The team would love to have something like that come out. You know, we’re also fans of those shows and fans of those universes. To have something like that for Overwatch would be really, really cool. But I can’t really discuss the plans for future stuff like that.
I completely understand. I just ask because it’s something that I want to manifest into the universe. But on the subject of Overwatch’s story–and now that we’re a little bit more removed from what happened–do you want to go into a little bit more detail on why things didn’t really work out with story missions?
Keller: I know Blizzard holds their cards kind of close to their chests sometimes. But I don’t think we really saw the critical success that we wanted and it forced us to really analyze where we were putting our time and resources. At the end of the day, what we’ve been telling our players is that we want to make the game that they want to play. And the game that our players have been playing is this competitive, PvP-focused hero shooter. We really realized that that was the game that we needed to invest our time into.
Following the release of our sole campaign, we did a really big pivot internally on the team. We wanted to focus on what it means to be a best-in-class hero shooter. What are the competitive systems that we need in order to do that? What are some of the other systems?
In the year since that, we’ve focused on evolving the game our players play–on how we turn it into the best version of Overwatch it can be. That’s why we started doing these much bigger systems, like Perks and Stadium. Now that we’ve corrected the course, it gives us the opportunity to make bigger steps with the game. And some of those are things that players are asking for, but then some of them are really big surprises. That’s the future for Overwatch right now.
The above interview has been lightly edited for clarity, readability, and brevity.
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