Additional info and launch trailer for Overwatch 2

Blizzard has released additional information and a new trailer for the game a week before the launch of Overwatch 2. Most of the new information is for players starting Overwatch 2 without having played the original. Furthermore, Blizzard has also taken additional steps to combat toxicity and hacking.

Let's start with the biggest news, which is the First Time User Experience. If you are new to the Overwatch universe, Blizzard will give you side wheels in your first games. This choice was made to avoid overwhelming newbies with all the (new) heroes, maps and gamemodes. In practice, this means that new players have access to a limited number of characters when they start. Also, features like voice chat and some gamemodes are not immediately accessible, but according to Blizzard, you don't have to play much to unlock these features.

To gain access to all existing heroes, all you have to do is play games. After about a hundred games you will have unlocked the complete cast, even if you do not invest a single euro in Overwatch 2. This was chosen to give new players a good start in Blizzard's shooter. To unlock Competitive, players must win fifty Quick Play matches. Again, the logical reasoning behind this is to protect experienced players from newcomers who do not yet understand the game. By the way, if you are a new player and don't fancy all this, you can also buy the Watchpoint Pack directly for forty euros. This gives access to all heroes on release, including newcomers Sojourn, Junker Queen and Kiriko, among others. Existing players of Overwatch, by the way, have all heroes unlocked by default.

Another update is the Defense Matrix initiative. A project by Blizzard to make Overwatch safer. In this, you can think of adding phone-based two-step authentication to counter hackers, as well as in-game monitoring of (voice) chat by an AI. All this to call a positive atmosphere, Blizzard reasons. Either way, we're going to experience it next week when (the first season of) Overwatch 2 releases on Oct. 4. By the way, you can check out the launch trailer for the game above.