We're pretty late in the game for surprise reveal now...
There was a time when Overwatch could count itself as one of the biggest and most recognisable brands on God's green earth. That was also around about the time when people where fed years worth of teases for the new brand of shooter game that was going to revolutionise the genre and finally succeed Team Fortress 2, as that one cartoony shooter that people play forever. Blizzard still had their reputation as dedicated and passionate developers who always put the player first, and the general sweep of multiplayer shooter games had become so dominated by Call of Duty and half hearted Call of Duty clones that all the world was eager to see something new, and colourful. And when it delivered it was a whirlwind of activity and love and... appreciation of another kind... (Some would argue that the Rule 34 presence of Overwatch is just as much a meter of it's success as the play numbers themselves; and I certainly would agree in at least when it comes to recognisability. Blizzard knew how to make characters that people wanted to bang.)
Then came the dark period. The cluster of several years after Overwatch fell out of the public eye, and Jeff Kaplan left the studio, where it feels like Overwatch just sort of rested on the backburner. Not only were people not paying attention to it anymore, but the developers weren't really making content for the game. Only the competitive scene retained any form of life to it as the crowds just lost interest. And that might have been because underneath it all; Overwatch just lacked in world building depth. Sure, they had this whole great cast of fantastically designed characters, but the characters didn't mean anything. They played with great variety, but they had no purpose. Their backstory and lore did exist, but in piece meal animations once a year and the odd random release dump. That's no where near enough to get fuel lore channels on Youtube and Reddit speculators; and if people aren't thinking about the game after they put down the controls, then one day their attention is going to drift to a game that knows how to spar the imagination better.
To be fair to Overwatch, the hero shooter genre that it ushered into being proved a pretty tough act to follow. Some games managed to carve out a bit of a name for themselves, whilst others flared and vanished within the blink of an eye. The only game which I think really managed to nail what it was that Overwatch introduced and expand upon it (or rather, games) would be COD and Apex Legends. They both took the idea of a Hero Shooter and applied it atop the Battle Royale model, moving the concept forward in a manner that turned out to be quite synergistic. One might say that they moved the genre beyond the simple death matches/ escort missions that Overwatch founded it over, and that if an upcoming game were going to try and bring it back to that, it would feel like a step back in innovation. But then I guess that's what modern Blizzard excel in, isn't it? Backwards innovation.
At least, to their slight credit, Blizzard has recognised that with this great do-over for the Overwatch brand, the game is going to need something a little more special to stand out as it did last time. There's lots more competition, afterall. And for this Blizzard has made the choice to match what every other well adopted online-competitive game is doing nowadays and give itself a blank price tag. Now typically this is advertised as going 'free to play' but I prefer to characterise is as a 'blank tag' because of the intention behind it. They hope to lower the barriers to entry entirely by allowing anyone to pick up and play the game, using that lack of a buy-in to justify scandalous behind-the-storefront offers and prices that wouldn't fly in a sixty dollar game because "Hey, we've got to keep the lights on!" So whilst the game may seem inexpensive at first, their end goal is to get you invested enough in the game to spend much more than the sixty would have been worth throughout the life-time of the game. As though Overwatch 1 didn't already popularise lootboxes.
But then I'm going to take that credit immediately away because if a recent story on Blizzard is to be believed, the Overwatch 2 model is perhaps one of the most insanely dumb they could have possibly envisioned. Overwatch 2... is locking away their rooster behind unlock conditions that you have to grind painfully for or buy the Battle Pass. I can't... verbalise how much of a major misstep that is. Overwatch came to life because of it's colourful cast of characters that you can switch between at a whim to find who you want. From the second you put in that disk for the old game, you could shop around all the different personalities and playstyles to get the character who suited how you liked to play. And if you weren't feeling like playing that character tonight; no biggie, you can try out someone you haven't gotten bored of yet. ("Oh, there's a new character drop? I'm going to play them tonight!")
Overwatch was accessible and accommodating to all players, which is why it caught fire so quickly. Now Blizzard wants to replace that with freemium players grinding as... I'm going to assume Tracer, Winston and D.VA, in order to unlock any different character who might play differently so they try playing a different way. Robbing the accessibility away from the player and putting a price tag in front of it. Also, these characters are tied to a season pass? Those swap around, right? Does that mean Heroes are going to be unbuyable for certain seasons as they get swapped out? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? This is how casuals get bored out of playing a game; because they can't be bothered to spend the time grinding to unlock a character they then realise they're not really that good with them online! I think it's a painful system in Multiversus and other games of that calibre, but in Overwatch... that's an identity breaker!
Now I've made it sound like Freemium players are going to be locked out of certain heroes, and that's because I guarantee that will happen down the line with a set-up designed to be exploited like this. (Don't take Blizzard at their sworn word that they'd never do that; Diablo Immortal is proof they have no moral fibre.) For launch, however, heroes will be listed on the free track and unlocked at an agonising pace. (How much do you want to bet that buying the pass gives you an exp boost so that you can unlock the tiers of the battle pass quicker?) With this choice, Overwatch has literally decimated their casual audience, which is a huge part of what made Overwatch one such of an internet phenomena in it's early days. Heck, I loved Overwatch and even I'm not sure I really want to mess with 2 after this. Now I'm just wondering about those single player missions they promised us and how screwed they are with monetisation.
It's pretty telling how contentious of an issue this is that Blizzard waited for the weeks just before launch to tell us all about this. (Almost as though they foresaw the masses of backlashes; fancy that...) But when we reach the point where Blizzard is as at right now, good and bad publicity doesn't mean a thing to them: this is a numbers game. It's slowly becoming clear that the actual heart and soul of Blizzard is absent from the modern games they're making and the decisions behind them, and their ambition is going squandered thanks to that emptiness. A company built of community is slipping off chasing numbers that they aren't equipped to face, and Overwatch 2 isn't going to win the respect the first game did with a copy-cat business model. It sucks to have to write off Overwatch 2, at least for the immediate, but what else can we do?
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