At the initial announcement of Overwatch 2, Blizzard showed off an early version of its skill and talent trees. Playing with a hero and leveling them up allowed for players to choose different abilities and perks for their hero, adding a level of progression to the game outside of competitive play and player level. Thankfully this feature will be solely for the PVE modes coming in Overwatch 2, but much more was revealed about them at this year’s BlizzCon.
Back in 2019, Blizzard began discussing the progression of heroes in Overwatch 2. Tracer was the featured hero and as the player completed missions with her, the hero leveled up and gained perks for her abilities. Some examples of the shown abilities included blinking through enemies could cause damage to them, Pulse Bomb created extra explosions when stuck on an enemy, and cooldowns were reduced when killing enemies. The newly revealed version of this progression tree is much more in-depth than the previously seen versions and is stated to allow players to play their hero in many different ways.
Instead of a linear progression with choices in abilities, Overwatch 2 is looking to add entire skill trees for heroes. Each hero looks to have three available trees and many perks per tree. One example talked about by developers was making Soldier 76’s biotic field move around with him instead of being planted on the ground. At one point it even had the ability to push enemies inside the field away from the hero. Mercy’s full team resurrection is also making a comeback after her Ultimate Ressurection ability was reworked, this time as a PVE skill tree perk.
Since these changes are only in the PVE game modes, it gave the developers much more freedom to include things that wouldn’t normally be balanced in a competitive PVP mode. Using different perks can add elemental effects to abilities, such as Reinhardt’s Fire-Strike freezing enemies or Junkrat’s traps being electrically charged. The animations are also being updated for enemies to react based on the damage they take, such as shaking when being electrocuted. Changes like this should increase the replayability of the 100s of PVE missions, and really let players be creative with their hero builds.
Not everyone wants to grind competitive modes all the time, and the multitude of PVE elements of Overwatch 2 could open the game up to more players than Overwatch has. The deep skill trees, the volume of missions, and investment in the characters look to add RPG elements to the competitive FPS title, giving players more modes to play and customization inside of them. Blizzard has promised much more frequent updates on Overwatch 2 after this BlizzCon, and it’s yet to be seen when the game will release.
Overwatch 2 is currently in development.
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