It has been a very long time since I’ve seen the Overwatch neighborhood as hyped a few new hero as a lot as Juno. Her trailer has over 2 million views on YouTube—greater than the Overwatch 2 launch trailer—and my X feed is stuffed with posts from accounts devoted to counting down the times till she’s out. Everybody desires the area woman to return house, and she is going to subsequent week when season 12 begins on Aug 20.
Though the season is titled “New Frontiers”, it will not truly be themed round area or Juno’s house planet Mars. Many of the new skins and cosmetics will likely be based mostly round historic Egyptian gods. Fittingly, Reaper will get a Mythic pores and skin based mostly on Anubis, the god of dying.
However the true cause to log in is Juno, a help hero who brings a little bit Overwatch 1 again to Overwatch 2. She’s like a puppeteer on your crew, pulling them in numerous instructions together with her pace boosts and therapeutic whereas she glides above. Her Mediblaster cannot even headshot, which supplies her the area to focus totally on ushering her crew by a match. No hero since Overwatch 2’s launch has been so reliant on technique as Juno and I anticipate finding out what sort of intelligent crew synergies gamers give you.
Season 12 can even debut Conflict, a reasonably easy recreation mode the place each groups attempt to snatch a collection of goals that transfer additional into the opposing facet of the map. I performed a couple of rounds throughout a playtest in season 10 and it was like a mixture of king of the hill and Overwatch 1’s assault, or 2CP, mode. Workforce fights occur rapidly and are progressively tougher for the profitable facet as they transfer nearer and nearer to the enemy spawn and away from theirs. Not like the opposite modes, Conflict appears to be all about operating straight into one another, at the least on the Hanaoka map that was out there in the course of the preview. A second one based mostly on the Egypt-based Temple of Anubis map from Overwatch 1 will likely be out there subsequent week, too.
A handful of different notable updates are coming with season 12, together with:
- A mid-year aggressive rank reset
- An keep away from as teammate checklist that permits you to prioritize sure gamers over others
- Well being reductions to cellular help and injury heroes
- Enhancements to help hero Lifeweaver that additionally make it simpler to counter his high-mobility
- A one-time log-in supply for Recreation Go members to obtain 30 Mythic prisms for purchasing cosmetics and several other free skins
Overwatch 2 hasn’t made an excellent argument for why it is a sequel over the previous couple of years, particularly now that it is going again to 6v6 in some experimental modes quickly, but it surely’s nonetheless among the finest hero shooters on the market. The addition of Juno means that Blizzard is extra prepared now to take a couple of steps again and reimagine what Overwatch may very well be when it does not should help an enormous esports league. Blizzard would not ever say it, however I believe season 12 is the beginning of a shift towards updates that target making it a extra satisfying recreation for everybody, moderately than its best gamers.