Yesterday Tim from the Overwatch team, along with our boy Jeff Kaplan, threw a new Developer Update our way. The video announced some more information for the upcoming event, while still remaining incredibly vague. We now know that the spring event will now be called Overwatch Archives as opposed to Uprising. This year’s event will bring back all of the elements from last year’s Uprising event, including all of the cosmetic collectibles, the PvE mode, and the chance to unlock achievements/trophies from last year that you may have missed. The PvE mode, which focused on the attack on King’s Row, will allow for both the traditional mode with the set strike team of Tracer, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, and Mercy, as well as the All Heroes mode which allows players to choose their hero.
The attack on King’s Row brought us back to Tracer’s first mission as a member of Overwatch– you defend the citizens of King’s Row against an Omnic invasion, while delivering a payload, of course. However, this year’s event tells a new story out of the Overwatch Archives, which Jeff hinted at towards the end of the Developer Update as being called The Retribution.
Jeff also mentioned that we’d be getting a new skin for “everyone’s favorite Shimada brother”. Now we already got a skin for Genji last year during Uprising– a pretty great skin at that– so I think that Hanzo will be getting a new skin from the archer’s past. My prediction for The Retribution event mode is that it will involve the Blackwatch strike team. We know that Reaper, Mccree, Genji, and Moira were members of Blackwatch,– the Overwatch covert ops group– so I imagine that would be the team of four. Though, what the team is seeking retribution for or what the team would do I can’t predict. The other issue with this would be that the Blackwatch heroes that we know of includes three attack and one support, which is not the most ideal squad to deal with waves of enemies. Do we get more of a strike mission in which Blackwatch is attacking an enemy outpost? Is there another hero that was in Blackwatch that we don’t know of yet? Regardless, I’m happy to know that annually we will get a history lesson into the past of Overwatch.
Look for the event to drop on Tuesday April 10th, and for more Overwatch news and opinions make sure to keep it locked to Pass The Controller.
UPDATE: Leaks coming out of Blizzard HQ point towards a mission on a new Venice map. We know that Moira was disavowed from Overwatch following a Blackwatch mission in Venice. Maybe this event will be our insight into Moira’s fall from grace.
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