Blizzard is giving players a chance to relive the original version of Overwatch with a new limited-time mode for Overwatch 2. Launching Tuesday, Overwatch: Classic mode will feature the original 21 heroes and 12 maps — plus all the classic, unbalanced, and chaotic gameplay — from Overwatch 1.0, giving Overwatch 2 players new and old a taste of the how the game played back in May 2016.
In Overwatch: Classic, two teams of six will square off without any kind of role restrictions, and heroes will have their original launch-day abilities. That means heroes like D.Va and Junkrat can blow themselves up; Symmetra will be able to deploy a shield generator and up to six sentry turrets; Hanzo’s scatter arrow is back; and Mercy will be able to resurrect all five of her dead teammates at once. And who says an Overwatch team can’t be six Winstons? Or that the Goats and Moth metas aren’t viable in the year 2024?
Overwatch: Classic will be playable across four game modes: Assault, Control, Escort, and Hybrid. Assault maps Temple of Anubis, Hanamura, and Volskaya Industries will once again be playable as part of the rotation during Overwatch: Classic. Players will only be able to pick from the original 21 launch heroes, and those heroes will always wear their default Overwatch skins.
The heroes of Overwatch will play nearly identically to how they did back in 2016. You can check out the Overwatch: Classic patch notes for a reminder of how the game’s heroes used to play.
“It’s a great way to see how much the game has changed,” Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller said in an interview with press last week. “We’ve added a lot to Overwatch over the years — new heroes, maps, and modes — but we’ve we’ve also done big format changes over the years, like introducing hero limits, role queue, and changing the number of players on a team ti five from six. So this is a moment where players get to go back and experience Overwatch in the way it was when it first launched. […] It’s just a blast to be able to rewind the clock and go back in time and re-experience that moment all over again.”
Keller refers to Overwatch: Classic as a “snapshot” of the way Overwatch used to be. And while Classic will be a limited-time event that runs in Overwatch 2 for three weeks, it sounds like Blizzard already has plans to bring it back — or other Classic snapshots of Overwatch from the past eight years.
“We’ve already talked about, Could this be a recurring thing? Is this something that’s going to resonate with players? Can we jump to different snapshots in time of the game?” said lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson. “Overwatch has a lot of history and a lot of different metas that players might want to return to, different times or abilities, or [when] the roster was different. We’re going to be actively looking to see like what this could mean for us long term.”
“I hope people can see with Overwatch, our development philosophy right now is willingness to experiment and take some risks,” added Keller. “You probably wouldn’t label doing a classic mode as a risk, but we’re doing experiments with format changes in season 13, and we’re doing experiments with different team size — 6v6 formats — in season 14. And all of these are going to be done as limited-time events […] but some of the things that we try in this game could turn into a new permanent mode. Or it could just influence the way that Overwatch evolves in the future.”
Added Keller, “We want to make the game that players want to play.”
Overwatch: Classic will be available in Overwatch 2’s Arcade tab from Nov. 12 through Dec. 3. Overwatch 2 is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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