GameSpot sat down with game director Aaron Keller to discuss Blizzard’s new approach to Overwatch 2, which builds upon its predecessor to become a free-to-play, live-service game.
00:40 - What's the mood of the team all these years into development and coming off the alpha?
01:34 - What were your key objectives for Overwatch 2, and have they changed now the game is quite different?
02:36 - How do you think of Overwatch 2, given that you've presented it in a way that is now different from the initial pitch?
05:25 - How did the shift in vision and going free-to-play impact development and how did the Overwatch team adjust?
06:27 - Are there plans to change how you're going to be communicating with the community?
07:42 - You mentioned the cosmetics and new things coming to the store. Can you talk about the decision to lose loot boxes?
08:37 - For a lot of people the loot boxes were the proverbial carrot on the stick. What becomes that now for players?
09:03 - There's also Mythic skins. How are they going to work?
10:04 - What's the rollout of these going to be?
10:15 - Speaking of the new heroes, can you talk about Junker Queen?
12:03 - How feasible is a new hero every two seasons from a design, development, and production perspective and are you locked into [that timing]?
13:04 - The introduction of a new hero every two seasons also has major implications on the metagame. Are you pre-planning meta changes as well as pre-planning new characters?
14:26 - So the first roadmap is going to be for a year. How long internally have you planned out for?
15:32 - Is there any scope for creating some sort of system where large groups and Overwatch friend circles will be able to still play together?
17:19 - For many PvP and PvE to thee was the complete package for Overwatch 2. Can you talk about the decision to decouple them?
18:48 - You showed off a new origin story and cinematic. Now that you have a PvE component, are we going to be seeing more stuff like that within the PvE?
20:09 - Can you tell us about the new map coming in the beta?
22:53 - There's the cadence for hero release. Is there any sort of cadence with regard to adding new maps or even new modes to the game?
23:36 - Overwatch as a game is being developed by Blizzard, which is owned by Activision Blizzard, and there are things that are happening within the industry that are [then] associated with the team, and the conversation that needs to happen for people like us who love Overwatch and are so excited is how do we reconcile that excitement with what is going on with the parent company? So we have to try and ask for a transparent look at what the Overwatch development team is currently like.
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