Overwatch 2 Reveals A Slew Of New Stuff Is Coming, Including A Massive Overhaul Of Its Core Gameplay Experience

Overwatch 2 has wrapped its 2025 spotlight, showcasing a slew of radical changes coming to the game in the coming seasons.

With the hero shooter landscape irreversibly changed by the release of Marvel Rivals, many players expected some big announcements to come from Blizzard – and honestly, they didn’t disappoint. Game director Aaron Keller and several other Overwatch team members walked through the enormous list of stuff to expect, with a monolithic announcement that the core gameplay experience of Overwatch is shifting with the addition of Hero Perks.

https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1889748769626841554

The entire roster of Overwatch 2 will have access to two perk types, minor and major,  selected mid-match at particular level milestones.

Initially your level two minor perk will impact your character in a passive way, tweaking a part of your kit but mostly keeping the core experience familiar – but the major perk will have more impact, even going so far as to wholesale replace an ability with another unique one.

For example:

• D.Va Minor Perks
  • Bunny Stomp: Call Mech’s damage radius increased by 50%
  • Ejection Suit: Eject grants 75 temporary overhealth
• D.Va Major Perks
  • Shield System: Convert 150 health to shields. Defense Matrix restores shields based on 25% of its damage absorbed.
  • Heavy Rockets: Micro Missiles are swapped for Heavy Rockets which fire fewer projectiles with increased damage and explosion size.

A demo of this system was explored during a previous arcade experience, with the perk items selected between rounds. This incarnation will instead come to the base experience, with the levels doled out over the course of the match – meaning characters and their gameplay will evolve more like a MOBA experience. Pretty snazzy.

This system gets expanded and supercharged in a new upcoming game mode option, known as Stadium:

Season 16 is bringing an entirely new way to experience Overwatch 2 with the introduction of Stadium 🔥

Check out the all-new powers system, third-person combat, revamped maps, and more before Stadium officially launches in Season 16 💥 pic.twitter.com/ucuouJNZ6U

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 12, 2025

Stadium is a 5v5, best-of-7 round-based competitive mode where players earn currency that can be exchange for personal player power. These bonuses range from passive alterations to survivability or damage, but can also be dumped into more exciting benefits that can change existing character abilities in fun new ways – such as changing Reinhardt’s Fire Strike to leave a sizzling trail of lava in its wake, or allowing Reaper to actually fly during his Wraith Form. How horrifying.

A unique feature of Stadium is the ability to view your character in third-person, quite similar to one of Overwatch 2’s other rival hero shooter games. While this is a toggle, Keller mentions that the purpose behind this is so players can “see more of the battlefield and your modifications in action”.

Considering the scope of Stadium, it comes as no surprise that the initial launch of the mode will only see a limited number of characters being available – noted as 14 heroes to start with – with more maps and heroes coming as time goes on.

Speaking of characters, we of course got a sneaky look at how the roster will expand during the 2025 gameplay seasons, with a quick look at a new damage character named Freja, and a support that is simply codenamed ‘Aqua’:

The next Overwatch 2 heroes are bringing some striking new abilities to the battlefield that you won’t want to miss! 💥

Join Senior Narrative Designer, Jude Stacey, for a first look at Freja’s abilities and get a sneak peak at Season 18’s Hero, codenamed Aqua ✨ pic.twitter.com/WTS7fM5SRd

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 12, 2025

Hailing from Denmark and wielding a techy crossbow, Freja is a search-and-rescue operative turned Bounty Hunter that will pepper you with sharp bolts and bola you if you try to escape. Coming in Season 16, her backstory is that she was an Overwatch operative that has changed career quite drastically since the group was disbanded.

Beyond Freja though, the upcoming support character is a Chinese hero that is described as having ‘one of the most unique ability sets ever developed’ – wielding an ornate staff and apparently having mastery over water, it seems to be a massive bummer that this dude is making his way to the game after the Avatar tie-in has already happened. Hopefully they bring some fun splishy splashy to the Overwatch healing experience. A tidal wave might be a fun ultimate ability.

We then receive some incredible news for the competitive scene, with hero bans and map voting coming to the game!

Hero bans coming to competive
byu/HealingSlvt inOverwatch

Surprising no-one, Overwatch 2 Season 15 will include a competitive rank reset – to make way for a new age. With Hero Bans added to the game, Overwatch 2 will step into a new era of play and counterplay, with the micro and macro of the game’s meta being handed to the players. Sick of Ana anti-heal completely deciding an engagement? Get her out of here. Think Hammond is too aggressively niche to play around? Banish the ball. It is a huge deal, and may well lead to some growing pains for people who have played the game for over a decade – but only time will tell.

We will also see map voting in the game, finally allowing players to influence where they are off to from game to game. With the map pool as generous as ever, it’s neat that now we can try and steer towards a few locals that we maybe haven’t seen in a while.

Maybe.

Oh, and they are bringing back Loot Boxes.

LOOT BOXES. ARE. BACK. 🙌🎁

Available in both the Battle Pass and weekly rewards, see what surprises are waiting for you when Loot Boxes make their official return in Season 15 🎉 pic.twitter.com/BGZmIlii5d

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 12, 2025

Driven from feedback – a.k.a, “players kept commenting BRING BACK LOOTBOXES on all our social media”, It seems that loot boxes as you remember them will come back to the game, albeit with zero method to purchase them (to keep the scarier side of loot boxes safely in the bin).

Rewarded via things like weekly rewards or the battle pass, you’ll get nifty goodies from your loot box like the old days – with a transparent set of stats to give you a rough idea what to expect.

The last hot topic item that has me excited is a gorgeous Mythic Skin coming for the floaty robot monk, Zenyatta:

Experience tranquility with Mythic Pixiu Zenyatta 🧘

Get your first look at his stunning new Mythic Skin before it arrives next week in Season 15 ☯️ pic.twitter.com/GPv1yMqiGm

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) February 12, 2025

It is a monolithic amount of changes coming to the game – clearly offered as a roadmap to keep players engaged in the new year, considering the overt competition that Overwatch 2 has nowadays. And the changes are far from little snack-a-doos, they are hearty meals. A major change to the general gameplay of Overwatch? Hero bans? LOOT BOXES?

The Overwatch team is really stepping on the gas with this one. Make sure to check out the full spotlight video to see further detail on the items mentioned above:

What has you the most excited? Are you buzzing at the idea of going third-person in Stadium? Horrified by the idea of FLYING Reapers? Tell us all about it in the comments or on social media.