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The developers of hero shooter Overwatch 2 must have dropped a box full of old photographs while clearing the attic, spilling old snapshots of Route 66 onto the floor and getting snared in a nostalgic daze. The game is launching a “Classic” mode today that will let you play the first-person payload pusher as it (mostly) was back in 2016 when the first Overwatch launched. That means 6v6 fights, the original abilities of its heroes, and no limits to stop the entire team picking the same character.
Blizzard explained the ins and outs of Classic mode in a rose-tinty post. They also explain that this won’t be the only time the mode appears (Overwatch 2, like its predecessor, likes to run limited-time events often). Each time the classic event shows up it will replicate the “heroes and balance from popular moments in the game’s history.”
This time that means you can have a team composition of six Torbjorns, the turret-thwacking Swede. Or field a team made entirely of very annoying Genjis, the ninja who I hate. But be warned, this lack of hero limits only lasts the first few days, say Blizzard. “After that, we will enable single hero limits for the remainder of this first Overwatch: Classic event.”
Some things won’t be changing, though. The maps that cycle through this mode will be the maps you recognise (Temple of Anubis, Hanamura, and so on) but their design will remain as they appear in Overwatch 2. “This includes major reworks for Dorado, Numbani, Route 66, and Watchpoint: Gibraltar,” say the devs.
The mode will run for the next three weeks, until December 2nd. And it’s not related, we’re told, to the chin-scratching at the studio regarding another possible 6v6 mode in Overwatch 2. That’s something separate the studio is thinking about.
Blizzard aren’t the first to encourage players to become misty-eyed about a shooter they used to play. Last year Fortnite brought back its old map, resulting in record player numbers and likely catching the dollar-sign eyes of every executive in charge of a live service game. But harking back to some “golden age” of your favourite online blastabout is a questionable way to engage with nostalgia, as James learned when he had a go at Apex Legends after they launched a similar classic mode. As a a kind of FPS holiday it was enjoyable, he said, “but also a reminder that the good old days weren’t always that good.”