Overwatch 2: How to Unlock Every Character

The cast of characters in the Overwatch series is its bread and butter, but with the release of Overwatch 2, Blizzard made the controversial decision to lock a majority of its characters behind in-game progression as opposed to giving players access to all of them right off the bat. This choice has certainly been frustrating to fans of the first game who mained characters that are now locked until they can put several hours into the sequel just to access their favorite playstyles.

As irritating as the choice is, it seems as if Blizzard is staying strong in its conviction which means that players are simply going to have to accept that they’ll need to put the work in if they want to access the full roster of characters. Luckily, doing so is relatively simple. That’s not to say that it won’t be time-consuming to get some characters, but rather that all you’ll need to do to unlock the cast of the original game is play matches.

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Unlocking Heroes

Currently, there are two ways to unlock new characters in Overwatch 2: through the premium battle pass or through hero challenges. Only one hero is locked behind the battle pass, the new healer Kiriko, so luckily if you want all of the characters from the first game, you won’t need to spend any money on unlocking them. It does mean, however, that you’ll have to pay if you want to unlock the new characters that get added to the game with each new season.

Completing hero challenges is simple: play regular matches and you’ll earn progression to unlocking the heroes from the original game. If you win a match, it counts for two matches. It’s worth noting that you won’t get any progression if playing Custom Games or Practice vs. AI. To view the hero challenges and see how close you are to unlocking each character, select the “Challenges” option on the game’s main menu and tab your way over to “Hero.”