Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller seems to understand that the players want something more than a possible Overwatch cartoon.
Keller said this when asked by GameSpot about an animated spinoff like Cyberpunk Edgerunners or Arcane: League of Legends:
The team would love to have something like that come out. You know, we’re also fans of those shows and fans of those universes. To have something like that for Overwatch would be really, really cool. But I can’t really discuss the plans for future stuff like that.
An Animated Overwatch Show Could Be A Huge Win
There is an obvious appeal of an animated Overwatch spinoff. And it goes beyond making the developers happy they see their characters on streaming.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners was a strong part of the comeback narrative of Cyberpunk 2077. Subsequently, Arcane propelled a successful but technically challenging game like League of Legends into the mainstream.
Overwatch also always had this feel of being a Saturday morning cartoon itself. And no, the adult subject matter does not take away from that. Not if you knew how dark those shows could get.
There’s also the side effect of a show being an opportunity to tell Overwatch’s story without the constraints of fitting into a live service game format. However, Keller revealed that the Overwatch team is quite serious about fixing the story where it started.
Overwatch’s Team Does The Right Thing
This is what Keller said about their team’s efforts to tell Overwatch’s story:
I know Blizzard holds their cards kind of close to their chests sometimes. But I don’t think we really saw the critical success that we wanted and it forced us to really analyze where we were putting our time and resources.
At the end of the day, what we’ve been telling our players is that we want to make the game that they want to play. And the game that our players have been playing is this competitive, PvP-focused hero shooter.
We really realized that that was the game that we needed to invest our time into.
Will Lapsed Overwatch Buyers Buy Into It?
We know many former players will dismiss this outright. But then, if you were one of those Overwatch players who stuck around, or came back, you might read these in a different light.
Because many players are recognizing that Overwatch 2 is now in the best state that it has ever been. In the fallout of the past few years, they have earnestly been improving the game to earn those players back.
Whether it can do so remains to be seen. But don’t be surprised if Blizzard manages to stage that comeback after all.
