It’s looking more and more likely that this week will bring us Overwatch’s first “original” event. One based on game lore rather than a specific real-life holiday such as Halloween, Christmas or Chinese New Year.
We have gotten exactly two major hints about the event, which launches on Tuesday, April 11th. One video teasing an “Omnic Uprising” in King’s Row, and a lengthy new comic that shows the original Overwatch team. Back when Tracer had just been recruited and was the new kid on the block.
But it wouldn’t be an Overwatch event without some sort of leak. This time it’s courtesy via the Xbox Live dashboard. A new image, grabbed by fans before Microsoft could take it down, shows what appear to be four new skins arriving for the event. Tracer, Mercy, Torbjorn and Reinhardt in their “OG” Overwatch uniforms before the team was disbanded and then reassembled by Winston.
We have already seen “original” Overwatch skins for Reaper and Soldier: 76 which were given away as pre-order bonuses back when the game launched. More recently, we have gotten a pair of young Ana Amari skins when she was launched. Now, it appears much of the original line-up are getting their own “origin” skins as well. From the looks of them, these don’t look like that dramatic of transformations from what we’ve seen in other holiday legendary skins. Or even the Reaper/Soldier/Ana skins which take the old character and make them young (or de-demonified in Reaper’s case).
I think what I’m more curious about besides these skins is what the actual “Omnic Uprising” mode will be. It seems like it could be some sort of horde mode like we saw with the Halloween event. But I’m actually hoping that this might be Overwatch’s first foray into some sort of co-operative story mission with new dialogue, plot points, etc.
We should know more on Tuesday when the event goes live and finally explains itself. I wouldn’t rule out another leak or two before then. But for now an early peek at these skins is all we’ve got.