Overwatch is a 6v6 team-based first-person shooter and was released on May 24, 2016.

Directed by Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch is Blizzard Entertainment's take on the FPS genre. The official announcement came on November 7, 2014 at BlizzCon, where they showed gameplay footage as well as 12 of the characters with promises of many more to come.

On October 4, 2022, the 'sequel' Overwatch 2 was released, overriding the original. This changed the game into a free-to-play model with an emphasis on microtransactions. It introduced new maps and game modes, and changed the lootbox system into a battlepass system. There was a promise of a campaign mode, but that was eventually cancelled.

The story of Overwatch starts in a highly fictionalized version of future Earth, where humans and robots known as the Omnics existed together. The peace did not last; the omniums producing the omnics went rogue and began constructing militarized robots to stage an uprising. To fight back, the United Nations found the most elite soldiers from around the world and formed the peacekeeping force known as Overwatch.

Their job was to save earth from the rogue omnics, which they did quite successfully. Over the next 30 years, Overwatch grew to be a vast coalition of the world's top soldiers and scientists. Though it was revered across the planet, as time went on accusations of human rights abuses and internal conspiracy tore the organization apart. Now, with terrorism rampant, inequality commonplace, and corrupt companies unchecked, one thing is clear: the world needs heroes.

Playable Characters - Heroes (by Class)

• Damage
• Ashe / Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe
• Bastion
• Cole Cassidy (formerly Jesse McCree)
• Echo
• Genji Shimada
• Hanzo Shimada
• Junkrat / Jamison Fawkes
• Mei-Ling Zhou
• Pharah / Fareeha Amari
• Reaper / Gabriel Reyes
• Sojourn / Vivian Chase
• Soldier: 76 / Jack Morrison
• Sombra / Olivia Colomar
• Symmetra / Satya Vaswani
• Torbjörn Lindholm
• Tracer / Lena Oxton
• Venture / Sloan Cameron
• Widowmaker / Amélie Lacroix
• Tank
• D.Va / Hana Song
• Doomfist / Akande Ogundimu
• Junker Queen / Odessa Stone
• Mauga Malosi
• Orisa
• Ramattra
• Reinhardt Wilhelm
• Roadhog / Mako Rutledge
• Sigma / Siebren de Kuiper
• Winston
• Wrecking Ball / Hammond
• Zarya / Aleksandra Zaryanova
• Support
• Ana Amari
• Baptiste / Jean-Baptiste Augustin
• Brigitte Lindholm
• Illari Quispe Ruiz
• Kiriko Kamori
• Lifeweaver / Niran PruksaManee
• Lúcio Correia
• Mercy / Angela Ziegler
• Moira O'Deorain
• Zenyatta

Additional Characters

• Alejandra - Seen in the animated short 'Hero'
• B.O.B. - Ashe's omnic butler/bodyguard
• Efi Oladele - Orisa's creator
• Emily - Tracer's girlfriend
• Ganymede - Bastion's bird companion
• Harold Winston - Winston's 'mentor'
• Kitsune - Kiriko's kitsune spirit
• Maximilien - Member of Talon's inner council
• Pachimari - In-Universe merchadise character
• Snowball - Mei's drone companion

See Also

• Blizzard Entertainment