Overwatch 2 - Gaming Sequels DON'T WORK

The Best Of Both Worlds?

Developers and publishers are becoming increasingly reluctant to take risks. As such, when they have a huge success on their hands, they tend to try and treat it with kid gloves.

Gamers, for their part, are super passionate about their favourite franchises. Slights against them are often taken personally, and follow-ups that go against the grain of the original are not usually well received. At the same time, though, ‘lazy’ sequels that simply retread old, safe ground simply don’t cut it either.

This just highlights the precarious situation that sequel development leaves game creators in. It’s as easy to save a series’ reputation with an excellent sequel as it is to destroy it with a sub-par one, and opinions on that score can differ wildly over time.

All gamers have experienced countless disappointing sequels, often after a protracted period of hype in the run-up to their launch. When this happens, faith in a franchise is shaken and fans can be dissuaded from every engaging with a franchise again.

All in all, there are so many different approaches to sequels, but they always represent a huge can of worms. Overwatch 2 in particular is a fascinating discussion point, as it’s hard to tell exactly where it fits in with the concept as we know it.

Kaplan himself has stated that the team working on it is twice the size of the original team, arguing that “Overwatch 2 is an order of magnitude larger than the original game, and therefore we consider it a sequel.” Whether it is or isn’t, whether it should be or it shouldn’t, one thing’s for sure: it’s going to offer an enormous amount of the Overwatch content fans have fallen in love with and add another layer of customization and other extras on top. Perhaps that’s enough.