The Story Missions take place during the invasion of the Null Sector, the rogue Omnic group. In addition to bringing their brand of destruction to major cities, they're also kidnapping Omnics for a mysterious purpose. As you might imagine, the world turns to the heroes of Overwatch to put a stop to the waves of destruction.
"We typically don't go into depth in-game with our stories," game director Aaron Keller says. "This is a PvP shooter and as much as we can we try to build characters and build the universe through voice interactions, but we've never really picked up on that thread that we first started when Winston had his 'Recall' cinematic that launched with Overwatch. He had this moment where he asked players, 'Are you with me?' He's trying to get Overwatch back together, and we've had all these other cinematics since then where we've shown people responding to that call, but never tie it all together. This story that we're going to be telling in Season 6 is that moment where Overwatch gets back together and they answer Winston's recall."
This first wave of Story Missions, which arrive as part of Season 6: Invasion, includes missions in Rio de Janeiro (previously shown at Blizzcon), Toronto, and Gothenburg. These missions feature enormous, objective-filled maps, and in-depth storylines that blow past what we've seen in previous PvE content often tied to seasonal events.
These Story Missions always consist of other human players, whether matchmade or through your squad. The developers tell me that if a player drops, a bot may take over in the interim, but there's no current way to play alongside a team of bots. When you go into a mission, you can select Normal, Hard, Expert, or Legendary.
At the character select screen, we're limited to the characters who make sense for this particular mission. In this case, it's the team members who were in the cutscene, which encompasses the heroes of Overwatch. However, it's not that simple, as characters like Torbjörn, Soldier: 76, and Zenyatta aren't around at this point in time.
As soon as we get out of the spawn room, we begin fighting off waves of Null Sector grunts to protect the evac ship. These basic enemies are easy enough to pick off, but one part I didn't expect was for them to be destructible. Just when I thought I had bested one by blowing its head clean off with Cassidy's pistol, it continued charging towards me. With another, I blow away its legs, but it keeps crawling on the ground in my direction.
Without taking into account the cutscenes, our playthrough of this Toronto mission lasted 31 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised by not only how massive the map is, but also by how diverse the battles felt. Not only that, but you're given the added bonus of receiving Battle Pass progress for your effort.
The Overwatch 2: Invasion Bundle will cost $15, and will include the three story missions, a brand new Legendary skin for Sojourn (plus access to Sojourn for new players once you complete the Story Mission challenges), and $10 worth of Overwatch Coins (1,000 Coins) – enough to purchase a Premium Battle Pass. For $40, you get all of that, plus the Null Sector Premium Battle Pass, 20 Battle Pass skips, an additional $10 in Overwatch Coins (1,000 Coins), a Legendary skin for Cassidy, and a Legendary skin for Kiriko in the Overwatch 2: Ultimate Invasion Bundle.
