The Chinese-language video originated on YouTube before being shared by popular Overwatch personality (coach and streamer) Stylosa. In it, we get a HUD-less montage showing what Sojourn - Overwatch’s first black female character - can do. We see her dual-purpose gun, which has what looks like a machine-gun primary fire and a railgun alternate fire. And judging by the video, the railgun is deadly and potentially passes through enemies too. We also see Sojourn slide along the ground quickly and leap high into the air, then throw a swirly blob that emits a field around it, but it’s not entirely clear what it does. Does it affect enemy movement? Does it damage them? We don’t yet know. We don’t have long to wait to find out, though, as Sojourn will be a playable character in the closed Overwatch 2 PvP beta test that beings 26th April. This will also showcase considerable reworks for Bastion, Doofist, Orisa and Sombra; show the new Push gamemode on all-new maps; and give you a chance to get used to playing in teams of five rather than six. Overwatch 2 still has no release date, and we haven’t seen or heard a lot about it since I played it at BlizzCon 2019. Of course, much has happened since then: there’s been - and still is - a global pandemic, plus Activision Blizzard has been embroiled in controversy following reports of a toxic workplace culture. And then the company was put in the limelight again after Microsoft made the record-breaking move to acquire it for nearly 70bn dollars. Overwatch 2 development has presumably suffered as a result. It’s now no longer clear whether Overwatch 2 will come as one package, containing both the new PvP part of the game and the considerable new PvE part of the game. The suggestion - after Blizzard said it had “decoupled them” - is not. It’s also not clear how Overwatch 2 will be supported as a live service game, though glimpses of the words “Battle Pass” on an official user interface mock-up give a big clue.
