Overwatch 2 : Invasion is said to be biggest and most exciting season so far, with a plethora of new content in the form of Story Missions, a new PvP game mode, Hero Mastery Missions, and a brand-new support Hero – Illari.

Story Missions

Story Missions is a new PvE experience, much like the Overwatch Archives but now in a bigger scope.

For the first course of the Story Missions, players will get access to Resistance (Rio de Janeiro), Liberation (Toronto), Ironclad (Gotenburg). Each of the story missions involves the Overwatch team protecting various parts of the world against Null Sector invasions, all while meeting old friends and new allies.

In Resistance, players will invade a Null Sector ship to destroy its core. With Liberation, you’ll have to rescue survivors and escort them to safe places. While with Ironclad, players have to escort Magma Cores to fuel giant turrets to shoot down Null Sector spaceships.

The Story Missions will have players be put in a 4-player co-op experience where you fight hordes of enemies and complete all objectives that takes around an average of 30 minutes to finish. Each story mission offers a different set of characters to choose from and all of the available heroes are part of the narrative of the game.

Overwatch Lore enthusiasts will definitely have field day with the Story Missions as you’ll be put in Winston’s lab in Watchpoint: Gibraltar before heading out for missions. This means that other than the in-game cutscenes and dialogues, players will be given access to data related to the heroes, missions, general intel which can be read through emails, voicemails and chat logs featuring characters.

From a gameplay standpoint, the enemy AI feels a bit linear in the sense that there aren’t a lot of varied enemies that do different things. Most of them would just run at you and shoot you, just in different sizes. There’re also beautiful maps with lots of details, but you’re not given enough time to really explore the map considering how the objectives are constantly changing and forces you to move fast.

The Story Missions is overall a decent experience in terms of gameplay, but it’s definitely a really nice storytelling experience that manages to flesh out the Overwatch universe, especially for fans who have been yearning for more lore.

Hero Mastery Missions 

Hero Mastery Missions is a single-player and replayable experience which will help new and returning players master specific hero skills and compete against other players through the leaderboard. Available for free to all players, the Hero Mastery Missions will have its first course of a selection of heroes be launched when the new Season rolls in, with more to come in future seasons.

New Game Mode: Flashpoint

Flashpoint is a new game mode that offers fast-paced team fights and the biggest maps you’ve seen in Overwatch 2 to date. It’s a PvP game mode where players compete to capture rotating points.

The first team to fully secure 3 points wins, meaning that after capturing a point you’ll have to hold the point until it reaches 100% in order to fully secure a point.

Flaspoint will launch with two new maps:

• Suravasa
• New Junk City

Both of these maps are massive and as always, the level designer and environmental art teams nailed the aesthetics of these maps, even the music are arguably some of the best Overwatch has come out with.

The pacing of Flashpoint is really fast with each game averaging at about 10 minutes due to faster point capture ticks than with the Control maps. Fast and mobile heroes like Tracer, Lucio, D.Va and Winston seem to be the prime picks in this game mode, but regardless I’m still interested in seeing what sort of team compositions and hero picks will define the meta.

New Support Hero: Illari

Illari is Overwatch 2’s newest Support hero right after Lifeweaver. She hails from Peru and she’s able to draw her power from the sun. Her unique set of abilities bring in new healing mechanics to the game as well as some variety to the Support role. In the right hands, Illari can be extremely deadly considering her offensive kit, especially for players with high mechanical skills.

Her primary fire is a long-range auto-charging rifle similar to Sojourn’s Railgun Alt-Fire/Secondary, so idealistically you wouldn’t want to spam her Primary fire. Her Secondary fire is a medium-range healing beam that consumes solar energy, so you’ll need to manage that resource well to ensure you can heal your teammates.

Her E deploys a Healing Pylon that heals allies. The deployable object is similar to Baptiste’s immortality field, so enemies can shoot it down. The Healing Pylon can stick to walls and has a medium range, but it requires a direct line of sight of allies for it to heal them.

Meanwhile, Illari’s L-Shift is called Outburst where upon activation, you’ll launch in the direction you’re moving to while knocking back enemies. You can jump as far as 12 meters, and holding Jump makes you go higher but you’ll still jump 12 meters long.

Illari’s Ultimate, Captive Sun, fires an explosive ball of solar energy. Any enemies that are hit within the explosion radius of her ultimate will be slowed down and it explodes when taking significant damage.

New Feature: Player Progression System

With this new progression system, Players can start earning emblems for heroes and upgrade their hero’s levels just by playing the game. Players will earn badges as they progress and unlock a name card that upgrades through the more games they play.

Overwatch 2: Invasion is set to launch on 10th August, while the Hero Mastery mode will come during the mid-season update sometime in September.