This is Overwatch's "comeback," says Blizzard, as Season 1's player stats beats the game's launch weekend's

There was a world in which Marvel Rivals eclipsed Overwatch. NetEase’s comic-styled hero shooter came out of the gate sprinting, blowing past Blizzard’s seminal FPS game and cementing itself as the next new thing. But, for all the time I plowed into Marvel Rivals, it never had the same feel. While its destruction systems and vibrant art style are unique in themselves, it didn’t have the soul that Overwatch did despite its ties to a franchise so dear to my heart. I think we were all secretly praying that Blizzard would someday ‘fix’ Overwatch; while the PvE dream felt doomed from the get-go, the game’s nostalgia-tinged sparkle survived, albeit buried by seemingly endless pop culture crossovers. With Season 1 and the rebrand back to Overwatch proper, this is the shooter’s best era in years, and that’s got Blizzard excited.

It’s an excitement that Overwatch’s associate game director Alec Dawson exudes. I had the pleasure of chatting to him in the wake of Season 1’s launch, and while Jetpack Cat dominated the conversation in the same way that she does my ranked games, there was a real sense of hype. “You dream of these types of things,” he says with a smile. “It’s the beginning of a comeback.”

I ask Dawson what it’s been like to see a massive influx of players – both old and new. “It’s been a bit wild on our side,” he admits. “Early last year we were talking about all these plans and how we were going to execute and lead up to releasing five heroes at once. A lot of effort went into that, and seeing the result of that is something that the team’s been ecstatic about.

“We actually had a bigger Saturday than our first Saturday after launch with Season 1. There’s that momentum that’s continuing; there are a lot of people coming back to try the game again and there are a ton of new heroes, there’s perks, there’s Stadium – a lot of things they haven’t seen before. The team’s like ‘alright, we did something,’ and we want to push this momentum and continue making sure we’re making the best game for all the Overwatch fans.”

I mention that Overwatch’s recent Steam reviews have hit ‘Mixed,’ with 58% being positive. While the game unfortunately still sits firmly in the ‘Mostly Negative’ category at a somewhat harrowing 37%, that’s higher than when I spoke to game director Aaron Keller at Gamescom last year, where it clocked in at just 25%. It’ll likely be a slow but sure climb to fix Overwatch’s tattered Steam reputation, but I ask Dawson how it feels to see the numbers finally going up.

“We’re very happy about it and we think we put our best foot forward a number of times. That doesn’t mean we can stop,” he stresses. “It means we need to continue to execute on the rest of the year – there are still five more heroes coming out this year, there’s still a lot of lore to go through, there’s still a ton of other things to continue development on. So for us, it’s really about, how can we make sure the rest of the year is done well, that these heroes are in a really good shape, that the game’s in a really great place? Then, how can we surprise players again in the future?”

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this entire resurgence, though, was the sudden rebrand back to Overwatch. While Keller says that it’s part of a refocus on making the game that “[Blizzard] truly wanted Overwatch to be,” I ask for Dawson’s take on things, and whether or not he feels like the PvE that never arrived damaged the sequel beyond repair.

“It’s really a commitment to the type of game that Overwatch is, and what it’s going to be, going into the future,” Dawson says in a statement that’s not dissimilar to Keller’s. “Going back to ‘Overwatch’ is really a commitment to Overwatch being a forever game – this is the game that you know that we’re going to continue to develop for a number of years.”

In terms of PvE, he admits that its absence “was something that was a giant deal for a lot of players out there. Our commitment now is to make the best PvP hero shooter, and making sure that this is the thing we know that we are very, very good at. We want to make sure that we are serving that player base in particular and making sure that that game is better and better.”

While many of us will lament the final death of PvE, Overwatch’s return to form brings me a lot of joy. I wanted to love Overwatch 2, I really did, but it just didn’t quite gel with me the way that I expected. For years I’ve invested hours in Valorant instead, never quite enjoying it as much as Overwatch, but seeing it as the next best thing to the game that I loved. Now, all I want to do is OTP Mizuki, perma-ban Jetpack Cat, and convince myself that I can hit 360 no-scopes on Widowmaker. Alas, that last one died with my youth.