Overwatch Insurrection trailer leaks, shows today's new PvE mode
UPDATE: New co-op mode now live through 1st May.
UPDATE 11/04/2017 7.14pm: Overwatch's new Insurrection mode is now live! It will run through 1st May.
You can catch a glimpse of it in the new English-language trailer below:
There's also this story trailer offering context to the new co-op mode:
Insurrection mode includes over 100 unlockable pieces of loot tied to the three week event. For more detail, check out Blizzard's blog post on the seasonal update.
ORIGINAL STORY 11/04/2017 9.52am: A video showing today's Overwatch Insurrection update has leaked. It reveals the cooperative, four-versus-AI (PvE) game mode teased in the recent Uprising Overwatch comic, as well as new character skins and sprays. Expect the update later this afternoon, around 6pm UK time.
The King's Row PvE mode involves Reinhardt, Tracer, Mercy and Torbjorn. It's set seven years ago in Overwatch lore, so one year before Overwatch, the organisation, disbanded. Remember Overwatch fell apart amidst scrutiny from the outside and conflict from the inside - from covert operation Blackwatch, led by Gabriel Reyes AKA Reaper. Expect a lot of that tension to come through during the new game mode event.
In the video, originally leaked by PlayStation France, we see a destroyed King's Row filled with various class of omnic (robotic) enemy - big ones, small ones, massive ones... It looks like you'll follow a similar route on the map as you do when on Attack in the game currently, perhaps capturing or disabling the giant cannons you see in the video.
It's not clear what the Insurrection event culminates in but the suggestion is a boss battle. Do we see an Orisa skin at the end of the video, a snapshot of a boss, or both?
It's unlikely to be Orisa because she/it didn't exist in the seven-years-ago timeline, but it could be an OR14 unit, the earlier version of the OR15 unit Orisa is based on. OR14 units were the other robot type omnics used against humans in the big war.
The rest of the Insurrection update appears to share the several-years-ago theme, which makes for some exciting new skins and sprays.
We see a younger Blackwatch-themed McCree, plus an unarmoured, presumably still in rehabilitation Genji, whose half-cyborg skin is arguably the pick of the bunch. We also see a non-blue/purple Widowmaker, which is significant, because her colour change tends to denote her fall to wickedness, to Talon, the terrorist organisation who are the baddies in the game.
Therefore Widowmaker's new skin suggests she - Amelie Lacroix - is in her temporarily brainwashed phase, around the time she returned to Overwatch and killed her husband, Gerard Lacroix, while he slept. Indeed, there's a new spray showing a wedding photo of them both.
There are also sprays showing younger versions of Overwatch heroes, such as a very cute little D. Va, perhaps because that's how old they were when the events of Insurrection played out.
More importantly, there's a poster-style spray of Reinhardt showing him with long, flowing blonde hair - presumably the poster he references when talking with Pharah in game. "I remember the poster!" he says. "My hair was amazing." And it is.