It has been two years since the first and only Overwatch 2 story missions launched, and I still yearn for the conclusion we won’t be getting. Blizzard has reportedly canceled the campaign that was once a pillar of the sequel’s pitch, which isn’t too surprising considering the apparent development struggles that the team had while getting it off the ground. Despite this, Overwatch 2 has a story that has been largely in limbo for years, with most of the shooter’s external media focusing on new characters and looking as far away from the main conflict as it can. Well, Blizzard may have just wrapped it all up kind of unceremoniously, at least, as far as the titular organization’s conflict with the Omnic radicals of Null Sector is concerned.
In an almost six-minute audio drama, Commander Vivian Chase, aka Sojourn, addresses the public. Null Sector, the Omnic resistance group that rose up in the initial campaign, has apparently retreated following a “final battle” with Overwatch in Buenos Aires. Sojourn answers a handful of questions at a press conference, name-drops some Overwatch 2 characters like the shield-wielding Brigitte and the Omnic tank Orisa’s creator Efi, and says that things are chill, for now. The Overwatch organization will continue to serve the public, however, implying that some new threat may be lurking in the future. Other pieces of Overwatch media have hinted at more antagonistic forces beyond Null Sector and the chaos-inciting Talon organization that characters like Doomfist and Reaper belong to, so this might just be Blizzard clearing the series’ plate to focus on something new. I’ll say, though, that if this is the end of Overwatch’s Null Sector storyline and we got it in an audio drama that tells us about a sick battle that happened off-screen, that’s a real bummer.
The audio drama ends with a screen that says “The story continues in Overwatch 2,” likely a reference to the new Lore section that’s being added to the game in its midseason update. I’ll hold sweeping judgments until we get a better look at what Blizzard is doing to get the game’s story back on track. For now, I’ll just hope that this is a sign of more story content to come, and that Blizzard can salvage its universe as more than just a stage for crossover events.