First Overwatch 2 maps for unannounced game mode possibly revealed

Overwatch 2 has a special unannounced game mode in development, and it now seems like two of the maps it will be using have been revealed by Game Director Aaron Keller.

The announcement of a new game mode caught fans off guard when it was announced on May 20. With the addition of Push and the removal of Assault/2CP, Overwatch 2 is set to have one more additional competitive mode than the first game.

What made this announcement all the more intriguing is that, while it was already announced at BlizzCon that 2CP would be removed from the sequel, the devs revealed that the new mode would be replacing it.

Now, it seems especially clear why, as Game Director Aaron Keller may have revealed more information than he intended to in a Reddit Q&A on May 24.

While responding to a question about what the previously-announced Gothenburg and India maps are, Keller said he wasn’t sure that the PVP maps had even been announced for those locations yet.

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“If we were to make maps for them, I think it would be a great idea if they were built for some super exciting, as yet unannounced game mode,” he said.

Overwatch 2 will have a PVE story campaign in addition to the standard PVP gameplay, so it’s likely that Keller thought that only PVE content for those maps had been shown.

In fact, PVP gameplay of Gothenburg was shown as far back as BlizzCon 2019, where the Swedish city appeared to be a 2CP map.

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As you can see in the gameplay, the Widowmaker player is on a team tasked with capturing two objectives, just like how 2CP functions. (Timestamp 2:30 for mobile viewers)

Users pointed this out to Keller who simply remarked, “Oh shoot! You might be right. Ummmmmm.”

It seems like at some point, with the decision to remove 2CP as a game mode, the developers reworked Gothenburg into this new game mode – and India will be another map for this mode, as well.

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As for if other existing 2CP maps could be reworked, Keller set the record straight.

“Each OW game mode requires very different maps. Reworking the original 2CP maps into another game mode would probably be just as hard if not harder than building a whole new map from scratch with that particular art kit,” he said, and added that there might be a place in the Arcade for the existing maps, but they don’t have plans to build any more.

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like Horizon or Paris are going to be returning in any capacity, either. “We were in the middle of reworking parts of both Horizon and Paris when we made the decision to move away from the Assault game mode. Those projects are currently on hold and probably won’t be restarted,” he revealed.

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So, if any 2CP map was going to be redesigned, it seems like Gothenburg was a special case as it was so new and not yet released.

That said, it’s unlikely that Overwatch 2 will launch with only two maps in this new mode, so expect to see more shown off in the future.

In any case, we can’t wait to see more about what the mode entails.