Yesterday Blizzard dropped the new Archives Event for their hit game Overwatch, known as “Storm Rising.” The story of this mode continues the saga of the Overwatch team when they were an authorized sanctioned group.
The mission follows as Tracer as she leads the rest of the team consisting of herself, Genji, Winston, and Mercy. The group are acting on the orders of an unknown Captain Sojourn, and are to hunt down and apprehend the Talon money (man) Omnic, Maximillian. Max for short.
The story is told via cinematic scenes with the character’s voice actors returning to voice the team. It starts with Tracer as she is taking orders from Capt. Soujorn over the radio and tailing Max’s convoy. She is quickly spotted by enemies and she jumps into action to take them down. After a short cinematic battle, Mercy, Genji, and Winston join the fray. After Max’s car crashes, the team starts tracking him down which is where the player (that’s you) gets to play.
As a player, you are joined by 3 others and have a choice to play Genji, Tracer, Winston, or Mercy.
This new mode is a hybrid type game. For those who don’t know, a hybrid map has the players secure a section of the area and then follow a payload to an endpoint.
This new game is the best in the series of Archives games that have been released in the past (Uprising, Retribution). The format is similar to years past but really picks up on the story side. While Overwatch does not have a standard story mode and relies on YouTube animated videos, comics, in-game banter among other formats, this does an excellent job at combining the well-done animation and game mode. This makes one wonder if Blizzard may introduce bigger story modes in the future.
The previous titles in the Archives event are great, but Storm Rising raises the bar for Blizzard to continue doing these types of events. The animation was on par with Disney or Pixar and the writing for the actors stay true to previous games. This event alone would be more than enough for me to purchase the game, especially at the current $20 price point.
If you haven’t played the game, give it a shot. If you have please feel free to check us out on Facebook and let us know what you think.
