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Overwatch game guide

Overwatch is coming our way on May 24! To help you hit the ground running, read our gameplay guides and game lore rundowns below — or check out the latest news in our Overwatch category.

Table of Contents

Gameplay guides

Heroes and Tips for Overwatch beginners

With the impending release of Overwatch, new players might be overwhelmed at the multitude of heroes available off the bat. The tutorial starts you off with Soldier: 76 to get you acclimated with the UI and other aspects of the game. Once you’re done with shooting bots with rockets and learning about your ultimate abilities, you’re free to bounce into Quick Play or AI games to get additional practice. So let's dive in to what you need to know to become an Overwatch expert.

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How to win in Overwatch’s Assault game mode

Assault is Overwatch’s classic game mode which pits offense versus defense. A team of attackers is charged with invading and capturing different points on a map while a team of defenders needs to hold the points. Points are captured one after another, with a time limit to accomplish each capture

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Escort strategy for Overwatch maps Dorado and Gibraltar

Veteran FPS players ought to be familiar with the Payload game mode. One team has to escort something to a predetermined location while the other team ensures that they can’t. Overwatch currently features two exclusive Payload maps — Dorado and Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Many of the other maps that have a payload component are known as hybrid maps because they involve capturing a location then escorting the payload.

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Overwatch’s new Control game mode

The relaunch of Overwatch comes with a brand new game mode: Control. Two maps are available for play — Lijiang Tower, a sleek metropolis, and a base cradled high in the mountains of Nepal. Control mode features three capture points that your team must take over and hold. You’ll score a win if your progress bar reaches 100% before your opponent, and you need at least two wins to emerge victorious in the match.

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Overwatch for the novice FPS gamer

I am not an FPS gamer. Not even remotely. I’ve tried my hand at a few different titles, and they never really captured my attention. Let’s face it, I’m the kind of gamer who’s typically focused on story over gameplay, so a game that is nothing but gameplay isn’t usually my cup of tea. So the question is: what’s Overwatch like if you’ve never really played an FPS title before, or you didn’t really enjoy them? Surprisingly, it’s ridiculously fun, fast-paced, and relatively easy to pick up even if you haven’t really dedicated a lot of time to FPS titles before.

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Overwatch audio cues for better gameplay

Redditor SSBM_Kira has been busy at work creating helpful videos for would-be Overwatch players — and they’re actually some of the most useful videos you can get outside of flat tutorials. Overwatch is a game where knowing and listening for certain audio cues can be the difference between survival and certain death.

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Character customization

Overwatch unveils new cosmetic progression skins

With the Overwatch beta coming back up today, we’re expecting plenty of news on Blizzard’s latest title. And our first catch of the day is new skins for Overwatch characters.

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Everything you need to know about Overwatch’s Loot Boxes

The latest build of the Overwatch beta added a new cosmetic rewards system, including new character skins, sprays, emotes, and more. But how do you get these new toys? It’s all about Loot Boxes, which four random items. There are seven different things that can fill those four slots: Skins, Emotes, Victory Poses, Voice Lines, Sprays, Highlight Reels and Player Icons.

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Lore and story

Overwatch veterans: Reinhardt, Torbjörn and Mercy origins

When Overwatch was first created to combat the Omnic Crisis, the general consensus was that only the best of the best would do for the team. Notable heroes from all over the world would take part. In the United States, that meant John “Jack” Morrison and Gabriel Reyes — but they weren’t the only leaders on board.

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Overwatch’s McCree and the Deadlock Gang

One of the most notorious gangs of the American Southwest was the Deadlock Gang. They trafficked in illicit weapons and military hardware, much like the Shimada Clan did. And they had just as much success doing so, although their reach may not have been quite as widespread. One of the members of the Deadlock Gang was Jesse McCree.

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Know Your Lore: Overwatch’s ongoing story

We’ve spent the last several weeks covering the existing lore for Overwatch, and piecing together a story that has yet to be fully fleshed out. But the pieces that do exist tell a pretty compelling story.

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Overwatch origins: Symmetra, Lúcio and the Vishkar Corporation

The Omnic Crisis left the world in a semi-chaotic state, but it was a period of history filled with hope for the future, thanks to the efforts of the Overwatch team. Still, that didn’t mean that the world was automatically a wonderful place to live — all over the world, the effects of the Crisis hit hard. Cities were devastated, populations were displaced, and the global economy, once monitored and carefully maintained by the omnics, was shaky at best. But the Crisis paved the way for new companies to rise up and take charge, creating what many thought would be a bright and hopeful future for the world.

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Zarya and Overwatch’s second Omnic Crisis

Overwatch may have been formed as a world-wide team to combat the threat, but there were parts of the world that were determined to handle the Crisis on their own… and they succeeded.

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Objective complete: Widowmaker, Talon, and Recall

The threat of a new Omnic Crisis wasn’t the only thing former Overwatch agents had to worry about. In fact, one of the biggest terrorist organizations had yet to be taken down… and they had a new target to focus on: the fractured remains of Overwatch.

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Brothers at odds: Overwatch’s Hanzo and Genji origins

The peacekeeping part of Overwatch was hard at work as well. And as new agents were continually pulled in for Overwatch, it carried out operations against numerous threats — terrorist organizations and crime syndicates alike. For two brothers, Hanzo and Genji Shimada, this introduced a string of events that would change their lives forever.

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Omnic Crisis fallout: Overwatch’s Junkrat and Roadhog origins

The Omnic Crisis was pretty much that one explosive historical moment that served as the impetus for a lot of world-changing events on Earth in Overwatch. The few videos we’ve seen — like the museum footage from the Overwatch cinematic trailer — don’t really do the scope of the Crisis justice. We’re talking homicidal robots in almost every country in the world, intent on taking over and wiping humanity out.

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Fallen heroes – Overwatch’s Soldier: 76 and Reaper origins

The Overwatch team may have solved the world’s biggest conflict to date when they came out victorious from the Omnic Crisis, but that didn’t mean the organization was flawless. In fact, much of Overwatch‘s current story has to do with the fallout after the Omnic Crisis was done and over with. As saviors of the world, the Overwatch team enjoyed a golden age of admiration and adoration from the general public…but it wouldn’t last.

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Overwatch Robots with Soul: Bastion and Zenyatta’s origins

The Omnic Crisis was a world-wide catastrophe for Earth. Omniums, the facilities that created omnics, weren’t just relegated to one global region — which meant that when the omniums went rogue, the entire world was under attack. Overwatch put an end to the Omnic Crisis, rounded up and destroyed nearly all of the Bastion combat units the omniums had created, but they didn’t destroy all omnics. There were plenty left behind after the fighting was over, and their future was uncertain.

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Space Gorillas and Test Pilots: Winston and Tracer’s origins

Overwatch may not be the type of game with a heavy story — or at least, there isn’t a heavy story involved when you’re simply playing the game, duking it out team vs. team. But the heroes in Overwatch actually have a lot of history behind them, history that works with, or in some cases goes beyond the origins of the Overwatch team.

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Know Your Lore: Overwatch and the Omnic Crisis

Overwatch is a little different from Blizzard’s standard fare. Rather than taking place on an imaginary world at some nebulous point in time, Overwatch is set on Earth, in the not-too-distant future — which makes it a little easier to relate to. While the game doesn’t have a ton of lore surrounding it, that’s almost a blessing in disguise — but we’ll talk about that later. Because although the game is pretty much an FPS with no campaign or story to explain why we’re all fighting over various checkpoints in locations all over the world, Overwatch does have some distinct lore moments. And what it has to say about the future of our world is pretty interesting. The world definitely needed heroes, and maybe it still does.

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