Overwatch 2 Animated Series Announced, Looks Like A Prequel

Overwatch has been struggling to get its narrative off the ground since it launched, and while the story missions are finally coming to Overwatch 2 in August to move the plot forward, Blizzard is also taking a look at its past with a new animated mini-series.

Genesis: An Overwatch Mini-Series is a three-part animated show that seems to focus on the early days of the titular organization. The teaser trailer shows a lot of the older generation heroes, such as Reinhardt, Torbjörn, and Ana in what looks like the original Omnic Crisis. Also seen is Dr. Mina Liao, who isn’t a hero in the game, but is the creator of Echo and one of the progenitors of the Omnics, the synthetic citizens of the Overwatch universe. While the trailer showcases some returning characters, it ends with an unknown Omnic character walking toward what looks like the Nepal monastery, one of the game’s maps and a safe haven for Omnics.

Check out the trailer below:

The first of three episodes will premiere on July 6. It will be titled Dawn and will run five minutes and 13 seconds.

I’m honestly surprised it took Blizzard this long to invest in an animated series, even if it is just shorts to be posted on YouTube. The animated shorts the studio has put out in the past have been impressive, but they told disparate stories about characters spread across the map. Genesis seems to be a story specifically about the Omnic Crisis and is introducing filling in some gaps long left by codex entries and short stories.

While projects like Genesis seem like the right move, Overwatch 2 is still in a rough state right now after Blizzard has gutted its planned suite of PvE modes. In the wake of this announcement, Overwatch 2’s middling seasons have felt all the worse. That Pride event was pretty good, though.