‘Overwatch 2’ Is More Approachable, But It Could Be A Lot More Accessible Too

Games ‘Overwatch 2’ Is More Approachable, But It Could Be A Lot More Accessible Too Kris Holt Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I cover all things games, especially Overwatch. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 4, 2022, 03:15am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Kiriko in Overwatch 2 Blizzard Entertainment Overwatch 2 has a really solid onboarding experience for new players. I had the chance to check out the First Time User Experience. It seems like a great way to ease newcomers through the basics and start helping them understand the ins and outs of each hero.

Overwatch 2 is a complex game and it’s going to take a while for fresh players to learn many of the intricacies. This onboarding setup should help the game feel more approachable, instead of giving new players 35 heroes to choose from on the hero select screen and letting them figure it out. In addition, the Overwatch 2 ping system works really well .

It’s one of my favorite features in the game. It should be easier for you to communicate things like an enemy position, the location that you’re defending or where you want your teammates to group up. It increases the in-game communication options for those who don’t want to or can’t use a microphone.

That’s a boon for accessibility. Overwatch 2’s ping system seems like a great improvement for accessibility. Blizzard Entertainment But it seems like Overwatch 2 could still use more robust accessibility options .

I understand that Team 4 is working on accessibility improvements. As things stand, though, the in-game accessibility menu only has a few tabs. You can adjust the camera shake levels, add subtitles (with a few options for the level of detail), change ally and enemy silhouette colors to address color blindness and turn on text-to-speech.

MORE FOR YOU Juan Soto Contract Rejection Could Make Orioles A Better Buy Than Nationals Brewers’ Playoff Push Comes To A Painful End Despite Walk-Off Win Phantom Auto Buys Voysys To Boost Remote Operation Capabilities I’m not an expert on this front by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to see more studios, especially one with the resources that Blizzard has at its disposal, to include better accessibility features. For one thing, it would be helpful to include directional arrows alongside subtitles in Overwatch 2 to indicate the source of the sound. Overwatch 2 could also do with enemy footstep indicators, similar to Fortnite .

A while back, Overbuff suggested including a mono audio toggle. A more customizable UI would be very helpful too. One of Blizzard’s major design goals for Overwatch 2 was to reduce clutter.

The on-screen text looks smaller than it was in Overwatch 1, and the blocky font seems harder to read. Being able to adjust the sizes of text elements or even the font itself might help. On the subject of the HUD, it would be enormously useful for some players (including me) to have indicators for teammates’ health and status on screen at all times.

Displaying their Ultimate charge level there would help too. If you’ve ever used the in-game replay system or watched an Overwatch League match, you’ll understand what I mean. As someone who plays Support heroes a lot, knowing how much health each ally has at a glance would help a lot in terms of deciding who to heal first.

I do think these persistent health and status indicators could improve accessibility as well. Being able to see at a glance if a teammate is frozen, hacked, sleeping or burning without needing to hear them call that out could be beneficial to many. Kiriko players, in particular, could benefit given that she has the ability to cleanse teammates of various statuses.

In any case, here’s hoping we start to see significant accessibility improvements in Overwatch 2 soon. For more news and updates on Overwatch 2 and other games, follow my Forbes blog ! You’ll get a weekly round-up email that includes everything I publish. You’d be doing me a solid, too — it’s a great way to support me and my work at no cost.

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