Overwatch Season Two Will Bring Back The Animated Shorts

With the one year anniversary of Overwatch happening very soon, Blizzard is already making big plans for the next season of the first-person shooter. While it hasn't detailed everything that we can expect from the forthcoming season (like events and new characters), it did indicate one thing was making a comeback – the animated shorts!

We haven't seen one of these shorts from the team since August 2016, when The Last Bastion made its premiere on YouTube and wowed viewers with its impeccable quality, followed by the Sombra announcement that came in November. (We've included the Bastion video at the bottom of this story in case you missed it.) But, speaking with Polygon, game director Jeff Kaplan explained that the team is already hard at work on a new round of shorts, possibly highlighting new characters that could be coming to the game. (He didn't say specifically just yet though.)

They're "hard at work," he noted. "The animated shorts are probably the thing that we have the most fun making. We really love working with our animation group and digging out the stories not tied to any constraints of gameplay. We can tell any stories we want."

He continued, "We think of them as in seasons. That's how we talk about them internally. So our first season started with Recall and ended with The Last Bastion." This is even with the Sombra premiere, which was more of a special occasion to introduce the character and not so much part of a story arc.

A premiere date hasn't been announced for these shorts just yet, as they take an extravagant amount of time to put together and release to the public. But Kaplan assured that the team is "making good progress" with them, and, like the ones from the first season, they'll be well worth the wait.

In the meantime, Overwatch fans already have a lot to get excited over, with the first anniversary rapidly approaching and the possibility of seeing new content introduced as soon as next month, to tie in with the forthcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo. We can't wait!

Overwatch is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.