Overwatch McCree Animated Short Reveals New Hero

At BlizzCon 2018, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan appeared on stage to debut Reunion, a new animated short for McCree. It begins at Route 66's diner, where the gunslinger is enjoying a slice of pie, before a train crashes just outside. McCree grabs his hat and his guns and sets out to investigate.

As the Deadlock gang rob the train, McCree comes into view to meet Ash, a white-haired member of the gang who seems to be voiced by Jennifer Hale. McCree asks her to hand over a crate that has something mysterious in it. Sadly, we don't get to see what's inside, but having seen it, Ash decides to hold onto it. Naturally, a standoff begins, and you can see how that goes in the video above.

In the lead up to BlizzCon, Blizzard set about managing expectations, saying that it was not planning to announce a new Overwatch map during the show, as it had done in previous years. However, it did confirm that new map was indeed in development. Not wanting to leave fans disappointed, Kaplan confirmed that Ashe is the new Overwatch hero. We've since learned what Ashe's abilities are.

Major updates are on their way to a few of Overwatch's characters. Currently, Blizzard is testing tweaks to Mercy, Reaper, Symmetra, and Roadhog on the Public Test Realm. The PTR is only available on PC, where players are able to take the tweaked versions of these characters into battle before they're released to the wider Overwatch community on all platforms.

Among the changes, the cost of Mercy's Ultimate is lowered by 15%, while her healing per second is being upped from 50 to 60, which should make her a more viable and valuable healer. For Reaper, meanwhile, the spread pattern of his shotguns are being made more consistent, while the amount of health he gains from The Reaping ability has been increased. This means that his offensive potential in direct engagements is much better. For Symmetra, her primary fire beam will charge 20% faster, which raises her damage output.

However, Roadhog has had the most significant changes, with his Chain Hook cooling down as soon as it's used now. When the hook lands, it now reduces his victim's speed of movement too. The spread pattern on Roadhog's Scrap Gun has been adjusted, so now his primary and secondary fire deal more consistent damage. Finally, the knockback velocity of his Whole Hog Ultimate has been increased. The patch notes for the PTR update can be found here.