Overwatch‘s limited-time mode, Uprising, is returning this year, and Blizzard shared a few more details about it today. This is the same King’s Row mission as last year, but now it has a new name and modes. It’s now called “Overwatch Archives,” and you can play in Story Mode or All Heroes Mode. Story Mode is basically a replaying of Tracer’s first mission in King’s Row, with four heroes available: Tracer, Mercy, Reinhardt, and Torbjorn.
All Heroes Mode, as its name suggests, lets you play the same King’s Row mission but as any hero you want. Regarding the new name, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan said in the video above, “The idea is there are all these cool past moments in Overwatch history, and by going into the archives we can re-live those, and Uprising was just one of those events.”
All of last year’s loot boxes are coming back for this year, along with some new skins. Kaplan teased that one of the Shimada brothers–either Hanzo or Genji–will be getting a new skin as part of the update. Blizzard also teased that the new Uprising mission will have “new content” that the developer will discuss later. In particular, Kaplan teased that Blizzard will release a new video during this week’s Overwatch League competition that may show what’s coming in the new event.
As announced previously, the new Uprising event goes live on April 10. Blizzard has been talking about the new Uprising event for some time now.
Back in January, Kaplan stated Uprising would return for 2018 but that Blizzard “want[s] to evolve it” in some way. At the time, he also said the Anniversary event would make a return to give players another chance to unlock the items that were only available last year. A date for that has not been announced, but it’ll presumably come in May, when Overwatch will celebrate the two-year anniversary of its release.