Overwatch 2: Invasion Story Missions, New Support Hero Illari, and All Season Updates Explained

10.08.2023 - 19:09 / ign.com / New

Overwatch 2: Invasion is out now August 10th on all platforms including, for the first time, Steam. Invasion brings in Story Missions, new Support Hero, new game mode Flashpoint, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about the Invasion season update in Overwatch 2.

Illari is the 10th Support Hero to be added to Overwatch 2. Illari gets her power from the sun, and her kit revolves around solar powered attacks and healing. Here’s how she plays:

Story Missions on Invasion take place in three maps: Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Gothenburg. Your mission is to fight back against Null Sector, a rogue Omnic group that invaded Paris at the start of their global takeover. Chronologically, this Story Mission takes place after Winston’s Recall short when he put out a call for help to band together Overwatch. So Lucio hasn’t even met Reinhardt yet and this story will follow how these heroes met each other and what happened before the invasion happened.

Each mission will take about a half hour or forty minutes depending on difficulty level and player coordination (we all have that one friend who can’t seem to stick together). I was lucky enough to have played the previous Rio de Janeiro Story Mission at Blizzcon 2019 when the original demo for that mission was available.

There have been some updates since that build but it was honestly hard to point out all of the changes since it had been so long. The two noticeable changes are that you’re allowed hero choices now and AI improvements have been made for your PvE team when you load in and are missing a player and a bot takes their place.

In order to access story missions you have to purchase the Overwatch 2: Invasion Bundle for $15. This grants you access to the story missions during the season and permanently after, 1000 Overwatch Coins (which is how much the Premium Battle Pass costs), new Sojourn Legendary skin, and permanent access to Sojourn as a playable hero for new players after completing Story Mission Challenges.

Underworld is a new co-op event that is free to play for everyone. Players will be going to King's Row to stop Null Sector from completetly taking over the Omnic Underworld by reactivating a combat bot to help omnics escape.

The Null Sector force will be more challenging this time around in Underworld and a new support bot will be healing the big boss OR-14 attack bot you're facing off against. There will be new challenges added to Underworld throughout the limited time it's available. Underworld will only be availabe from August 10th to September 5th.

Flashpoint is the new core game mode added to Quickplay and Competitive this season. In this mode, two teams of five will face off and have to secure rotating capture points called Flashpoints. The