Overwatch animated shorts are coming back for ‘season two’

It’s been a long time since Blizzard Entertainment released an animated short set in the Overwatch universe. Rest assured that the team hasn’t abandoned the medium, director Jeff Kaplan said during a New York City press event this week: More shorts are currently in the works.

“The animated shorts are probably the thing that we have the most fun making,” he explained. “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.

“We plan to tell more of those. We're hard at work on more of those.”

Although a short starring Sombra premiered at BlizzCon 2016, Kaplan said he considers the first “season” of Overwatch animated shorts to have ended with “The Last Bastion.” That touching short premiered at Gamescom last August, exploring the origin story of the lovable robot.

Four previous shorts starred Winston, Widowmaker, Tracer, Hanzo, Genji and Soldier: 76. The series serves to deepen Overwatch’s lore and roster, which fans appreciate. Numerous other heroes have still not been tapped for the format — a good enough reason to launch a second season of shorts.

“They take a long time,” Kaplan told Polygon. “We think of them as in seasons. That’s how we talk about them internally. So our first season started with ‘Recall’ [the Winston short] and ended with ‘The Last Bastion.’”

There’s no timetable for season two’s debut, although Kaplan said that it’s “making good progress.” The director said that characters like Pharah are destined for more spotlight in the coming months, so here’s hoping she and the rest of the cast get to star on the small-screen sometime soon.