Overwatch 2 temporarily loses Bastion and Torbjörn

Two Overwatch 2 heroes have been temporarily pulled from the game as Blizzard works to fix some major bugs. Both Bastion and Torbjörn are “taking a quick trip to the workshop”, with Bastion suspended from all modes, and Torbjörn absent from all but quick play.

Bastion's emergency holiday is for pretty obvious reasons: the charismatic robot was able to call down an obscene amount of artillery strikes, or in Jon's words, “as many [artillery strikes] as you can click for in the limited time window that Bastion's new ultimate allows”. A lot of fun? Definitely. Fair? Unfortunately, no. There's some collated footage here and it's good for a laugh.

It makes sense that Bastion has been pulled from the game entirely, given the severity of the bug. As for Torbjörn, it's a little less exciting: apparently his Overload ability can receive double duration if the button press is timed right, meaning he can run faster, receive more damage, and deal more damage for a lot longer. Given he'll stick around in Quick Play, it must be a rarely implemented exploit.

No indication was provided regarding the length of their suspension. Maybe once they're back, new players will have learned to play the objective.

These are some pretty innocuous bugs compared to the launch problems Overwatch 2 experienced, such as long matchmaking queues and an 'auto-purchase' glitch. Some players are also, understandably, annoyed by the need to attach a phone number to their Battle.net account, a big problem if you use a pre-paid phone. That functionality is also coming to Modern Warfare 2.

Still, it's early days, and what's a live service game without a parade of teething problems? Tyler's review-in-progress expresses mixed feelings.