Interview: Overwatch 2’s Haunted Masquerade is a treat for story and lore enthusiasts

Overwatch 2 Season 19 is now live. Ahead of its launch, esports.gg sat down with associate game director Alec Dawson and lead events designer Kirill Perekrest for an interview. The Overwatch 2 Season 19 interview went into the Haunted Masquerade game mode, which features a bunch of Easter eggs for fans of the franchise's story and lore!

Haunted Masquerade is both the name of Overwatch 2 Season 19 and a brand-new game mode that lets players wear masks of different heroes. After queueing up and entering the spawn room, players can walk up to a mask and put it on for a special ability. Some hero and mask combinations are quite unique as they pay tribute to the Overwatch 2 story and lore! In an interview with esports.gg, Dawson and Perekrest expanded on these combinations and provided insights on what went into creating Haunted Masquerade.

In the interview, both Dawson and Perekrest talked at length about the different Haunted Masquerade mask and hero combinations. Reinhardt and Brigitte, Hanzo and Genji, plus Tracer and Winston together, for example, were obvious choices for the team. In fact, according to Dawson, the giant shield option for Reinhardt and Brigitte was part of the first playtests. For Hanzo and Genji, the Overwatch 2 team also really wanted to let them have a moment with their dragons. As for Tracer and Winston, players can do some Recall and Pulse Bomb shenanigans!

"There's 11 pairings, and on each special pairing, each hero has a different thing," Dawson said. "There's a few that are a little bit close together in terms of like you have to actually combine some of the things you're doing together, but each side of the mask, like let's say Tracer and Winston, they both get a special thing from each other, right? So Tracer can throw her Pulse Bomb onto Winston. It'll actually stick onto him, and then he can actually jump into the enemy team. And then it will explode. Winston actually, after he puts on his bubble, he can Recall to it within a limited amount of time just like Tracer. So each side of the pairing gets something special."

Dawson also went into creating Hanzo and Genji's combination. "I think one that ended up being in a pretty good place, but was pretty difficult -- we really wanted to get that Genji and Hanzo moment with the dragons. So we had them try and combine the ults together, like you would be Hanzo [and] you're like, 'Hey, I have my ult,' and you'd be waiting, kind of tabbing, waiting for Genji to get his ult, too. And then you had to do it together and do [it at] the same moment. That was pretty difficult. When it worked, it worked really, really well."

Perekrest provided some insights about the Haunted Masquerade combinations as well, noting that from the design perspective, the biggest challenge was creating teamplay combinations that were clear and useful. Perekrest highlighted the Genji and Hanzo dragon combination as an example and called it a rare yet amazing moment when executed perfectly. He added that while it sometimes failed or produced no effect, the synergy required made successful moments feel incredible.

"Alec talked about before how [when] we worked with Genji and Hanzo at the beginning, they both required ult activation. You could activate your Dragonblade while you're inside Hanzo's dragon and they'd like you to spawn more dragons," Perekrest said. "And it's [a] really cool combination. When we played this for the first time, when we just saw it for the first time, it was just like, 'Yeah, that's amazing. It's like exactly like in the brothers' cinematic.'"

He continued, "But it applies to two ults. It's a very rare moment. It requires lots of synergy between heroes, and we have rounds when it never happened or we had rounds when it's, for example, you both used two ultimates, you collaborate perfectly, but the result is zero."

To make it all more practical, the Overwatch 2 team leaned into Genji’s Dragonblade instead. Now, when he activates his ultimate, he's able to send out a dragon by pressing Q during it!

Another mask ability that changed over time pertained to Moira’s Fade. The early prototype let everyone use Fade every 20 seconds, which created chaotic and overpowered interactions. Heroes like Reinhardt, Ramattra, and Reaper became especially terrifying with this mask.

"Yes. some of them were too powerful," Perekrest said. "For example, one of the bonuses that we prototyped with Moira at the beginning -- we gave [the] Fade ability to everyone. You were able to perform Fade every 20 seconds, and Reinhardt or Ramattra with the [Fade] ability were terrifying. Or Reaper who can Fade in and then Wrath out. It was madness."

In terms of their favorite combinations in Haunted Masquerade, Dawson enjoys the aforementioned Tracer and Winston one. Meanwhile, Perekrest likes the lore and gameplay interactions involving Ramattra and Zenyatta.

"Honestly, my favorite combination is Ramattra and Zenyatta. They kind of [have] this monk brotherhood," Perekrest said, adding that when Zenyatta applies Discord Orb to Ramattra, it creates a debuff that affects nearby enemies.

"It embraces lots of collaboration and lots of communication between those two," Perekrest continued. "But it makes you feel extra powerful as Ramattra, [and] I really enjoy this theme and the narrative of being [a] big, scary omnic robot -- even more scary than he is right now."

Although the Ovewatch 2 team wanted to create hero combinations that encouraged coordination and big moments between allies, not every combination had them. Some combinations, like Juno and Mei, evolved over development to be simpler and more effective, such as Mei’s Ice Wall interacting with Juno’s ult to create a massive freezing effect. According to Dawson, combinations were also organized into different buckets based on how players could interact.

These combinations range from coordinated setups, like the aforementioned Winston and Tracer one, to abilities precisely, to simpler interactions that provide benefits without strict requirements.

"And then some are going to be, 'Oh, I just get something because I'm with this other person. I just get something that's really nice, right? Like Roadhog, when he uses Chain Hook, it's actually going to explode at the end. So that's going to create a big explosion. It's actually just pretty nice, right? It gives him more damage. And you can do some like weird things, like you can just get some like AOE damage if you miss your hook [...] when you're paired with Junkrat. So there's a number of buckets that we ended up putting these pairings into to make sure that we're covering the breadth of what we want to see players react to."

During the interview, both Dawson and Perekrest also went into feedback and past events. Perekrest noted that Junkenstein's Lab was so popular last year that it got extended. Meanwhile, Dawson revealed that the team is always looking to learn from events and players' reactions.

"I think our player base understands that we're always looking to learn something from the events that we're doing," Dawson said. "It could be something as wacky as April Fools', and [we're] still going to be like, 'Oh, there's two abilities in there that we're actually trying to look for feedback on and see if these things can stick.'"

He continued, adding that last year, during Junkenstein's Lab, the team examined a number of things related to Stadium and other features such as upgrading heroes over multiple rounds. Dawson explained that the team wanted to see how these systems would work in practice and whether players were making good decisions within them.

"And so there's always something we're trying to glean from our events and seeing how players react," he said. "I think there's a sort of a nice handshake between us and the player base -- they're like, 'Oh, we want to be able to participate in this and experience this so that we can get feedback on these sorts of things, too.' So I think that's something that our players look forward to with some of the events that come out, and we look forward to seeing all the feedback about them as well."

That's all for now. We hope you enjoy Overwatch 2 Season 19 and Haunted Masquerade! Stick around on epsorts.gg for more interviews, news, and updates.