[Update]: Overwatch Archives 2021 has now arrived, and sadly the new mission challenges are pretty disappointing.

It seems that Blizzard has completely given up on teasers for their Overwatch events. With some of the previous ones they'd showcase a brand new skin each day for an entire week leading up to the launch date, whereas these days it's more like "BAM, here's an event!"

Not only that, but the amount of time between the announcement and the event itself is getting shorter. As such, you might be both surprised and pleased to hear that the annual Archives event is launching in exactly two days, on April 6th!

Much like before, Archives will bring with it three co-op missions that will pit you and three teammates against a whole bunch of AI opponents ranging across four difficulty levels, with the fourth one requiring both a fair bit of skill and coordination to complete. And naturally, there will also be a whole bunch of new skins to acquire through either loot boxes or the three 'quests' that will be running throughout the event.

While any sort of new content is unlikely given that most of the Overwatch team is currently busy with Overwatch 2, there is a pretty good chance we'll at least get some remixed challenges like last year. Even though they were fairly simple additions, I found them to be remarkably fun and well worth checking out, so I must admit I'm actually quite excited to see what will happen this year. After all, this is the perfect time to test out some experimental Overwatch 2 concepts on a wide audience!

Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once the Archives event is live. Until then, I'll leave you with a trailer for last year's variant. Enjoy!