Genji can’t dance on Overwatch 2’s payload and it’s not right that Hanzo can
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Overwatch 2 is fresh out of the gate, and there’s a lot to be excited about. So why did they take what’s special to me: my ability to dance to the load?
Emoting is a fun and silly way to engage both teammates and enemies in Overwatch 2. It can also keep you busy if you’re left to babysit the load and push the cart toward the goal while your team is battling against your opponents on the other side of the map. Because the load cannot move without someone around, often a team member is left behind to do God’s work.
And what better way to dispel that sacred work than to dance on top of the bomb?
It turns out that while some characters retain the ability to make serious moves, others suddenly seem too shy to take center stage in the charge. Take the cyborg ninja Genji and the fleshy ninja Hanzo. While Hanzo can pull off his “fisherman dance” on the load, Genji keeps sliding and sliding off the cart every time.
Sliding and sliding
It seems like parts of the payload geometry are treated the same as what’s used for the rooftops in Overwatch 2. By this I mean any surface Blizzard says isn’t “flat” or shouldn’t be accessible, causing your character to slide right from it. This mechanism is a good way to restrict access for curious players who want to explore the forbidden corners of each map.
This means that Genji can stand on the load and sit on the load, but as soon as he starts dancing and his foot taps one of the parts of the load that is bent, he freezes and slides off, like a klutz.
Genji’s passive ability, Wall Climb, allows him to climb any flat surface as long as it’s not marked inaccessible, but it seems Blizzard has been quite liberal with tagging surfaces to keep the ninja grounded.
A good example of this is the route under the railway to the first point on the Midtown map, newly added to Overwatch 2. In the image below you can see two red lines parallel to the train. If Genji tries to climb this flat surface, he will instead freeze and fall to the ground.
What makes it worse is that this bridge is a bottleneck, an area that leads the attacking teams to a natural congestion point. This allows the defending team to determine where the attackers are coming from and unleash a bombardment of gunfire aimed at killing anything that dares to walk through them. In other words, it’s about the worst place on the map to fall awkwardly mid-match.
A Genji player caught in this trap will be immediately punished for attempting to jump above the train ignoring the laws of a choking point, and death will likely come soon.
Dancing on the edge
Genji mains doesn’t seem to be taking a break at the moment. Falling into choking points first and now not dancing to the load while his estranged brother, Hanzo, is having the time of his life. It doesn’t seem fair. Unfortunately, it seems not only Genji has a big stick at the moment.
So far, attentive players are aware of several heroes who may or may not dance to the payload on the Paradiso, Circuit Royal, and Hollywood maps.
Hanzo, Zenyatta and Winston can, while Genji, Reinhart and Ana cannot.
The latter in particular feels like a personal disdain from Blizzard, as Ana is my main hero. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been left alone with the load as my team pushes to the other side of the map. I stand there and do my best to go as far as the load will allow me so I can peek corners and try to heal my dying team.
It can be so frustrating, and now I’m learning that I can’t even lighten the mood with a nice little dance. What should I do now? Are you watching my team get Critical Health Marks, a world away from me and the payload? Great, sounds nice.
I may not be the only one who has to get used to a danceless life. When the payload moves, any emote not attached to the ground seems to slide right off. So beware, if your Overwatch 2 head is an erratic dancer, they will unfortunately have to keep their moves off the mark.