At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard took the stage to announce a brand new title named Overwatch. For the first time in almost 20 years, the Irvine, CA developer announced a game not tied to the StarCraft, WarCraft, or Diablo franchises. Overwatch is their upcoming first-person shooter and it has that Blizzard style oozing throughout every character, model and bullet hole. But since then, limited footage and impressions have sprinkled throughout the web until just yesterday (October 15), when a few lucky Twitch streamers were given the chance to broadcast nearly two-hours of gameplay, shooting alongside a few devs and answering the burning questions fans had. Check out the new stuff we learned from these awesome streams, and mark your calendar for October 27, when Blizzard releases Overwatch beta!

If It’s Broken, You Can Fix It

One of the big staples of arena shooters or class-based esports titles is the idea of picking a hero or character and sticking with them the entire game. DOTA 2 and League of Legends is built around the idea of picks and counter picks, leading to intense dynamics that can determine a winner long before the battle has even begun. But with Overwatch, they are taking the Team Fortress 2 approach and allowing players to swap classes at any time during the game. Getting your butt kicked as Tracer and can’t get her teleportation down just right? Switch over to Hanzo, the ranger class, and you’ll turn into the fearless hunter once you come back to life. It’s the sort of mechanic that will rub some competitive gamers the wrong way, but will ensure matches aren’t too unbalanced from the start.;

Play Your Class

Consider this to be the Golden Rule for shooters like Overwatch, as treating every class like they are the same is going to lead to certain death. In Halo, Destiny or Call of Duty, classes are mostly just different combinations of skills and abilities, but in Overwatch, playing Mercy the medic like John Rambo will get your teammates pissed very quickly. Much like an MMO or MOBA, team dynamic and success lives and dies with how each character balances with one another. Tank classes will take the most damage in order to let their stealthy cohorts slide in and do their job. Medics will stay behind the line of fire to support their troops. If everything goes according to plan, your team will run like a well-oiled machine and be able to take down any ragtag group of randoms you come up against.

Blizzard Is Not Reinventing The Wheel

It might come to some surprise, but this new IP from Blizzard is not as groundbreaking as their past few. Everything from the art style, pace of play, gameplay modes and special attacks all have extremely direct influences from games still playable today. Team Fortress 2 is the most obvious comparison, from the similar cartoony style and Payload mode to the Engineer archetypes and “Red vs Blu” aesthetic. Once we get our hands on it, we will truly know if it handles differently, but nothing about last night’s stream helped calm any fears that Overwatch might be just another in a long line of first-person copycats all looking for that free-to-play gold. Also, free-to-play was not confirmed today, but after watching two hours of gameplay, there is little incentive to pay for this game in its current state.

There Is Plenty Of Icing On This Cake

One of the most exciting things we saw on the stream was just how awesome the presentation is for Overwatch. Top to bottom, the menus, interface, animation, and especially music, are killer. While each match tends to start quiet to allow for supreme concentration, the menu music before and after each game is awesome. And right when a round is about to begin, a swell of inspirational orchestral tunes starts pouring through your speakers and gives you a little boost to get out there and kick ass. While the kill cams are standard and important, the end of the match is even better, as the player of the game gets their own highlight reel, showing exactly what their most epic moment of each match was. Since the game has built-in voice chat, expect to hear plenty of trash talking during this portion of the game.

You Can Play Starting Really Soon 

Starting on October 27, you will actually be able to get your keyboard and mouse in the game. Head to Battle.net right now and sign up for the beta for free, as long as you have a Blizzard account already (if not, it’s free and easy to sign up). This is a North American test first and only on PC, but more regions and platforms are coming down the pipeline. If you’re lucky, you’ll get an email between now and the 27th with a code that allows you to download the beta build. Hopefully you have 50gb of hard drive space, a solid processor, and a beefy graphics card if you truly want to experience Blizzard’s next big game.