When Overwatch 2 was announced, one of its main selling points was the inclusion of an expansive PvE Story Mode where players could play as the Overwatch heroes fighting against the Omnics with unique variations to their abilities, allowing for custom load-outs, and an exploration into Overwatch 2’s lore.
That plan has unfortunately been completely scrapped. In a developer live stream by the Overwatch team, Jared Neuss, the game’s executive producer talked about how Blizzard had to make the choice between continuing to modify the game’s live service PvP to be more enjoyable for the players or pouring its efforts into its PvE offering which was a huge part of the game’s marketing.
As stated by Jared during the 45-minute mark of the live stream, “With everything we have learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it’s clear that we can’t deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019. What that means is that we won’t be delivering that dedicated hero mode with talent trees, that long-term talent power progression. Those things are just not in our plans anymore.”
The PvE portion of the game was meant to be what differentiated Overwatch 2 from its predecessor, as many fans questioned whether it was worth having to scrap much of their progress and unlocks from Overwatch 1 and turn the game free-to-play if it was just going to be updated to the game’s PvP. This mode would have included co-op attacks, new abilities, a level-up system, and much more as seasonal content. While the game will still be getting some seasonal PvE content with story missions coming in Season 6, it’s a shame that one of Overwatch 2’s biggest and supposedly defining features have been cut, leaving a lot of fans disappointed.
▍About Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 is a competitive team-based FPS game developed by Activision Blizzard and a sequel to the original title released in 2016. The game retains the game’s team-based objective formats with players taking on the role of heroes, each with unique weapons and abilities at their disposal in 5v5 combat.
The game maintains a cartoonish and almost Disney-like aesthetic to its characters and was originally revealed to be a PvE Co-op shooter while still maintaining its PvP component in 2019, but plans for that mode have been scrapped in favor of shorter bursts of PvE content released seasonally.
