Entertainment

Overwatch 2 guts PvE Hero mode content and fans are furious

By Adam D Anglo
0

Overwatch developer update Activision Blizzard

Overwatch 2 was already hemorrhaging players and this news won’t help (pic: Blizzard)

One of Overwatch 2’s key selling points will no longer be a thing as Blizzard admits it wasn’t happy with how it was turning out.

Back in 2019, when Blizzard revealed Overwatch 2 to the public, perhaps its chief selling point, and the thing that justified it being a full sequel and not an update to the original game, was the new story content.

Unlike the first game, Overwatch 2 planned to offer narrative driven PvE missions that would advance the overall story and come with its own unique mechanics, including being able to level up and upgrade the various heroes.

Blizzard then launched the game without any PvE content at all, promising it would start arriving in 2023, and now it’s admitted that it can no longer follow through with its original plans.

It must be stressed that Blizzard isn’t cancelling PvE content; Overwatch 2 will be receiving co-op story missions in future updates. The more detailed Hero mode, which would’ve featured long-term character progression, is what’s been scrapped.

Executive producer Jared Neuss admits that Blizzard simply wasn’t satisfied with how the mode’s development was progressing, and it was decided that the resources would be better spent supporting the live service experience.

‘The team has created a bunch of amazing content, so there’s awesome missions that are really exciting, there’s brand-new enemies that are super fun to fight, and some truly great and ridiculous hero talents,’ says Neuss in a recent livestream.

‘But unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together into a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge and there really is no end in sight, or defined kind of end date when we can put that out into the world.

‘And so, we’re left with another difficult choice. Do we continue to pour all of that effort into PvE, hoping that we can land it at some point in the future, or do we stick with this set of values we’ve aligned on and focus on the live game and focus on serving all of you?’

He acknowledges that the news will upset players, adding that it was a difficult choice to make and just as disappointing for the people who worked on it.

A new content roadmap was also shared, providing a rundown of what to expect in the next few seasons. While season 5 is what’s next on the docket, season 6 will introduce the first batch of story missions.

Neuss clarifies via Twitter that while Hero mode has been cut, you can still look forward to ‘Big story missions, new cinematics, co-op events and single player Hero Mastery missions.’

In a GameSpot interview, Neuss and game director Aaron Keller were asked about what led to this decision, with Keller explaining that throughout the course of development, the team realised the Hero mode was effectively turning into a separate game.

‘As we started to get further and further into it – obviously our players could realise that we were pulling focus away from the live game – but it just didn’t look like there was a definitive end date in sight where we would finally be able to put that stamp on [it], or that end date was years away and it no longer felt like we could be doing that to our players, or we could be doing that to the live game that we were running. And that’s when we took the moment to shift strategy and put everything into the live game,’ says Keller.

Neuss and Keller express optimism that PvE wasn’t the sole factor in peoples’ interest in Overwatch 2 and that they’ll stick around for what the game is currently offering and all the other new content the team has planned. Season 6, in particular, is planned as their biggest yet.

However, a quick scan of social media shows that fans, unsurprisingly, are very bitter about the change in PvE plans, arguing that Overwatch 2 has now lost the one thing that justified the number after its name.

The aforementioned livestream has 20,000 dislikes compared to just 1,900 likes and several fans consider Overwatch 2 to now be a worse version of the first game. Which, as a reminder, you can’t play anymore since Blizzard shut it down, telling everyone they needed to migrate to the sequel.

Overwatch 2 is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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Adam D Anglo
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