Hey, remember when Overwatch basically went into deep freeze to deliver on all of the awesome content that Overwatch 2 was going to have? Yeah, so it turns out that is not going to happen at all. During a Blizzard livestream focused on the game’s current roadmap and future progression, game director Aaron Keller and executive producer Jared Neuss stated outright that the majority of the PvE content that had been planned for Overwatch 2 will not be happening as planned because it just requires too much work to develop. As Neuss put it:
“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 power progression… those things just aren’t in our plans anymore.”
Since the developers do say there will be some story missions, technically the game will still have some very small portion of PvE content. However, the entire list of important features from the sequel’s announcement hinged around that content. Blizzard also promised PvE in 2023 with no mention of reduced scope ahead of launch in 2022 and teased back in March that PvE content would be “sooner than you might think” before launching the most recent season with some threadbare PvE content. Reddit, understandably, is having a field day with this.
And again, just in case you missed what happened here, Overwatch went into a three-year-long maintenance mode for development of the sequel’s new long-term PvE gameplay modes. This, along with improved graphics and presumably a do-over of the business model, was the sequel’s reason for existing. Those modes are no longer happening, so Overwatch 2’s whole stated raison d’etre has been removed in favor of what it has now. It’s not surprising, but it sure is disappointing.
