Overwatch 2 was announced back in 2019 with the promise of a PvE mode. A mode where players would take on the role of a character and form a squad where they would complete story based, narrative missions together. Blizzard were planning to re-work each character in the Overwatch game so that you could essentially build a custom version of them depending on what unlocks you had achieved in the PvE/narrative mode.
Well, the team at Blizzard have gone public and announced that they will be ditching this original PvE mode. In a live Twitch stream, Jared Neuss, executive producer, said that “Development on the PvE experience hasn’t made the progress that we [Blizzard] have hoped”. He adds that the team have been attempting to put this mode together and in the process, have come up with some really good content for the game, but putting it all together into one, homogenous game mode is proving too much and “there really is no end in sight”.
The PvE mode was essentially the differentiator between Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2, but with it out of the picture, it is pretty much just all Overwatch now.
There is a silver lining for those who were keen on the PvE mode. Because the team at Blizzard have already put so much effort into making a few of the stories and working on the character development, they have pushed out a roadmap for Overwatch 2, showing that “Story Missions” and “Hero Mastery” are still on the cards. The kicker is that it’s only due in Season 6 and we only just started Season 4.
#Overwatch2: A Look Ahead ✨
Join us as we share more details about everything we have planned for 2023, including new events, PvE, new Heroes, new maps, & more.
👀 https://t.co/FEyTC2p7eL pic.twitter.com/lGd1uABbfN
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 16, 2023
In an interview with GameSpot, Aaron Keller, director of Overwatch 2, said, “We have a whole new type of PvE content that we’re releasing with our single-player Hero mastery missions… So I hope that players can see that we are still committed to PvE and doing more with the story than ever before. We’re just doing it in a different way than what we originally talked about.”.
This does give hope to the PvE-ers out there, as “Story Missions” could mean anything. In Apex and Fortnite, these kinds of missions are just side quests to complete while you attempt not to die, so this explanation from Aaron does shed some light on the kind of PvE gameplay we can expect.
Are you bummed that there won’t be any co-op PvE in Overwatch 2 anymore? Grab your buddy, and let us know your thoughts.