Despite it being one of the key selling points for Overwatch 2’s existence as a sequel to the popular hero shooter. It has now been announced by Blizzard that they will be scrapping most of their original plans for the mode.
The company announced via a livestream with game director Arron Keller and Executive Producer Jared Neuss, that hero missions that were previously announced with the initial announcement would end up being cut.
“Development on the PvE experience really hasn’t made the progress that we would have hoped,” Neuss said. “…With everything we’ve learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it’s clear that we can’t deliver on the original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019.”
“What that means is 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.”
Unsurprisingly this announcement was poorly received by fans, with the livestream garnering nearly 20K dislikes as of this writing.
In the updated roadmap for Overwatch 2’s seasonal updates, they still plan on having story missions by season 6. Though this fact has done little to assuage the backlash they’ve received.
Overwatch 2 is available now for Windows PC (via Battle.net), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
