Overwatch 2 Developer Discusses Cancellation of Hero Mode, Future Plans for PvE

gamingbolt.com:

Blizzard Entertainment, specifically the team developing Overwatch 2, has received backlash for cancelling Hero Mode. It was meant to be a PvE experience, one of the game’s major selling points when initially announced, that featured Hero Talents and progression. All of that has been scrapped, though story missions are still coming later this year in Season 6.

Speaking to GameSpot, director Aaron Keller discussed the shift in approach and why it happened. “We’ve talked a lot in the past about Overwatch 2 and how different it is from the original game, even just being free-to-play and swapping to a 5v5 team format and all the new content we’ve developed for it. To me, that’s the biggest change we’re looking at here; it’s not just that we have some of the same Heroes in the game. It’s the way that we’re writing the game and how we’re looking at the game, going forward. I really hope that the roadmap that we just released is something that illustrates that to players.

“We have a lot coming out this year, and even if you look at Season 6, it’s the biggest season we’ve ever launched in the history of Overwatch. We have a new Support Hero coming out that season. We have a new game mode. We’ve never released a new game mode as a seasonal update ever in Overwatch. It has two new maps coming out with Flashpoint. We are running a PvE event that season. We have a whole new type of PvE content that we’re releasing with our single-player Hero Mastery missions.

“Overwatch Anniversary is running another event. And then, on top of all of that, we’ve got the start of our new story arc with new story missions, cinematics, and other lore content, such as a lore codex. It’s all packed into this one season, and this is the future of what