Overwatch 2 director says canceled PvE mode was part of an ambitious plan to one day make an Overwatch MMO
Aaron Keller's latest Director's Take blog doesn't have the jovial tone that they usually do. The Overwatch 2 game director used the space this week to expand on an announcement made Tuesday that Blizzard has cancelled Overwatch 2's long-awaited PvE «Hero mode.» The news came in the last few minutes of a 30-minute livestream, along with the announcement that story missions were still happening as early as Season 6.
The news did not go over well. Confusion swirled as fans and websites alike were under the impression that all PvE was scrapped. Players are angry that Blizzard spent years selling Overwatch 2 on the promise of PvE only to kneecap its development halfway through its first year. Story missions are coming, but the mode that was supposed to make PvE in Overwatch more than a fleeting distraction is never happening.
Keller expanded on the reasoning for cancelling Hero mode in today's blog—essentially, it wasn't close to done or proving to be as fun as the team had hoped, so Blizzard decided to stop taking resources away from Overwatch 2's live content.
«Things rarely go as planned in game development. We struggled to find our footing with the Hero Mission experience early on. Scope grew. We were trying to do too many things at once and we lost focus,» Keller said. «The team built some really great things, including hero talents, new enemy units and early versions of missions, but we were never able to bring together all of the elements needed to ship a polished, cohesive experience.»
The most interesting revelation in the blog is how Overwatch 2 got its PvE focus in the first place. Since Overwatch's launch in 2016, Blizzard has apparently been planning to realize the original vision of the cancelled MMO FPS that
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