Blizzard has officially cancelled the much-anticipated Overwatch 2 PvE mode. This news comes from today's developer livestream which introduced the 2023 Roadmap and had the devs talk about the limited-time Starwatch event, a space opera themed event, that runs until May 23.
Overwatch's PvE Mode Cancelled
Overwatch first talked about a PvE, or player-vs-environment, mode before the original Overwatch released. The game came into existence from Blizzard's failed "Project Titan" when members of the Titan team used assets from it to create the hero shooter we know and love. Titan was supposed to be an MMO PvE game that used a brand new set of characters outside of Blizzard's Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft franchises.
With Overwatch having clear PvE roots, it was great to see the additions of fun PvE events in the original game, such as Junkenstein's Revenge and Uprising, which put you together with a group of friends to experience a narrative objective against AI. Tracy Kennedy, ex-Producer on Overwatch, stated on Twitter in 2021 that Jeff Kaplan wanted PvE in the original game, so this shouldn't be much of a surprise that Overwatch ended up with some PvE elements.
Quote From Tracy Kennedy That wasn't ABK. Kaplan had a vision of an OW game with PVE in it from before the original game launched. He wanted OW2 to be a sequel to get non-PVP players to consider trying the game out for the PVE. He felt very strongly about that.
Two years ago, on April 20, 2021, Jeff Kaplan left the company after 19 years. It may have been due to the ongoing company culture issues, with plenty of notable leaves over the past few years, but it does make you wonder if he saw that his vision for PvE in Overwatch was never going to work out.
The Silver Lining - Co-Op Experiences Are Here to Stay
Not all hope is lost for some elements of PvE in Overwatch 2. The team worked on a lot of mission content, new enemies, and crazy hero talents. We don't know what of that we may see, but Overwatch's Game Director, Aaron Keller, did state that they want to make co-op content a part of their live roadmap. Instead of holding back big updates to the game, they will instead be pushing smaller doses of content when it is ready.
With that said, there will not be the planned dedicated hero mode that incorporated talent trees and power progression. There will be story-based events though, some canon and some non-canon, that players will see over time during new Seasons.
A Roadmap for 2023
We've got our first look at Seasons 5, 6, and beyond which include reworks to Roadhog and Sombra and new Support and tank heroes!
Season 5
- Questwatch - A new limited-time event.
- Mischief & Magic
- A new cinematic.
- Summer Games returns.
- 5v5 Mini Comp Season
- On Fire Returns
- Creator Workshop Mode
Season 6
This will be the first season that will have a season name and be themed around that name.
- Story Missions
- New Support Hero
- Flashpoint
- Hero Mastery
- Firing Range
- Player Progression System
- Overwatch Anniversary
Beyond
- New Tank Hero
- New Collaboration Event
- New Control Map
- New Winter Event
- New Hero Mastery Missions (Multiplayer)
- Roadhog Rework
- Fan Favourite Modes Return
- Cinematics
- Competitive Mystery Heroes Return
- Lore Codex
- Sombra Rework
Hot Take
Seeing Jeff leave Overwatch and Blizzard as a whole was a huge let down. The game had gone through what appeared to be development hell with all the delays and finally, Overwatch 2 hit the market without its promised PvE mode with Blizzard saying that it would come in a future update. With his vision gone and the new monetization model of the game, I personally never had any interest in playing Overwatch in Overwatch 2.
The whole purpose of moving to Overwatch 2 was to make these big changes to the game, bring in this gigantic PvE mode that was teased for years, and to switch up monetization at the clear benefit of Blizzard. The last part of that really sucked, because everything got more expensive and harder to obtain as a result. At least the new game was a free update, right? Nah.
Now players are left with some new fancy character models, new maps, paid heroes, harder to obtain skins, skins that are legendary flagged but clearly not deserving of the title, and a confusing name. Why couldn't this just be a massive overhaul to the original game? They could have easily just pumped it all into Overwatch since they were deleting it anyway and kept things easy breezy. Now it will be a game with a 2 attached to it, like Destiny 2, which will beg the annoying question for years to come "when is Overwatch 3?".
Maybe in 2030 they'll do the modern thing and release the third version of Overwatch and just call it Overwatch. Thanks Xbox One and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. (Yes, technically the original was CoD4:MW but everyone just called it Modern Warfare)
But wait. There's more.
We're going to jump onto the other side for a moment because seeing what the team has been pouring into the game with their updates and how we might end up getting to see some of the elements that they worked on for the PvE mode is kinda cool. It's going to depend a lot on how everything gets packaged up, but there may very well be a save here from the Overwatch team.
Overwatch 2 Developer Update VoD
The PvE discussion begins at around 42 minutes in.
Comments
This video highlights some interesting reasons for the failure to provide the PvE experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxPbdtZ770c
Basically the TLDW is, the OW team were split in 2, 1 maintaining the live service PVP experience and the other side doing the PVE experience. The PVP side was already making the company money while the PVE side wasn't so ofc the money hungry corporate heads made the decision to trash the PVE entirely and I'm sure Jeff saw that from a mile away and left when he could.
I imagine Overwatch will go the way of Heroes of the Storm in a few years. These decisions coupled with the fact that better games exist doesn't look well for the game's longevity.
If I had to guess, I think management simply decided that the costs are too high and overwatch 2 isn't giving them the returns they want. So they had to axe something, and the PvE aspect is deemed the less risky choice, on top of saving loads of man hours.
A shame really, because what we left with now can be said to be definitely overwatch 1.5 instead of 2.
Shameful that they made $1bn in loot box sales and couldn't give the team the resources to maintain OW1 live service while creating whatever they wanted OW2 to be. Look at the content Epiq manufactured for Fortnite during the same time period.
I mean, Fortnite also abondend its pve main mode in favor of the live service for the pvp game.
Fortnite had a mostly complete PvE game built, and then released the BR that expanded exponentially. Later, they cancelled further development on the PvE side of things. Blizzard delivered nothing and then cancelled. Totally different.
I guess that's true. Though while they delivered nothing yet does it not mean that they aren't going to deliver anything pve related at all in the near future. They "just" canceled the hero missions that were supposed to containt highly replayable pve missions and a huge skilltree for each hero. The Story missions in the veins of Archives are still coming.
Overwatch 2 and the pve mode started out extremely ambitious ("we want to redefine what a sequel is"), maybe even too ambitious as it turns out.
This highlights a harsh reality in game development: You can't plan fun. They clearly tried out a lot to make it happen, as seen during the Blizzconline 2021, but if you try to make something happen for 4 years, and you still have no clue how to do it, then maybe it's best to let it go. Especially when you wanted to maintain a live service game in addition to the pve development that has no end in sight.
This is actually kinda similar to the development of Hearthstone's Mercenaries if you think about it. This mode was also in development hell for a long time, got delayed almost an entire year (first teased on the darkmoon roadmap), while never being able to deliver a experience that was entertaining for the majority of the playerbase. The difference is that instead of deciding to scrap it, they instead tried to tie all the loose ends they had together and atleast decided to release something, even it was dissapointing for a big part of the playerbase.
In the end I'm still somewhat optimistic about Overwatch's pve missions. Sounds like with Season 6 they finally begin to tell the Story they wanted to tell through regular, although smaller, pve mission releases. I remember how cool it was to play the retribution event for the first time, and to think about getting something like it every 9 weeks makes me excited enough.
I guess this whole thing is the peak of the development shift that happened early last year. No more are they holding everything they have back for years and years and years, to then finally release everything they have at all once in a huge bombastic release. Instead they release as it gets finished to ensure a constant stream of fresh content. The defintion of a live service game.