The new Overwatch 2 roadmap is here for season 5 through 7, and it confirmed that the PvE Hero Mode option is being scrapped in favor of Story Missions. Upon the announcement coming out, GameSpot also shared an interview with Director Aaron Keller and Executive Producer Jared Neuss that went over the decision to get rid of this mode and why.
In the GameSpot interview by Tamoor Hussain, resources were cited as an issue. Specifically, Director Keller noted that that development of the Overwatch 2 PvE Hero Mode would be like “running two separate games at the same time with a set of Heroes as the piece that is shared between two of them.” He noted the time necessary to do that and resources meant it was “pulling focus away from the live game.”
Neuss also expounded on how much extra work it involved and told GameSpot:
But for games like this, it’s tougher because the team was building something that is totally different than anything that they’d built before. These story missions are significantly different than Archives or other ways that [we’ve] told stories inside the game before. And so developing those, what it takes to do that, the technology required, the people required, the iteration required is all different.
As for the new roadmap, people will still need to wait a while for any sort of PvE Story Mission in Overwatch 2. The fourth season will end on June 13, 2023, with the fifth season following that with events like Mischief & Magic, Questwatch, and Summer Games. Since seasons are about nine weeks long, it won’t be until sometime in August 2023 that the sixth season will bring with it a new Support Hero, Flashpoint, Hero Mastery, and Story Missions. (As a reminder, Lifeweaver was the last new Hero added in Season 4.)
Image via Activision Blizzard
Here’s the official presentation going over the future of Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 2 is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC.
