Overwatch 2 | director reflects on cancelled PvE Hero Mode

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Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has written in more detail about the decision to cancel the gameā€™s much-anticipated PvE Hero Mode.


 

On 16 May, Blizzard made the surprising announcement that Overwatch 2's long-in-development PvE Hero Mode had been cancelled.

Stating that the story-led multiplayer mode hadnā€™t ā€œmade the progressā€ expected, the gameā€™s executive producer Jared Neuss announced in a Twitch stream that development would be put back into Overwatch 2's base PvP mode, and that smaller PvE events would be arriving in the future ā€“ including the gameā€™s upcoming season 6.

In a more recent blog post published on Blizzardā€™s website, meanwhile, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has written in a bit more detail about the Hero Modeā€™s cancellation.

He began by going back to the original Overwatch, which was forged from the remains of the cancelled Project Titan. ā€œThat game had many facets, but at its heart, it was an FPS MMO,ā€ Keller writes. ā€œThe Overwatch team, especially at its inception, considered itself an MMO development team. As we transitioned away from that original concept and started creating Overwatch, we included plans to one day return to that scope.ā€

Keller then described the teamā€™s plans to transition from the original Overwatch (which he describes as the seriesā€™ ā€œcrawlā€ stage) to ā€œa dedicated version of PvEā€, which was considered its ā€œwalkā€ stage, while an ā€œMMO was the runā€.

In other words, Keller and his team had plans to gradually build Overwatch up from a PvP shooter to a more grand, multi-featured MMO ā€“ something more along the lines of their earlier plans for Project Titan.

By the sounds of things, the teamā€™s plans for Hero Mode were simply too ambitious to make happen, especially with its development existing alongside Overwatch 2ā€²s ongoing live service requirements. ā€œThings rarely go as planned in game development,ā€ Keller continues. ā€œWe 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. 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.ā€

When the studio realised ā€œwe were continuously pulling resources away from the live game,ā€ the ā€œincredibly difficult decisionā€ was made to cancel the Hero Mode altogether. For his part, Kellerā€™s contrite about the modeā€™s failure (ā€œI had trouble pivoting away from a vision that just wasnā€™t working. And for that I would like to apologise to our players and to our team. Iā€™m Sorry.ā€), but adds that Overwatch 2 will continue to evolve over time.

ā€œWe are focusing our efforts and our passion into making this game an ever-evolving experience,ā€ Keller concludes. ā€œWe are still committed to building many of the elements we talked about at BlizzCon 2019, including the Story Missions that delve into the next chapter of the Overwatch universe, new types of co-op content we haven’t yet shared, and new stories that we’re planning to tell both in and out of the game.ā€

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