The gutting of PvE

The biggest blunder for Overwatch 2 this year was the gutting of its planned PvE suite. In May, Blizzard hosted a stream in which game director Aaron Keller and executive producer Jared Neuss announced that some of the planned PvE modes (which were firstannouncedin 2019), including replayable hero missions and talent trees that let you customize your character’s abilities, had been canned in favor of focusing on the competitive game. The story missions are still happening and will act as the driving force of the Overwatch plot moving forward, but a lot of the fancy dressings that made them feel like more than just an iteration of the original game’s Archive missions will never see the light of day.

This was a major blow to the narrative Blizzard had been trying to craft about why Overwatch 2 was necessary when the original game was right there, still functional, and lacking content updates in anticipation of a sequel. The initial pitch for Overwatch 2 at Blizzcon 2019 was that it would bring story, cooperative elements, and PvE gameplay as a pillar of the game, all while allowing original Overwatch players to keep playing competitively alongside Overwatch 2 players in a shared multiplayer environment. Some of that has technically come to fruition, since nobody had to buy a second game to keep playing. But what has changed is the business model, how much money you have to pay to take part in things that used to be free, and how many players are on each team.

The loss of those PvE modes is both a loss for the game, as well as a reminder that Overwatch 2 is not what Blizzard said it was going to be when it was announced in 2019.— KS