Overwatch 2 PvE Hero Mode Canceled: ‘A Difficult Choice’

Blizzard has officially scrapped Overwatch 2’s long-awaited PvE Hero mode, but the game’s creative leads are assuring fans that PvE is still a focus for the game moving forward.

On a Twitch stream detailing Overwatch 2’s content roadmap, executive producer Jared Neuss explained the decision to cut the PvE content.

“Development on the PvE experience has not really hasn’t made the progress that we have hoped,” Neuss said. “The team has created a bunch of amazing content so there’s awesome missions that are really exciting. There’s brand new enemies that are super fun to fight and some truly great and ridiculous hero talents. But unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together into a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge, and there really is no end in sight or defined kind of end date where we can put that out into the world.

“And so we are left with another difficult choice. Do we continue to pour all that effort into PvE, hoping we can land it at some point in the future or do we stick with this set of values that we have aligned on and focus on the live game and focus on serving all of you? With everything we have learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it’s clear that we can’t deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019. What that means is that we won’t be delivering that dedicated hero mode with talent trees, that long-term talent power progression. Those things are just not in our plans anymore. And we know that this is going to be disappointing to many of you which is why we wanted to bring it up before we talk about the road map. And to be perfectly honest it’s been really difficult for many of us and a lot of folks on the team that pour their heart and soul into that stuff.”

Another big change to Overwatch 2

Overwatch 2’s PvE mode was supposed to be a big differentiating factor between the original game and its sequel. In 2019, we got to go hands-on with the PvE, which was set to have new hero abilities, co-op attacks, and a level progression system. But, when Overwatch 2 launched, the long-awaited PvE mode wasn’t a part of it. Instead, Blizzard promised that Overwatch 2’s PvE would come sometime in 2023 as seasonal content.

Even though the original vision for the PvE mode has been cut, there is still a lot of content in the Overwatch 2 pipeline. On Twitter, the Overwatch account shared an image detailing plans for Overwatch 2 Season 5, Season 6, Season 7, and beyond. It’s confirmed that story missions are coming to Overwatch 2 in Season 6, alongside a new support hero. So while the ambitious PvE mode isn’t a part of Overwatch’s future, maybe the story missions can help fill that void for players.

In an interview with GameSpot, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller explained some of the PvE additions coming to Overwatch 2 in lieu of the ambitious Hero mode.

“We have a lot coming out this year, and even if you look at Season 6, it’s the biggest season we’ve ever launched in the history of Overwatch,” Keller said. “We are running a PvE event that season. We have a whole new type of PvE content that we’re releasing with our single-player Hero mastery missions… So I hope that players can see that we are still committed to PvE and we are doing more with the story than we’ve ever done before. We’re just doing it in a different way than what we originally talked about.”

Neuss expanded on that, saying Blizzard isn’t walking away from Overwatch 2 PvE entirely.

“We know that if we get into the seasonal cadence, we can release things during seasons in a way that we can plan for effectively and that we think is going to be really exciting to players,” Neuss said. “That, more to the point, gives us time to adapt to the next thing for players before you release it, and I think moving away from that idea of this one big singular PvE release moment and into a, ‘No, we’re going to do PvE stuff all the time.’ We have all these plans. Season 6 has three different flavors of that, and we have a bunch of other versions of that coming up and seasons after that.”

We called Overwatch 2 great in our review, saying the sequel, “breathes new life into what was once the sharpest multiplayer shooter around, before it had its edges severely dulled by Blizzard’s attention shifting away.”

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.