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Overwatch 2<\/em>\u2019s long-awaited hero missions PvE mode is no more. In a developer livestream, game director Aaron Keller said that the team is canceling the game\u2019s PvE-based hero missions in favor of continuing on with seasonal, story-focused events.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Blizzard first announced Overwatch 2<\/em>, the developers teased that the game would have two PvE campaign modes<\/a> adjacent to its traditional competitive modes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the presentation announcing Overwatch 2<\/em> during Blizzcon 2019, former game director Jeff Kaplan spoke of hero missions and story missions that encompassed the game\u2019s PvE elements and drove the game\u2019s narrative. Story missions would be like the story-focused events the original Overwatch<\/em> already had. Players would group up and fight against AI-controlled enemies instead of teams of other players. These kinds of missions would either cover Overwatch 2<\/em>\u2019s overall story the way Uprising<\/em>, Retribution<\/em>, and Storm Rising<\/em> dug into events in original Overwatch<\/em> or be fantastical side stories outside Overwatch<\/em> canon like the Halloween event Junkenstein\u2019s Revenge<\/em>. These story missions would also be seasonal, rotating out every few months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hero missions, however, were presented as this always-available, always-replayable mode that featured talent trees that would grant different buffs to heroes, giving this part of the game more RPG-like qualities. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWith everything we\u2019ve learned about what it takes to operate this game,\u201d said executive producer Jared Neuss. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that we can\u2019t deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After Overwatch 2 <\/em>was announced, the game entered a kind of \u201cdead zone\u201d where no new content was being released save skins and rehashed holiday events. Even though a new game was forthcoming, players started disengaging from original Overwatch<\/em>. Ahead of the game\u2019s release in 2022, Keller put out a video promising a steady cadence of releases and new content<\/a> so players would never again have to wait years between new heroes or events.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In an interview with GameSpot<\/em><\/a>, Neuss and Keller went into detail about the reasons for hero modes\u2019 cancellation, talking about how it would\u2019ve taken pulling developers off the live game in order to create hero mission PvE as it was originally conceived and how that wouldn\u2019t square with the team\u2019s commitment to keeping the game fresh and exciting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In reality, what we were looking at was running two separate games at the same time with a set of heroes as the piece that is shared between two of them. And as we started to get further and further into it \u2014 obviously our players could realize that we were pulling focus away from the live game \u2014 but it just didn\u2019t look like there was a definitive end date in sight where we would finally be able to put that stamp on [it], or that end date was years away and it no longer felt like we could be doing that to our players, or we could be doing that to the live game that we were running. And that\u2019s when we took the moment to shift strategy and put everything into the live game.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Losing hero missions is a big bummer, but Overwatch 2<\/em> PvE isn\u2019t totally gone. Story missions have been traditional events within both games, and the developers shared that Overwatch 2<\/em>\u2019s first big story event is coming in season 6. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Additionally, the livestream wasn\u2019t solely focused on PvE. Neuss and Keller also shared the rest of the 2023 road map featuring new support and tank heroes, the return of the Summer Games event, and the equally anticipated arrival of the creator workshop<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n