Blizzard recently faced backlash from fans when it announced the cancellation of hero missions, a prominent feature of the player vs. environment (PvE) story mode in Overwatch 2. In response to the concerns raised, director Aaron Keller took to the official Overwatch blog to provide more transparency and offer an explanation behind the “incredibly difficult decision” made by the development team.
Hero missions were initially unveiled in 2019 and were designed to offer a “deeply repayable” gameplay experience with RPG-like talent trees. While the progression would have been separate from the main game to maintain fairness, Blizzard had heavily marketed hero missions as a key component during the game’s four years of promotion. However, the publisher ultimately discovered that these missions were consuming excessive development resources that could be better utilized for the live game.
Keller’s blog post delved into the history of Overwatch’s development and the challenges the team faced. He acknowledged that the focus on Overwatch 2 hero missions may have detracted from the original game’s success. “When we launched Overwatch in 2016, we quickly started talking about what that next iteration could be,” Keller wrote. “Looking back at that moment, it’s now obvious that we weren’t as focused as we should have been on a game that was a runaway hit. Instead, we stayed focused on a plan that was years old.” The plan he referred to was influenced by the team’s previous work on Project Titan, Blizzard’s canceled MMORPG, with the intention of integrating some of its concepts into Overwatch.
The PvE aspect of the game began development, but Keller acknowledged that the team’s scope grew too vast, causing a loss of focus. While they created impressive elements such as hero talents, new enemy units, and early versions of missions, they struggled to bring all the elements together into a polished and cohesive experience.
According to Keller, the ambition for hero missions consumed resources that should have been dedicated to the core gameplay. “We had an exciting but gargantuan vision, and we were continuously pulling resources away from the live game in an attempt to realize it,” he explained. “I can’t help but look back on our original ambitions for Overwatch and feel like we used the slogan of ‘crawl, walk, run’ to continue to march forward with a strategy that just wasn’t working.”
The decision to abandon hero missions was a difficult one, made in favor of prioritizing the present quality of the game over past promises. Keller expressed the team’s understanding of the disappointment this decision may have caused. “We needed to make an incredibly difficult decision, one we knew would disappoint our players, the team, and everyone looking forward to Hero Missions,” he said. “The Overwatch team understands this deeply — this represented years of work and emotional investment. They are wonderful, incredibly talented people and truly have a passion for our game and the work that they do.”
Despite the cancellation of hero missions, Overwatch 2’s story missions are still on track to launch in season six, scheduled for mid-August. The PvE aspects will include a single-player version with a leaderboard, in-game and out-of-game stories, and “new types of co-op content” yet to be revealed. In the meantime, players can look forward to season five, set to launch in June, as Blizzard continues to refine and expand upon the existing Overwatch experience.
