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.
