Everything to know about Overwatch 2 PvE

The 2023 Overwatch 2 roadmap is here! In a major content drop, Blizzard revealed what's in store for the game's upcoming seasons. Season 6, in particular, features some PvE Story Missions. Read on for everything to know about Overwatch 2 PvE.

Overwatch 2 PvE will arrive in Overwatch 2 Season 6. It will be in the form of PvE Story Missions and include in-game cinematics. According to Blizzard, this will advance the game's narrative. Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller also expanded on this, noting that the game will get its first major story-based event and kick off a brand-new story arc.

"Rather than doing a big one-time PvE release and rather than pouring all of our efforts into these singular releases, we're planning to make co-op gameplay and co-op experiences just part of our live roadmap," Keller said. "So we want you to be able to experience it more often and with more variety than we had originally announced."

Keller also mentioned other co-op features that will be canon and non-canon.

"We're going to be releasing our first major story-based event featuring a new set of missions, and it'll kick off a brand-new story arc for Overwatch. And beyond that, we have a lot more co-op features planned. Some canon and some very not-canon," he said.

The original plans for Overwatch 2 PvE got canceled, according to Jared Neuss, the executive producer of the game. A dedicated hero mode with talent trees and long-term power progression also got canceled and is no longer part of the game development plan.

"Development on the PvE experience really hasn't made the progress that we would have hoped," Neuss said. He added that the team created a bunch of amazing content. "But unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that 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."

Neuss then explained the difficult choice between pouring all of that effort into Overwatch 2 PvE or focusing on the live game.

"With everything we've learned about what it takes to operate this game at a level that you deserve, it's clear that we can't deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019," Neuss said. "What that means is that we won't be delivering that dedicated hero mode with talent trees, that long-term power progression. Those things just aren't in our plans anymore. And we know this is going to be disappointing to many of you, which is why we wanted to bring it up before we talked about the roadmap."

When Blizzard first announced Overwatch 2 back in 2019, Story Missions and Hero Missions were highlighted as PvE content. However, to focus on the live game, the Hero Missions got cut out.

Despite this, the 2023 Overwatch 2 roadmap still boasts lots of new content for the upcoming seasons. You can check out this roadmap overview here.

That's all for now. Stay tuned on esports.gg for more news and updates!