Throughout a developer livestream in the present day, Blizzard revealed its roadmap for the approaching months. The roadmap, which was introduced by recreation director Aaron Keller and govt producer Jared Neuss, particulars what’s coming throughout Season 5, 6, 7, and past. Along with PvP updates, the Overwatch 2 builders additionally gave us an thought of when to count on the long-awaited PvE expertise that was introduced alongside the sport in 2019.
“As work slowly continued on Overwatch 2, we started to drag an increasing number of of our focus and vitality away from the reside recreation and the entire those who have been enjoying it,” Keller mentioned on the stream. “We had those who have been excited to be enjoying that recreation, they usually simply wished extra of it. So, we had a troublesome option to make: We might proceed engaged on our authentic imaginative and prescient for Overwatch 2 with no definitive finish date in sight or change our technique and get one thing in entrance of gamers sooner. We selected the latter, and we launched Overwatch 2 final October with new heroes, new maps, new modes, and common seasonal updates. However greater than that, we shifted our values for the way we wish to develop the sport. Not would we retailer content material up for actually huge releases and go away the sport type of languishing on the aspect. Now, we made the dedication to all the time prioritize the reside recreation and the entire individuals enjoying it and to dedicate our improvement efforts there.”
Season 5, which has the theme of “Mischief and Magic,” is at the moment set to kick off on June 13. This fifth season of the live-service shooter brings occasions and modes, together with a brand new limited-time occasion known as Questwatch, in addition to the return of the Summer time Video games occasion. The roadmap additionally guarantees a cinematic reveal, a 5v5 mini comp season, the Creator Workshop mode, and the return of the On Hearth mechanic that was current in Overwatch.
Season 6, which is ready for later this summer season, is heralded by Blizzard as the one largest drop of recent gameplay launched at one time since Overwatch 2 launched in October of final yr. Season 6 guarantees a brand new help hero, Flashpoint, Hero Mastery, a Firing Vary, a participant development system, and the annual Overwatch anniversary occasion. Maybe most significantly, Season 6 provides gamers the PvE content material that was introduced again in 2019, as Story Missions arrive as a part of Season 6. Sadly, the Hero Missions PvE mode has been minimize from the workforce’s plans.
“Improvement on the PvE expertise actually hasn’t made the progress that we might have hoped,” Neuss mentioned on the stream. “The workforce has created a bunch of fantastic content material. So, there’s superior missions which are actually thrilling, there’s model new enemies which are tremendous enjoyable to battle, and a few really nice and ridiculous hero skills. However sadly, the hassle required to drag all of that collectively to a Blizzard-quality expertise that we are able to ship to you is large, and there actually is not any finish in sight or outlined sort of finish date the place we are able to put that out into the world. And so, we’re left with one other troublesome selection: Will we proceed to pour all that effort into PvE, hoping that we are able to land it in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later or can we follow this set of values that we have aligned on and concentrate on the reside recreation and concentrate on serving all of you? With all the pieces we have realized about what it takes to function this recreation on the degree that you simply deserve, it is clear that we will not ship on that authentic imaginative and prescient for PvE that was proven in 2019. What which means is that we can’t be delivering that devoted Hero Mode with expertise timber, that long-term energy development … these issues simply aren’t in our plans anymore.”
Lastly, we realized what gamers can count on from Season 7 and past, which features a new tank hero, reworks of longtime heroes Roadhog and Sombra, a brand new Management map, a brand new winter occasion, new Hero Mastery missions in multiplayer, cinematic debuts, the return of fan-favorite modes and Aggressive Mastery heroes, a brand new limited-time collaboration occasion mode, and a brand new lore codex.
Overwatch 2 launched on October 4, 2022. Whereas the preliminary response was constructive (learn our assessment right here), the method to supporting the sport and the season move construction has deterred many gamers from maintaining with the title.
