Overwatch 2 boss admits they “dropped the ball” with PvE & wants to return to story

Overwatch 2 Game Director, Aaron Keller, has admitted that they “dropped the ball” with the cancelled PvE content, but assured fans that they plan on returning to the game’s story.

When it was first announced back in 2019, OW2 was supposed to be heavily focused on story missions to flesh out the universe. These plans quickly changed and the project pivoted to the PvP hero shooter we know today, but PvE was still slated to come down the line.

However, when the first set of story missions arrived in Season 6, titled Invasion, sales were much lower than expected. This led to the cancellation of the entire project as Blizzard put all of its energy into the multiplayer side of things.

There’s been very little in the way of news since then, but OW2’s Game Director has reassured fans that story content isn’t gone forever.

OW2 Game Director wants to get back to story content

Speaking in an interview with Twitch streamer Jay 3, Keller explained that even he’s disappointed with how little attention the story and world of OW has received in recent years.

“It can kind of feels like Overwatch has dropped the ball when it comes to story and lore, you kind of see that,” said Keller during the stream. “We used to put a few more of the big animated shorts out than we do nowadays.”

He went on to mention that the canceled PvE mode was Blizzard’s big swing in terms of story content, but they’ve had to take a break after it failed to land. However, he also teased that they aim to pick it back up in the future.

“We did have a big plan to go after the story in the game, that was the PvE side of it with the campaign and everything like that. That didn’t work out, so it was kind of a reset moment for us when that happened, and we would like to get back to it.

“I think one of the best parts of Overwatch is the universe and the characters there. So that’s definitely a goal of ours to get back to it, [but] there’s been a bit of a step backward we’ve had to take.”

Although Keller didn’t go into specifics about the form new story content would take, or give a timeline for when it would return, he assured players that animated shorts will return eventually, as the game can’t be “firing on all cylinders” without them.