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Overwatch 2 has had a weird journey to full release. It was originally shown off in one form, lost its director, and emerged in a completely different form, but always with some kind of promise of getting that Overwatch 2 PVE eventually. This week we’ve got a developer update after rumours of the Overwatch 2 PVE roadmap swirled for a while. If you were looking forward to a deep dive into the lore and world of Overwatch, it’s not good news. Activision Blizzard is entirely abandoning the original form of the game. In a developer stream, we’ve learnt that Overwatch 2 PVE is cancelled.

Source: Blizzard

Devs behind Overwatch 2 this week released new information about their plans for Overwatch 2 PVE, it’s cancelled. Or at least in the form that was originally promised.

Overwatch 2 is in early access, but had originally been planned as a much more full-on solo experience. There’d be Overwatch 2 PVE with a full story, cinematics, and loads of Hero Missions. This was almost an RPG, with characters unlocking their abilities over time with skill trees.

All of this was pretty central to the game’s early development. Features were shown off and a lot of hype was built during the game’s early development over this. More specifically though, the work being done on this PVE experience was cited as the reason for giving up on Overwatch 1. It was also a carrot held up for why a more barebones game had to tide fans over in the meantime. Blizzard has just made it official that this isn’t coming to the game anymore, as Overwatch 2 PVE is cancelled.

Lots of people are fairly upset at this given the journey here. But after the game lost its director early in production and all talk of PVE seemed to disappear, there’s been some clues.

Overwatch 2 was originally planned to have PVE in a huge role. Its first details at BlizzCon focused on this, and a lot got shown off. Plans changed though. After a series of problems with Blizzard, Overwatch 2 was brought forward. We got some changes to the overall game like 5-v-5, but a game with a heavy resemblance to Overwatch 1 launched without PVE, but now for free.

Source: Blizzard

Fans were promised that an eventual Overwatch PVE experience was still coming. However, the PVE elements had almost disappeared from any promotional materials about the game. The big change really seemed to happen when Overwatch had a change of director.

With the original version of Overwatch 2 PVE cancelled though, fans might be left wondering just what the point of the switch to Overwatch 2 was. Its biggest differentiating feature is no longer part of the game.

Overwatch 2 PVE isn’t coming in the form anyone expected. Instead, it’s going to be more of a continuation of what the first Overwatch got. These will be mission-based content that reusing the existing assets for the game. An example given has been the current Starwatch event.

While fun, Starwatch is a standard game of Overwatch with some minor format changes, reusing an old map. It’s not the type of “story” content that was planned for the sequel. With Overwatch 2 PVE cancelled though, this is all we’re getting for the foreseeable future.