Overwatch 2's PVE Was Never Going To Be Good

may 16 2023

Overwatch 2, the sequel to Blizzard Entertainment's team shooter sleeper hit Overwatch, was announced at Blizzcon in November 2019. This surprised a lot of people, since Overwatch was a live service multiplayer shooter game with basically no story, lore, or other circumstances that felt like it would require a sequel. Lots of people have speculated that the announcement of Overwatch 2 was meant to take the heat off the Blitzchung/Hong Kong controversy Blizzard was facing at the time, but hot take? I don't think this is true. I think it's more likely that Activision Blizzard loves sequels because they make more money.

Take a look at Destiny 2— the original Destiny game was a live service looter shooter that felt like it could be updated forever without real need for a sequel. It didn't really need one, but it got one anyways, and Bungie split from Activision Blizzard in 2019 because Activision Blizzard wanted them to divert focus to a Destiny 3, and Bungie didn't want to do that. Blizzard executives knew that Overwatch was one of their most popular games, and making a sequel to it would sell—; especially if they cut off server access to Overwatch, which would force players to move over to Overwatch 2 if they wanted to continue playing at all.

Whatever the reason, Overwatch 2 had been announced. They stressed that the game would be a true sequel, and would have brand new PVE elements, like new hero modes, talent trees, and longterm hero progression, as well as an overall of the PVP elements that fans new and loved. A lot of people didn't see the point of an Overwatch 2, and Blizzard was embroiled in pre- controversies that would lead to their company shaking lawsuit from the state of California, but fans seemed tentatively excited.

Then both games stalled. Updates on Overwatch began to trickle, before gradually slowing to a complete halt as devs began to focus more on Overwatch 2. The original game went for months at a time without receiving new heroes, new maps, new modes, or balance updates, and the game lost a lot of popularity because of the lack of content. This meant that the game's core audience was a small, unsatisfied, but extremely dedicated group of high-level players, which a game cannot survive on. Blizzard had a difficult choice to make during those days— did they please the hardcore fans or try to attract new players, which the game desperately needed?

They ended up not really doing either, and Overwatch began to fall from grace as three years dragged on and Overwatch 2 remained nowhere to be found. Resentment began to brew in the remaining fanbase. "We were abandoned for this?" seemed to be the common opinion among hardcore players. "For nothing?" News on the project was sparse, and what did get announced often angered the players; for example, the news that Overwatch 2 would be 5v5 instead of 6v6, and the news that PVE was being uncouple from the launch of the game, as previously promised, to be released at an unannounced further date.

So the game launched in late 2022 without PVE, with oppressive monetization and microtransaction systems, and with PVP that was fun, but felt like the same old Overwatch. It didn't feel like a sequel at all, but at least there was still that promised PVE on the horizon to shake things up, right?

Wrong! As of May 15th, 2023, Blizzard devs announced in a PVE panel that their original PVE plans (hero modes, talent trees, etc) had to be scrapped due to lack of resources . There will still be PVE elements, game modes like previous years' Archives, but they decided it was better to focus on PVP and keeping updates coming to the live service instead of continuing to sap up all their resources trying to make PVE work. There's already been a lot of obvious criticism and feedback fired back at this— consumers were promised a product and didn't get it, PVE was the whole reason it was marketed as a sequel and not just a big update, blah blah blah.

Something I keep seeing people throw around is, "I'm so disappointed, I was so excited for Overwatch PVE, it was the only reason I wanted to play?" But... why? In my opinion, Overwatch PVE was doomed from the start. The game was simply not designed for PVE— it was designed for PVP, and that's what it excels at. Previous PVE game modes were well received because of their novelty, and even that wears off after a while.

Was anyone really excited to play Junkenstein's Revenge the sixth year in a row?

PVE wise, the game is only really capable of very simple things. Defend this door from bots attacking it. Run over a key on the floor to pick it up. Defend a capture point with AI teammates from AI bots. None of this is particularly fun or compelling gameplay, and I always felt like the Overwatch PVE game modes were a bit of a drag. Maybe some people genuinely enjoy this kind of gameplay and did find those game modes to be fun, but getting upset that there's not going to be Overwatch PVE is like getting upset that a McDonalds by your house closed. There are still a billion other places you can go to get that same experience!

Why are people acting like Overwatch 2 PVE would have been the pinnacle of gaming? The reason they couldn't get PVE working after throwing resources at it for three years was because the game was simply not designed for PVE. Blizzard really fucked these developers over by either forcing them or allowing them to think that they could add PVE, which would be designing and coding a brand-new game from the ground up, with half the resources they needed. It was never going to happen, and the onus really is on Blizzard executives for not properly supporting Team 4 (the Blizzard studio who developed and continues to work on Overwatch 2).

It was pointless for Blizzard to market the game around PVE, because PVE was never going to happen and never satisfying in the first place. And Blizzard knows that! The fact that they did market it around PVE was entirely an excuse for why a sequel was necessary, and that's entirely on Blizzard's marketing and monetization executives, not on the developers. In the video where they talk about scrapping their PVE plans, you can tell that they're genuinely upset and feel bad that their hard work is being wasted and I feel for them. The devs are going to get all the hate for all of Blizzard's bad decisions when this whole mess is Blizzard's fault in the first place.

I'm not upset about Overwatch PVE getting scrapped because it was never going to be good in the first place. I don't blame you if you're upset, for the sole reason that they promised something that they failed to deliver. But there are much bigger issues with the game, and I feel like pointing out that the game isn't a real sequel because there's no PVP blah blah blah is such a frustrating way to critique the game because everyone agrees with it. Only the most hardcore of Blizzard fans blinded by nostalgia will defend Blizzard deciding Overwatch needed a sequel.

Blizzard doesn't care that it's not really a sequel. Calling them out on the game not being a real sequel and not having what was promised to make it a sequel does nothing. What we should actually be focusing on is what the game does have, and critiquing that. What is really the problem is the game's existing monetization and balance issues, which both exist on entirely different axes than the PVE issue. Let's focus on those before getting mad over a feature that was never good in the first place.