Overwatch 2 was only just confirmed during BlizzCon 2019 in November, so we don’t know a whole lot about it yet. But in a recent interview the game's assistant director, Aaron Keller, and lead writer, Michael Chu, have tried to give fans a better insight into their ambitions for the sequel’s story and its new PvE Story and Hero Missions.
Speaking to PlayStation Blog, Chu stated that Overwatch 2 will have “a complete story with beginning, middle, and end” and that its co-op story missions will allow for “a more traditional way to tell a story in the Overwatch universe.”
Progressing the story of the Overwatch universe will require new characters and according to Keller there are “lots of heroes in the works” who will “round out the world” and create opportunities for “gameplay mechanics we have not yet seen.”.
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While he wasn’t able to make any reveals just yet, he did add that Sojourn, who has been confirmed as a new playable hero in the game, will be “a critical character moving forward” and “extremely important to the events that take place in Overwatch 2.”
“Overall,” Keller said, “Overwatch 2 will be offering players new gameplay changing ways to play our heroes in Hero Missions. For instance, we like to give the example of Reinhardt’s Talent called “Epicenter” where instead of a cone effect for his Earthshatter ability, it becomes an Earthshatter with a full 360-degree effect around him.”
While the team wants to use new heroes and gameplay to create fresh experiences for players and tell more of the story of the Overwatch world, it also plans to use new maps to great effect.
According to Keller, the maps in Overwatch 2’s co-op PvE missions “are almost 2X larger than regular Overwatch maps.” Not only that, advances in technology mean they’ll “show dynamic weather, lightning, explosions, and more. We like to say that our maps are almost another character in helping with Overwatch 2 storytelling.”
It’s worth noting, though, that Overwatch 2’s PvE and PvP progression are planned to be “entirely separate.”
According to Keller, “we don’t want gameplay changing talents and abilities to give an unfair advantage in PvP. We’re still exploring what players can earn in PvE and building out the progression system for that. Our goal is to make a robust meaningful progression system that feeds into our Hero Missions where players can play and replay for many hours or as their main mode of play after they complete the Overwatch 2 story.”
Overwatch 2 is still in the early days of its development with no release date to speak of but it’s expected to launch on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
- Everything we know so far about Overwatch 2
