Overwatch 2 director talks about bringing story content back to the game

Today, in a new video interview shared by streamer Jay3, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller talked about a desire to bring more story back into Overwatch. When the original game was launched in 2016, fans loved the in-game lore and characters. Blizzard frequently created animated shorts for most of the character roster, often introducing new ideas, connections, and characters. Overwatch 2 has been monumentally controversial since its launch in 2022, when it became free to play and replaced the original game. The sequel promised a PvE mode that would essentially be a “story mode,” but then scrapped those plans in 2023, much to the disappointment and fury of the fanbase.

Overwatch 2 director talks about the importance of story and lore in new interview

Overwatch 2’s game director, Aaron Keller, said in the interview that “it feels like Overwatch has dropped the ball when it comes to story and lore…” which many fans might consider an understatement, but at least someone is acknowledging it. The team at Blizzard has not released an animated short for Overwatch since 2023. Hazard’s voice actor, Connor McLeod, also took part in the interview and explained that when he was getting involved with the game, he “thought it was a story mode game” because of how detailed the characters, lore, and world were. A big part of that was watching all the animated shorts.

As a lapsed Overwatch fan, the one thing I’ll say is that the developers shouldn’t talk seriously about this unless they are serious. The forgotten promise of a PvE story mode has irrevocably burned the fanbase. That was the one thing that made all the other changes palatable, so when that was ripped out from under them, many Overwatch players realized that they were stuck with a bunch of changes they didn’t like and nothing else to look forward to. To this day, the Overwatch 2 Steam page still has one of the lowest review scores I’ve ever seen on the storefront. At the time of writing, it sits at 24% positive out of nearly 350 thousand reviews.

Since the launch of Overwatch 2, especially in the last year, the game has steadily been improving. New ideas introduced in the previous few seasons have attracted some fans back, notably the Stadium mode, a round-based battle where players can enhance and adjust their hero’s abilities throughout the match with a perk system. But one of the most significant changes happened a year ago when the team decided to stop locking new heroes behind battle passes.

There is potential for Overwatch 2 to regain some of its former glory. Introducing more story content will certainly be part of that. Whether that’s the return of animated shorts, some in-game story content, or, as McLeod brings up in the interview, an Overwatch TV show, is yet to be seen. For the sake of the fans, though, I hope they are still considering creating a PvE mode. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but better late than never.

Overwatch 2

October 4, 2022

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