Aaron Keller hears you all and agrees: Overwatch 2 could definitely use more story content right about now, stating that for it to be “firing on all cylinders” it needs to once again make story content a pillar of the game.
Keller, who serves as Overwatch 2’s director, was recently interviewed by content creator Jay3 about many aspects of the live game, including the status of a map editor/creator, a looking-for-group function, and the process of creating just one of the game’s many heroes. The latter question eventually led to discussion about the state of narrative content in Overwatch 2 and Keller was refreshingly frank about the matter.
When probed about a potential TV series, Keller responded by saying that the team “would love to do that” before springboarding off of the question to address narrative-starved fans. Keller continued, saying that the team sees a lot of sentiment online that “Overwatch has dropped the ball when it comes to story and lore.”
Despite the fact that the Overwatch games have always been multiplayer-first, Blizzard has always employed a story team that fleshed out the game’s constantly expanding cast. These storytelling efforts encompass many aspects of the game, like sprays, emotes, voice lines, interactions with certain other characters, in-game bios, events, and skins. Outside of the game, it has manifested as comics, novels, and vibrant animated shorts and cinematics, the latter of which Jay3 points out that he misses at one point in the interview.
Keller seems to as well, claiming, “For me personally, for us to say Overwatch 2 is firing on all cylinders, we need to have some of that come back,” all the while expressing that he and the team know that they used to to put out more animated shorts in the past and want to again. Accordingly, he claims that the team had large ambitions of pursuing story content in Overwatch 2, but then, as is often the case in game development, things went sideways.
Keller admitted, “To speak frankly about it, we did have a big plan to go after story in the game. That was the PvE side of it, with the campaign and everything like that. And it didn’t work out.” When Overwatch 2 was first announced, a major new feature of the then-upcoming sequel was the implementation of a PvE mode complete with a story that would weave together a cohesive campaign featuring a number of the Overwatch cast.
However, the heavily anticipated PvE mode was detached from Overwatch 2 prior to its launch in 2023, and was eventually scrapped, which prompted “a kind of reset moment” for the game’s team. Aspects of it were later salvaged for later updates, like a content pack of PvE missions that was sold to players post-launch. One of Overwatch 2’s newest additions, the Stadium mode, also adapts the canned PvE mode’s skill-progression system into a PvP format that has proven to be a success with fans of the game.
But for fans of Overwatch’s larger narrative and cast, these additions, as well as constant balance changes and mechanical pivots, have come at the cost of little-to-no in-game story content, let alone cinematics. Keller and the Overwatch team seem to get that though, and want to get back to it, sharing, “It’s just there’s been a bit of kind of like a step backwards that we had to take in order for us to be able to start moving forward on it again.”
With the game seemingly in a healthier place these days, Keller’s comments could be a positive sign that Overwatch’s narrative will be a larger part of the game again in the near future.
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