Gameitall 
If there is one big criticism that a lot of people had when it came to Blizzard’s Overwatch, was that the game built up an interesting world with no story or campaign set in it outside of items outside of the game through trailers and comics. The introduction of seasonal PVE modes that would eventually open up the story – such as the Archives events, were welcomed modes but unfortunately didn’t stay.
That is thankfully going to change in Overwatch 2, as the upcoming sequel is going to include new 4-player co-operative missions which will tell “a complete story with beginning, middle, and end.” According to Overwatch 2’s lead writer Michael Chu in an interview with the Playstation Blog. “We’ve finally moved the story forward after Winston’s recall, and we hope to continue to push events into the future in the stories to come.”
In the interview, which you can in full here, Chu acknowledged that the mentioned seasonal PvE events were mostly an “experiment” with story-driven content and that they learned on how to make the content work for the new campaign mode, which will have maps that will be two-times the size of Overwatch’s regular maps, that will add more gameplay and story possibilities.
“We like to call the story a Story Experience,” Chu said. “It’s not quite a single-player campaign in that you will be playing the story alongside three other players in co-op. Players will experience the story together with their friends.”
The new campaign mode will take place after Winston’s recall and push the story further. These missions will lock players in with mission-specific heroes and attempt to clear the objectives, there are some other adjustments to the game that you’ll only see in this mode, such as a new progression system which can upgrade abilities for each hero.
Because of that, the PvE and PvP progression for Overwatch 2 will be “entirely separated” as per Aaron Keller, Overwatch’s assistant game director. “We don’t want gameplay changing talents and abilities to give an unfair advantage in PvP,” Keller said. “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.”
Interestingly, the release of Overwatch 2 will not be the death of the original, multiplayer-only focused game. Owners of the first Overwatch will still receive regular updates, new heroes and maps alongside Overwatch 2’s PvP content with the PvE campaign being exclusive to the sequel. All PvP progression from the first, including character skins and levels, will also carry over to the sequel.
This concept has been hit and miss for fans, as many find that PvE should have been something introduced in the first game rather than released in a full-fledge sequel, especially if the original game will be receiving the same updates the sequel.
Overwatch 2 was announced earlier this year a Blizzcon but no release window was given. Blizzard has confirmed that the game will release on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One – but no talks about Next-Gen Consoles at this time.
