Overlook 2 director Aaron Keller and executive producer Jared Neuss announced in a Twitch stream on Tuesday that a cornerstone of the game’s promised story mode, Hero Missions, has been canceled. The game’s fan base isn’t too happy with the news, so on Friday, Keller went to the Overwatch Blog to provide a more in-depth explanation behind the decision.
In 2019, the Overlook 2 team announced upcoming PvE content in the form of Story Missions and Hero Missions (or “Hero Mode”). Keller reiterated on Friday that while development on the latter mode has stopped, the first is yet to come Overlook 2 later this year. “The work that has been done here is amazing, way above what we have built before in our game for PvE, and I can’t wait for our players to get their hands on them,” said Keller. “We’ll be sharing more details there in the coming weeks.”
Regarding the cancellation of Overlook 2‘s Hero Missions, which would have allowed players to upgrade individual heroes through talent trees in what was supposed to be a deeply replayable PvE version of the game, Keller delves into the history of Overexpected as a game born from the cancellation of an MMO Blizzard was developing, codenamed Project Titan. The plan, Keller says, was to keep building Overexpected to make it into something bigger – not quite Titansize, but fully equipped.
“When we started Overexpected in 2016 we quickly started talking about what that next iteration might be,” Keller said. instead, we stayed focused on a plan that was years old, work started on the PvE part of the game, and we continued to steadily move more and more of the team to work on those features.
“Things rarely go as planned in game development. We struggled to get a foothold with the Hero Mission experience early on. Reach grew. We tried to do too many things at once and we lost focus. The team has built some really great stuff, including hero talents, new enemy units, and early drafts of missions, but we never managed to pull together all the elements needed to create a polished, cohesive experience.”
After much internal deliberation, the team decided to cancel Overlook 2‘s Hero Missions – a decision Keller acknowledged would upset many of the game’s players. “This has been difficult for us, but as the director of this project, I have to do my best to make decisions that put the game and community first, even if those decisions are disappointing,” said Keller. “In this case, I had a hard time turning away from a vision that just wasn’t working. And for that I want to apologize to our players and to our team. I’m sorry.”
Keller closes the post by saying the Overlook 2 team is still committed to delivering story missions, new co-op content, and new stories told both inside and outside the game itself. Keller’s last note aligns this point Overlook 2‘s development into that of Project Titan, representing “a moment of metamorphosis” for the team and the project. Keller added: “This is another moment of change. And the future of Overwatch will be born out of it.”
“We are focusing our efforts and our passion on making this game an ever-evolving experience,” said Keller. “We are still committed to building many of the elements we talked about at BlizzCon 2019, including the story missions that delve into the next chapter of the Overwatch universe, new types of co-op content we haven’t shared yet, and new stories that we intend to tell both in and out of the game. We are excited about this direction and we can’t wait for you to finally experience what we have built.”