Overwatch 2: Campaign Leveling Will Be Separate From Competitive, And Other New Details

Overwatch 2 was revealed earlier this month during BlizzCon 2019, and it’s coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Its major new addition is a single-player (and co-op) campaign that will bring all of the heroes together to battle a new threat, and fans are hungry for more details. Now lead writer Michael Chu and assistant game director Aaron Keller have spoken to PlayStation Blog about the story they’re working on, giving us some further information about this new mode.

Keller states that Blizzard wants players to experience more the Overwatch’s world than they have previously, and that the campaign missions “tell an engaging narrative about how the heroes of Overwatch respond to a new global threat.” These missions are “deeply replayable,” apparently, and will shift players between “a wide variety of locations all over the world.” He mentions the leveling system, and says that “players will level their heroes and use different elements to modify their abilities and power levels.”

Keller also says that Blizzard has “lots of heroes in the works” beyond Sojourn. This matches up to earlier reports that suggested that Blizzard has internal concept art for at least four other heroes that are being worked on. “We can’t get into who they are exactly, or what their gameplay might be like,” Keller says, “but they will help round out the world of Overwatch and give us new gameplay mechanics we have not yet seen.”

Michael Chu’s early answers reflect earlier comments about how Overwatch 2 will follow up on the threads established with the original game, but he has more to say on the game’s structure here. “With story missions, we’ll have a more traditional way to tell a story in the Overwatch universe,” he says. “A complete story with beginning, middle, and end. In addition, 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.”

Keller notes that the maps added for the campaign are about twice as large as the multiplayer maps we’re used to, stating that they’ve “got way more advanced technology to show dynamic weather, lightning, explosions, and more.” Every mission will have its own opening and closing cinematic, Keller confirms. He also says that, at present, progression between the campaign and standard multiplayer is planned on being kept separate, so that leveling up in one mode does not affect your progress in the other. “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 does not yet have an release date or window. Work on it has slowed updates for the original, but once it releases the two iterations of Overwatch will share all PVP content.