Blizzard has just dropped a preview of its upcoming roadmap for Overwatch 2, detailing its plans for the next three seasons. While each season promises to add a plethora of exciting content, Season 6 looks more jam-packed than any Overwatch 2 season yet, and may bring the biggest changes to the game that fans have ever seen.
The first piece of information that piqued fans' interest was that Overwatch 2's Season 6 will bring yet another support to the game. With rumors around a Lifeweaver rework in Overwatch 2, it seems that the current focus is revamping the support position. On top of a new hero, Season 6 also promises to rework the current progression system, add PvE-based missions, new events, and much more.
PvE Will Be Introduced in Season 6 of Overwatch 2, Albeit in a Different Form
Fans have long been anticipating the drop of PvE content in Overwatch 2, but it looks as though Season 6 will deliver on Blizzard's promise, albeit in a much different fashion than fans were expecting. Blizzard detailed now-scrapped plans for a PvE mode within Overwatch 2 back at BlizzCon 2019, suggesting the addition of a PvE mode that would be implemented into the game all at once in a future update. Now, with the release of the Season 6 roadmap, the plans for PvE are more clear.
While PvE content in Overwatch 2 has been confirmed in Season 6, it appears as though Blizzard is aiming to implement PvE in bite-sized iterations. While plans of talent trees and the like have been discarded, Season 6 will bring Story Missions to fans, allowing them to experience smaller-scale PvE content. While details are relatively scarce about how these Story Missions will manifest, fans can expect that they will be part of Overwatch 2's content updates for the foreseeable future.
Even though fans' worst fears about Overwatch 2's PvE have been confirmed, the change could have unexpected, positive consequences. Since Blizzard now plans to release the PvE story in smaller segments, it can play around by introducing non-canon, 'what if' style scenarios. In lieu of the talent progression and other scrapped aspects of PvE, Blizzard could also offer unique rewards based on performance in smaller Story Missions, such as rewards for speedrunning through a scenario, achievements earned within each scenario, or something similar.
Overwatch 2 Season 6 Adds a New Support Plus Revamped Player and Hero Progression
Overwatch 2 is making good on its promise to focus on the Support position. Little is known about the upcoming support hero in Overwatch 2, but fan speculation is already running rampant. The image used on Blizzard's roadmap appears fairly innocuous at first glance, but it is the same image used for the in-game poster of Peru. While this could be a red herring, it appears to suggest, at least for now, that Blizzard's next support hero could be Peruvian.
In response to fans' complaints about the grind in Overwatch 2, Season 6 will implement a new player progression system as well as a hero-specific progression system with the aim to reward players more for their time spent in the game. The player progression system will likely reinvent the typical leveling progression in Overwatch 2 with the Hero Mastery likely functioning similarly to other games like DOTA, where players are rewarded for their time spent on a specific character.
Not only will Season 6 make these major changes to Overwatch 2, but it will also overhaul the firing range, add a handful of events, and implement a new game mode to the competitive rotation. Even as Season 7 promises to add a new Tank hero, it will be difficult to top the massive changes coming in Season 6.
Overwatch 2 is out now in early access for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.