Will Overwatch Receive a Story Mode?

Now that Overwatch has launched and is already being enjoyed by gamers around the world, many are looking forward to seeing what the future of Blizzard’s brand new shooter will be. As part of the release celebrations for the game, Overwatch Game Director, Jeff Kaplan hosted a developer Q&A session streamed live on the game’s official Facebook page.

The first piece of concrete information that we got from this session was that Blizzard plan to re-add the previously removed competitive mode to the game. The mode had been briefly available during some of the game’s beta testing phases, however, following negative feedback from the community, it was removed in order to be reworked and will feature in a patch before the end of June.

One of the questions from viewers addressed by Kaplan regarded the possibility of a campaign mode being added to the game. Kaplan seemed open-minded about the prospect, outlining Blizzard’s love of storytelling through their popular Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft franchises and that the idea was already being thrown around. He elaborated that should a story campaign be included, it would be a cooperative experience instead of single-player. Even if the story mode doesn’t go ahead, Overwatch’s tale and lore will continue to grow, with more animated shorts in the works and even a graphic novel. Other features Blizzard are considering include new gameplay modes as well as some kind of social system akin to clans or guilds, which feature in many other Blizzard games.

While launch day sales are still yet to be revealed, the popularity of Overwatch is not to be underestimated, with the game’s beta alone attracting over 9.7 million players, many of which may have decided to purchase the game based on their experiences. It certainly seems like Blizzard has another killer IP on their hands to place alongside their longtime greats.