If you’re wondering why the past few Overwatch updates are severely lacking in meat the past few years or so,  wonder no more. It’s because of Overwatch 2, as many folks have suspected since the leaks.

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said during a Kotaku interview that it hasn’t been easy for the development team to split its focus on  Overwatch live content and aspects while keeping mum about Overwatch 2.

“Overwatch 2 was 100 percent the reason [for the sluggish updates]. And that was the reason that we were so excited to announce Overwatch 2. We now feel like we can have that open dialogue with the community of, ‘This is what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing these things’.”

Kaplan stressed that Overwatch’s current state isn’t a slow death, but more a temporary stasis.  Parts 1 and 2 will be updated with new maps and heroes at the same time. When part  2 goes live, part  1 will receive all of its graphical improvements.

“There will be a point where the clients merge. We think this is important, especially as a competitive experience. The whole idea is to avoid fragmenting the player base and giving anybody a competitive advantage. If we’re playing in the same competitive pool, you’d better not have a better framerate just because you’re on a different version of the engine.”

Kaplan also talked about the new non-arcade mode Push being central in expanding multiplayer mode session.

“People think I’m crazy when I say this, but we are always working on new modes. They just rarely work out to be fun and balanced. They have this high propensity to be fun for, like, a day or two, and then you realize that it’s impossible to balance, or it doesn’t have a long tail to it. What tends to happen is, the ones that are relatively successful, but we don’t feel like they’re strong enough for competitive or the Overwatch League, they make their way to the arcade. So many modes, we just kill outright. But we love making new modes.”

Though he did stress that Overwatch and its players will not be abandoned, he is still keen on making  Overwatch 2 work.

“I think Overwatch 2 is kinda gonna be the greatest moment in Overwatch history. The fact that we can pick up again with that live service cadence, where we’re 100 percent focused, is really exciting to me.”

For more on the upcoming sequel/DLC, check out what we wrote about it.