I noticed tonight that the dialogue spoken by Athena while accessing the missions can be skipped by pressing the X button on a PS five controller. Knowing that, I decided to back out of the menu and test to see whether or not I could mash X and skip the cut scene even sooner as well as identify the earliest possible moment where you can simply press X in order to skip the cut scene and bring up the menu to select missions. I discovered a few things:
- Firstly, there’s currently no free-to-play Missions available at this time in the Anniversary event.
- Secondly, the earliest moment you can press X ( and probably Xbox A) to skip the intro cutscene is when Winston begins speaking the word “afraid.”
- Thirdly, it is REALLY easy to advance to the “purchase” screen to buy “locked missions”
At this point, I’d like to remind you that I was Button Mashing my PS5 X button to simply skip the intro cutscene for missions. This is a habit developed from playing Overwatch for many years on the Xbox One from a disc. Gotta skip the cutscene and PRESS A TO PLAY every time… good memories 
Other things I noticed included:
- It seems to only take 2-3 button presses to get to the “Purchase” button which is also PS button X (xbox button A), the button used to advance the cutscene and select missions.
- Getting from the intro cutscene to the Purchase screen is FAST on a PS5.
- This can happen in less than a second, and I almost bought the INVASION Bundle before I realized what was going on because the UI advanced so quickly through the options.
Now I’ve recently heard a cold take that UI for modern games is developed to make it as easy as possible to purchase additional products and services once you’re in the game, so this kind of seems like a glaring issue to me. Seeing as Diablo IV recently changed their controller confirmation button for purchasing the battle pass, shouldn’t overwatch’s mission system get a similar treatment so that nobody accidentally buys something they did not intend to purchase?
I’ve only tested this phenomenon on my PS5, and am not able to test it on Xbox One because mine has recently died via power surge after serving me for the past 6.5 years as a dedicated Overwatch machine. My only regret is that I cannot remove the Overwatch disc without voiding the warranty, but then again, Microsoft no longer supports the original Xbox One models…
That being said, I would assume it takes a bit more time to get to the “purchase” page on an older console due to increased loading times.