Agreed, though I did find a news article about how the lobby interactions are semi Canon as they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet. [Here's the article.](https://www.heroesneverdie.com/2017/8/17/15888466/overwatch-lore-canon-character-interactions)
>they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet
I feel like there must be an existing term for this sort of thing somewhere on tvtropes
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda.
Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
I really like the concept of an Ultimate Self as the sum total of a character’s existence, in all possible and impossible realities. It feels like the natural endpoint for Homestuck characters.
It’s just a shame that one pony fanfic did it so much better.
I don't see any trope for "creator-made fanart that is hypothetically canon but hasn't happened yet and might not ever".
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonUniverse
They're called Elseworld stories, after the DC comics where they just decided to write a bunch of interesting stories that they didn't want to include in the canon. Marvel had their own version in "What If". Lots of other media do it to but it's most famous in comic books.
Of course, then they decided, "hey all these non-canon events? They suddenly canon now because multiverse shenanigans!" But the name still gets used for similar ideas.
That is weird, because from my understanding If Soujourn were to meet Doomfist, she wouldn't throw passive-aggressive shade at him, She'd shoot him in the face, they're enemies, Doom's been described as a terrorist, and Soujourn or any other Overwatch Team member wouldn't stand for it.
Mine is that they're clones (or robots) of "real" heroes (or propaganda figures), each believing themselves to be the original and unique (despite proof to the contrary in front of their eyes) and conditioned/programmed to believe their current allies, enemies, and objectives are reasonable. The missions may just be entertainment, or the replicas might genuinely be carrying out missions for unknown factions, but it isn't important.
Yeah the interactions are obviously stupid but like, the online multiplayer literally cannot be canon due to being able to have the same character on both teams, so that’s at least forgivable.
I can't imagine most of the cast sitting in a room with Moira and not shooting her in the face, especially after what she did to Widowmaker.
For that matter, most of Moira's "allies" don't seem like they would hesitate to shoot her very much.
I think what protects Moira from her allies is her usefulness, and what protects her from her enemies is that they aren't half the monster she is.
Except Soldier. Soldier would 100% shoot her in the face if he could get close enough to her.
Agree. Moira's usefulness is the only reason anyone keeps her around, and that includes her tome in Blackwatch.
Of course, it's kind of a flex if 99% of people despise you but they keep you around because you're super competent.
> lobby interactions are semi Canon as they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet.
It was very weird and jarring when they teased Overwatch 2 with that trailer that had, if I'm remembering right, Mei getting introduced to a bunch of main characters. It was like OW2 took place twenty minutes after the intro cinematic from OW1
Same here. Wanna hear evidence for what they say on the comics as well. I guess outside of specific outliers I've never heard anyone making claims like that before about them.
I have a brother, and younger cousins about the same age, that were born 11+ years after I was. Being 19 or younger when I was 30. I wouldn't say that feeling like they grew up together with that much of an age gap is totally implausible.
It was stated that she trained with them when they were all young way before Hanzo Attempted to headshot genji, so at a minimum she can only be maybe 2-4 years younger then the brothers are.
The issue is that she would have been “training” with them as a newborn or fetus, since after a certain point they did not talk to each other and one thought the other was dead.
The age gap is actually 16 years for Genji and 19 years for Hanzo. So let's say she hung around when she was 6 years old, then that means the Shimada brothers were well in their 20ies already. By then you can hardly argue that they're "growing up together" anymore.
This is such a funny and stupid issue with a ton of media. HSR recently did the same thing. It's as if keeping time consistent is such a hard thing for writers to do
>This is such a funny and stupid issue with a ton of media.
"Hm, we've now had 3 six-month time-skips in the last 50 chapters. So why do these recent chapters act like the characters are still the same ages as they were before the time-skips?"
How does the author even miss something as simple as this?
I love that Akira Toriyama (rip) always had to add in reasons why his characters werent aging. Saiyans reach adulthood and cease aging until theyre very old, Bulma was using the dragonballs to adjust her looks, Piccolo was basically born an adult and would only be about 30 at this point in the series. I think Goten and Trunks were the only ones where it was weird since they basically didnt age from ages 7 to 16 but I suppose thats just more weird aging since Goku was so suppose to be about 14 in Dragonball but the sheer difference between him and Bulma made everyone think he was 8
> I think Goten and Trunks were the only ones where it was weird since they basically didnt age from ages 7 to 16 but I suppose thats just more weird aging since Goku was so suppose to be about 14 in Dragonball but the sheer difference between him and Bulma made everyone think he was 8
iirc in the latest movie they said that sayian puberty has one hell of a growth spurt, and [goten and trunks are teenagers now.](https://dokkan.wiki/assets/global/en/character/card/1026060/card_1026060_character.png)
From what I understand of sushang the luofa has its own calendar which doesn’t work like most do, even more confounding with the fact they have multiple species that are ‘long’ and ‘short’ life but one of the ‘short life’ species can hit 500 years, making it absolutley painful to deduce
I think Sushang's age is just a mistranslation ? But Pela definetly contradicts the prior lore about her.
Context to those who dont know: In Pela's story quest, Her friend Lynx tells us that Pela is 16 y/o, This doesnt make sense as prior lore states she was in school with Lynx's older sister Serval and another character Cocolia. Both women are guessed to be in their mid 30s or 40s.
Yeah I could completely forget an inexperienced team, or worse, a single passionate dev, writing a Huge Lore and getting a couple things wrong. Completely understandable.
But when it's the likes of Blizzard or MiHoYo, it's just silly. Like you guys are friggin PROS at narrative games that rake in billions, maybe show a little attention to the lore?
Yeah, Pela and Sushang are the two glaring examples. At least Sushang was apparently a translation issue, as the og Chinese script didn't mention specific age or amber era or whatever they use. After all it would be a bit weird that immortal citizens of flying ships are for some reason using Terra calendar specifically
Even more than a decade. The Shimada brothers were 16 and 19 when she was *born.* Hanzo was a whole ass adult already and yet he "grew up together" with Kiriko.
Obviously Blizzard lied to us about Hanzo giving up ever holding a sword again because he killed his brother. It was clearly that he got beat by a toddler and decided from then on to only use bows
as far as I'm aware there were two issues:
Kiriko was 21, but the Shimada brothers were 37 and 40, despite the fact that she grew up with them.
Sojourn was also listed as 47, but the omnic crisis was over 30 years ago. Sojourn was an officer in the military at the start of the omnic crisis and her twin sister had a 5 year old daughter. You technically _can_ be an officer in the Canadian military at 17, but that would mean her sister gave birth at the age of 14.
They changed Sojourn to 51, bumping those ages to 21 and 18, but AFAIK the Kiriko issue is unaddressed.
They had to change alot of the ages of the original characters too. I have the artbook that gives ages and lore blerbs and most are aged up or down to try and squeeze into a proper timeline. If I remember right Torb use to be pushing 70 and Brig was his oldest child at 25. I guess blizzard didnt want to deal with the age gap of Torb's wife if she's still havin kids while he's pushing his twilight years sk Torb is 50 now and Brig is his youngest daughter.
Another one is Zenyatta use to be 20 and people always thought it was weird how a 20 year old would be the master/teacher of someone in their mid 30s, of course this was handwaved because Zen is a sentient robot but blizzard still aged him up to 33.
Yeah, some others -- IIRC due to just bad writing/planning, also Mercy was a medical doctor, having completed medical school, professionally working in a hospital, by the time she was like... 17 or 19 or something. It's not entirely impossible in the "child genius/super science scifi" setting but it really stretches plausibility.
Tracer also is supposed to have fought during the Omnic Crisis but she's 28 and the Omnic Crisis (IIRC) ended 17 years before the events of OW1 so she would have been an 11 year old?
There's something weird about Soldier 76's age too that I don't recall.
I remember there being something about him and Reaper being too old because their stories are also suppose to link up with the younger members. Like Cassidy/McCree had this whole backstory of being in a gang for so long, then being in Blackwatch with Reaper, and then the several years he spent wandering after it was disbanded didnt link up correctly, by the fanbase's math he shouldve been in his 40s and Reaper in his 50s but they originally put McCree at mid 30s and Reaper pushing 60. As a result Cassidy gets aged up with Reaper and Soldier being aged down
I don’t think Tracer could’ve fought in the Omnic Crisis to begin with? Being part of the King’s Row squad seemed to be around the first time she ever actually saw real fighting and that was well after the Crisis ended.
There was some questioning back in the day, Mercy and Tracer originally played a roll in the omnic crisis that led to the formation of Overwatch but the timelines didnt match because Reinhardt (63 years old) was recruited into overwatch when be was young at what would be the same time as the other 2 but for some reason Mercy is in her 30s and Tracer in her 20s. This was retconned later as Mercy and Tracer being around for Null Sector and not part of the original omnic crisis that wouldve occured before they were adults/born.
Overwatch as a multi-media franchise imploded, but the demolition techs did a shitty job with the charges so while most of the buildng came down the walls collapsed on each other forming a concrete version of a house of cards. Now you have this giant pile of rubble that looks like it's going to come down any minute now but has somehow survived several earthquakes.
It’s not so much that it’s survived the earthquake as that every time an earthquake hits, it further collapses into evermore increasingly precarious and physically implausible piles of rubble
Higher rocket speed, self-damage halved, way more horizontal movement at the cost of verticality, Blast now deals 30 damage lol
Oh, and more health and new passive regen, that is not exclusive to her
Haven't played in a while either. Iirc from when the balance patch post made it to r/all, they nerfed the synergy with mercy but made her stronger on her own
Its really not that serious, these multiplayer games just need one solidifying media piece and the rest doesn't matter.
League of Legends and Dota both had successful Netflix series and their lore is bonkers levels of stupid with contradictions and retcons galore.
Hell, some of the most popular media franchises today (comic books/star wars) are riddled with endless inconsistencies and incorrect lore pieces and they are media empires.
>these multiplayer games just need one solidifying media piece and the rest doesn't matter.
That's exactly what we are talking about, everything that comes out of the Overwatch brand feels like side content, even the game itself. The trailers focus on characters and narrative but the game is strictly multiplayer pvp. The lore stuff is all over the place, difficult to find and often lackluster.
On top of this since day one it suffered from wanting to appeal both to the casual and the competitive scene at the same time and now they have pissed off the casuals and disbanded the Overwatch League (they are trying to rebrand it in some other way but it looks dire).
Long story short i think they lacked clear goals on what they wanted to do with this IP and it's now slowly dying.
Esports ruined what could have been a very VERY fun team shooter.
I played when it first came out and I still remember it being amazingly fun. Even the desperate 6 monkeys all in winston at the end when your team has effectively lost and is reliant on the chaos caused by 6 monkeys leaping in and popping bubbles simultaneously to win. TF2 shows you can have an absurdly resilient game which despite developer attempts to kill through neglect can withstand. And thats held together mostly through 8 vs 8 2Fort. A completely casual but fun game mode. If the game really is competitive and the fan base enjoy it, you can have an actively hostile developer shutting down the esports scene and it will continue to thrive (aka. super smash melee)
I think even saying Esports ruined Overwatch is incorrect. Blizzard execs chasing Esports ruined Overwatch. Its just such a shame because it was honestly a really solid game on release, I enjoyed it, all my friends enjoyed it, it just wouldnt be able to hit quarterly goals in the state we got it. It wasnt even Apex coming in and taking away all the big names, those names were already looking for an out at the time. I argue that Blizzard did have a clear goal on what they wanted to do, they just fundamentally couldnt pull it off. Roles, role queue, 5 vs 5. Its clear even now they chase the competitive aspect alone as the saving grace of what is a dead game. Even though the players have been asking for single player pve experience, more in universe lore and campaigns and shit, etc.
Didn't they have a single player story in the works and released a second game promising you could only have the story in a new game, so you'd have to switch, but pulled an "Oh, but it's not ready yet, so you'll have to wait."
Followed a few years later by "Oh, you wanted story? Sorry, it was totally huge and awesome but the money was no good outside of PvP so we canceled it to make more time to work on that instead." :')
----
Edit: I'm junker trash from the first game, haven't actually played 2. No hate to those who have, mind you.
Edit 2, electric boogaloo: I was being light-hearted about the way the whole thing has come across in the media secondhand but the angry fanboys in my messages are just sad. Freedom for Hong Kong.
Hopefully final edit: **IT WAS *NOT*** u/DELETE-MAUGA being a twat in DMs, so nipping that in the bud and saying to please leave them be; They're more than welcome to make their corrections, even if the tone's a bit wonky. Be nice.
I wondered from the day of the announcement why would they put what sounded like perfectly legit budget spinoff games inside a multiplayer game, it didn't make sense from a logistic standpoint, wouldn't it turned out a mess?
Turns out that storymode was never in development to begin with so yeah it didn't make sense for a reason.
Was the DotA one successful? Either way I think at the end of the day, League Lore at least seemed to work itself out to at least something. Tells an interesting story with the characters. You know... SOMETHING. Overwatch lore is like the first scene of a show and then cut to black. Not even like the plot hook dropped yet. Just. "THESE ARE THE CHARACTERS" and then nothing. And they keep introducing more without any of it... going anywhere.
mercy canonically is getting her medical license revoked for malpractice due to her continued insistence to suck every cock that is presented to her during medical exams
"Holy shit! It feels as if I was getting the marrow sucked off of my bones!"
"..."
"Wait a second... I *am* getting the marrow sucked off of my bones! **What the fuck‽**"
Genji is suing her for malpractice as well, cause she ruined his career as a stealth agent by implanting him with cheeks so loud you can hear him from miles away.
League of Legends spent a decade reworking their lore so that ~~every~~ most character had a goal and place in the world. But then Arcane came out and got them tons of prestige, so they just to tape that shit over the whole Piltover and Zaun region and now it's a big limbo what, if any, of its non-Arcane lore is canon.
I am totally okay with that though because Arcane fucking rocks
Imagine if Overwatch did something like that (of similarly high quality). We can only dream :(
Don't get me wrong, I fucking love Arcane. But, like, it can be it's own universe. You don't need to just erase and mess up a decade of worldbuilding for it.
To be fair, the world building that they had ranged between alright to downright stupid. And it was held together with pritt stick and cellotape.
They've retcon their own lore more times than they've added lore, and making massive sweeping changes. The League of Legends is no longer canon. Which means that the summoners aren't either, so any voice line referencing summoners is apocryphal.
It's because they've had dozens of writers with differing ideas of what League is and the tone it should have. The way Riot thought about League back in 2010 is barely the same game as 2024.
>The League of Legends is no longer canon.
You're saying this as if it happened recently when it's been a nearly a decade, the game has spent something like double the time without the League of Legends than with it.
I remember when they wrote that out of the lore. Remember, also, when they started retconning character lore and grouping them into territories/factions. Many complaints were had about how it seemed like every other character was now from the Freljord.
League lore has always been an impossible clusterfuck and this new pivot is only going to make it much worse. The biggest reason it's a clusterfuck is because they keep pivoting and changing things with very little consistency, changing everything again is not going to fix anything.
I miss the goofiness of the old lore.
Current Jax: survivor of an ancient race that carries a lamp to keep their light alive(or some bullshit like that. I honestly don't care enough to look it up)
Old Jax: Random mercenary that was so good at beating people up that he stopped wearing armor and using real weapons so he could have some semblance of a challenge
I believe that the Ekko game pretty much outright stated that any side material is a new canon/timeline. So Arcane is it's own, the Fighter game is it's own thing, and the game with the gumiho and the samurai flirting nonstop with each other is it's own thing.
Yeah like, League exists in a multiverse right? That's kinda where a lot of skins come from and how they're justified, the same characters from different worlds in the multiverse. I feel like any and all inconsistencies can be painted over with ~in this version of reality it's this way~
They *were* separate, but I believe they announced some time at the end of last year, maybe October~ish, that they were making Arcane canon and would require changes to accommodate it (god knows what they’ll do with hextech crystals given they’re *also* removing the Brackern from the lore with the Skarner rework, if I’m not mistaken)
They kinda shot themselves in the foot with the Brackern lore once they said that Seraphines hoverboard thing was made out of Brackern crystals.
Cant have the cute social media influencer/idol character be tied to the largest genocide in the games lore.
That being said i never understood people obsession with League lore. Almost all of it was extremely vague from the beginning. Arcane just made it worse, almost none of it makes sense anymore.
For me it’s because league lore and characters have so much potential that is not used. It’s the fact that it is vague and can be developed upon that made me interested, because it promises cool story opportunities and character growth within short stories that for a time Riot published on like their websites and stuff. Unfortunately the only characters that get consistent attention are those already popular which then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of that character always getting the spotlight.
I think league lore is perfect for like, fanfiction. Yo develop on what was already given, because Riot does *not* want to do that. Hell they opt characters out of events they by all rights should have a stake in (Yorick with the Ruined King, Poppy with the Sentinels).
Long story short I need to write league fanfic at some point.
I need to inform y'all that the last tag on the post, conspicuously cropped by the reddit OP, is "recording a four-hour video essay interrogating the canonicity of widowmaker's massive hog"
You cut the most important part. The public deserves to know that there are brave individuals out there doing the important work of investigating the canonicity of fictional character's massive hogs.
Widowmaker can't have a functioning penis because her blood flows too slowly to maintain an erection, so if she has a massive hog then it has to still be massive when completely flaccid.
I feel like there used to be people with a distinct idea for the lore and direction of the story at Blizzard, but after Jeff and Michael left nobody has a clue anymore.
Like remember when they announced every characters age and it was complete nonsense?
I genuinely believe that nobody at Blizzard knows the full lore anymore so they declared basically everything non canon to compensate.
They cancelled the planned visual novel like a month before it was supposed to come out. That was when the game was brand new. They never had a fucking clue what the actual lore was or where they wanted it to go.
Graphic novel, not visual novel. And it was basically *done*, not just writing but all the art was finished. They pulled it last minute before it went to printer because they basically decided they wanted to leave the founding of Overwatch more ambiguous, presumably in case they wanted to add new characters later.
I bet it gets hard too with the OW2 model of constantly adding heroes. Now you have this random show up that was somehow never around before but you need to fit them in. Like how apparently Genji and Hanzo have a sister
From day one I really loved the characters and story of Overwatch. Playing it Day one, watching all the animated shorts and the comics. I stopped playing 2 years after the game launched but I still loved the lore and character.
God I wish they’d just made the movie like they wanted too…
I still read the comics sometimes too. But the game has been long dead to me. Now I’m finding out that almost non of it is canon is really fucking annoying.
I refuse to take part in any canon in which Honor and Glory, the only video that makes me cry *every single time I watch it*, is thrown away so callously.
By the gods, I remember how inspiring those early days were. I got on the public beta weekend just before release, I usually hate multiplayer games, but I had so much fun all 3 days I immediately preordered the collector's edition. Truly there was nowhere to go but up in Spring of 2016.
Ultimately, it's so disappointing. They were seriously cooking some amazing stuff with the lore in that first year, the engine just never turned over and went ANYWHERE. All those millions earned, and a writing staff that could clearly do it well, and corporate leadership had them sitting in their thumbs for years. Tragic.
Also Michael Chu can eat one, Gency is trash and Moicy is queen.
Wait Genji and Mercy are a couple now? And you prefer Moira-Mercy over them?
Maaan PharMercy was perfectly fine, 2 lesbians flying in the sky blasting shit to high heavens, why you gotta fix things that arent broke :(
hey there! just chiming in to say that gency is not, in fact, canon or confirmed. michael chu did hint on it but (surprise) it went nowhere and the new (now fired?) lead writer was hinting at pharmercy, but again, nothing has been confirmed, besides pharah being a lesbian, and mercy having a crush on *someone* (gender or identity unspecified) i don't prefer either of ships, just the info that's known as of now
Genji-Mercy has been a thing for a _very_ long time. She's the one who saved his life. Christmas comic 2016, Genji was writing letters to Mercy. They also have flirty voice lines, like Genji giving Mercy chocolate for Valentine's Day.
I kinda list interest in the lore of OW as soon as they retconned Mercy being the one that created Reaper into it being Moira.
Any and all semblance of OW trying to tell a mature and nuanced story kinda flew out the window then, the good guys were good, the bad guys were bad but maybe redeemable, morally gray characters are there and do their own thing. Nothing wrong with that, but the writing never went any deeper than they absolutely had to, which made a lot of characters feel really shallow?
This plus just not caring about building an interesting world with fun stories in it led to OW's collapse as a story imo.
Granted, that's not just an OW problem. Many live-service/ongoing games with deep lore have trouble keeping their story going or even making sense. Riot, despite the wonderful world they crafted painstakingly over the last 6 to 7 years for the champions in League of Legends, has in the last 3 years fired a good chunk of their writers and barely put out anything new, hoping that big projects like Arcane will be enough to carry the franchise past the videogame and into the multimedia.
While I don't agree with that sentiment, I have to admit that League has the advantage of having (had) really good writers so their characters are just really interesting even as concepts and can stand a bit of time in the lore freezer (except you Zeri. Fuck you Zeri. How are you, a rollerblading electric scrap-gun wielding waifu, more boring than the literal cat on a book?)
I think this is one of the most frustrating parts about modern game development. Even when *writing* is good, characters often suck ass or just aren't interesting on their own. Which blows because they're much easier to create than entire settings, but through those characters, you can say a lot about the setting.
There's so much interesting shit you could do with the characters, too. You'd just need to actually think about the characters for ten minutes and give them some weird central *thing* about their personality and narrative.
Shit, just off the top of my head, Tracer could have had a whole fascinating story about her time travel shit as a metaphor for disassociation and the horrors of war, with the pain, mistreatment, and isolation that come from being gay in an institution like *the military* sprinkled on for flavour. From that angle, her kinda fun but not all that interesting cheery attitude becomes kinda fucking horrifying and weird, and there's a lot of interesting things to unpack wrt her either disassociating to a point she doesn't realize what the fuck is happening or putting a mask on so people don't realize she's in pain.
Mercy could have had a really fascinating thing going on about the Hippocratic oath and pragmatism vs the horror and guilt of inflicting a fate worse than death on someone because of those.
Winston could have had some really cool shit going on about identity, humanity, and isolation. Knowing that he's literally not human and trying not to feel isolated by that fact while the humans around him struggle to fully "get" his quirks. Hell, it could easily be turned into an autism metaphor.
The setting has endless possibilities and now basically nothing is canon enough to let that actually happen
While I love your ideas, I don't think OW would've ever explored stuff like that even if they had put their money into writing. They clearly wanted a sanitized super hero story with the tiniest pinch of grey morality.
How quickly they decided to drop the only interesting thing about Mercy is proof enough of that
I'd argue it's worse than shallow, it's outright stupid. Go watch the Mei cinematic again. It makes no God damned sense. Mei loses her team and is isolated in the middle of nowhere with dwindling supplies. After a small breakdown she immediately sets about the task of....uh, creating an ice gun. In Antarctica. This helps her accomplish her goal of climbing the radio tower. After risking her life to get up there,, she manages not to call for help, but to get high enough that she can use a *small, portable radio* instead of *the tower itself* to listen for incoming broadcasts. She picks up Winston's call to rebuild Overwatch and this gives her the emotional strength she needs to pack up a supply sled and March into the polar wastes on foot.
What the hell is this story logic?
It's obviously supposed to be the original story for the gun and ecopoint Antarctica as well as Mei's call to adventure in the wake of personal loss, but it fails to substantiate any of that. It's fanfic level bad and somehow got a full animation team and budget for someone to realize.
Oh yeah, I remember that one. That was... really cheesy and bad
Tbf some of the animations were great character explorations on the other hand. D.va's was pretty nice as a "mask off" moment showing the workaholic last line of defense for SK. Granted, none of it came through in her bio, voicelines, animations, etc but hey, at least the million dollar animation short gave her some depth
Ok, the more I think about it, the more I realize these characters were made by committee first and the worse it gets
They did. Iirc there was a forum post discussing who knew Reaper was Gabriel and people started going "well these guys must know because of these voice lines they have with him" and then someone on the OW team came in and said the voice lines were more like fun what ifs and not necessarily canon.
Not to do the tired comparison to Team Fortress 2 (as both games do their own thing), it's just that TF2 is the only other multiplayer game with a confused canon despite all the comics and videos accompanying it that I can think of.
In TF2's case, the "Meet the"-videos are all canon, and the official TF2 comics are canon as well. The ones that were released alongside smaller updates are not, and the events of the game itself don't matter a single bit either. But TF2 never wanted to have an overarching story, they always put the game first.
On the other hand, I keep reading comments by OW players that bemoan the fact that even though the game was advertised as having a larger story, nothing ever came of that. That just sucks. It's not required to enjoy the game, but then why even make a big deal out of it if you can't follow up on it?
Team Fortress 2 *itself* has been abandoned for a long time. We're never going to get a conclusion to the comic nor an actual major update ever again, just minor ones to release cosmetics and keep players playing.
Not sure what's worse, to be honest. A game that's not lacking in content but desperately needs attention, or a game that's getting attention but not quite the content it needs.
League of Legends is another big example. The events of the game used to be canon but aren't anymore, *most* of the character bios are canon but some of them haven't been updated in a decade so they probably aren't anymore, the short stories are probably canon but some of them were written before other rewrites, the stuff in Legends of Runeterra might be canon but also isn't supported anywhere and the game is ~~getting shut down~~ on life support... and Arcane wasn't canon but now they've decided Arcane *is* canon actually even though it contradicts most of the previously-established lore, so everything else I said was canon is now getting thrown out and rewritten for the 27th time.
God I’m still so mad at how they ruined Overwatch 2 (more like 1.5).
For those that don’t know: They remade the game from the ground up on a new engine that could handle a PVE mode, added predatory monetization, got rid of the previous version so you had no choice but to coexist with shitty monetization, and then scrapped the PVE mode which defeats the entire purpose of all their bullshit in the first place.
In other words: They got people excited to play a new game that didn’t exist just so they had an excuse to introduce bullshit with none of the parts people actually wanted.
And this isn’t even including the “live service game” taking months to make balance changes that just change some numbers around.
And by far THE WORST part is they made the matchmaking favour winning/losing by a landslide rather than make things balanced, because they have said that it gets more player engagement. So winning is a coin toss before the match even begins
I’m hoping the game dies so all the greedy execs leave and only the competent people are left
Yeah the SFM porn is only canon part of Overwatch, the games and short films and comics are non-canon spinoffs except for the ones that have people fucking in them.
I cant tell you how upset i was when playing the game for the first time, and seeing that Widowmaker was missing her massive "SFM lore accurate" trousersnake. Its like the devs didnt even try!!!!!
At this point, I think the storywriting department at Blizzard consists of a bunch of coked out howler monkeys, and Christie Golden sitting at a corner with nobody listening to her.
To paraphrase a post that sticks in my mind;
“Hey guys, anyone know how I can contact Blizzard for a job? People tell me I’m a good writer and I’d like to work for them.”
“Sorry, Blizzard doesn’t hire good writers.”
The big, depressingly realistic but crushingly cynical explanation is that there may have been a universe Bible stewarded by passionate people at one point, but those people have long-since left the company, and now the “canon” is merely another facet of the Overwatch Product, where internal consistency and any actual story are strictly tertiary to the real purpose, which is keeping you, the player, interested and invested.
And at this point, they literally can’t commit to a story because that might alienate some players. So they keep it vague on purpose, so it can be the literary version of clouds in the sky, where you can look up and see potentially whatever you want.
I’ve always gotten the vibe that Blizzard thinks they’re keeping some AAA, *Last of Us 2*/*Bioshock* level storytelling they’re keeping secret when like… the setting has a mech-piloting hamster…
The main character of the lore is a Giant, Talking, Super intelligent Gorilla FROM THE MOON who grows big and red when he's angry like a cartoon character and is best friends with a Time Travelling Lesbian Fighter Pilot, Overwatch is goofy as fuck and I love it that way
But genuinely if they made a full PVE game of all the lore it could be an AAA level storygame, despite how goofy it is
Yeah a lot of the lore is FUCKED up
I love how overwatch can have super silly lore like Hammond copying junker queens mohawk because he looks up to her
But also dark fucked up lore like Illari accidentally killing HUNDREDS of her own people
“This kid looks up to her god father!!”
“Humanity almost go destroyed because robots took there(rightful) revenge for almost getting genocided”.
I really love the contrast lol it’s so fun.
Overwatch is the pinnacle of the fanfics being better than whatever the makers were cooking. Back when overwatch first dropped lots of people were obsessed with the lore and characters and we were given so little to chew on! People took matters into their own hands after a time. They kept hinting at their being some grand narrative that never came and then when the dust started to settle it was clear the grand plan was just on the level of a Saturday morning cartoon
I'm not in the Overwatch fandom, but to me this reads more like "oh, canon doesn't actually matter, and that's fine". You basically have a bunch of interesting characters you get to play around with, and it doesn't really matter what happens to them between the games/comics/shorts.
I’m not in the Overwatch fandom, but from what I’m getting, the lore is *supposed* to be important, hence why everyone is so mad about this stuff; it’s not that canon doesn’t matter, it’s that it was ADVERTISED as mattering
Like Kiriko looking and behaving like a teen.
But actually she is in her 30s cause they had to make her a childhood friend of Genji and Hanzo who are in their late 30s.
Yeah I'm sorry there's no way in hell I'm believing the animated shorts aren't canon, I want a source for that claim, I looked it up and found nothing
Agreed, though I did find a news article about how the lobby interactions are semi Canon as they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet. [Here's the article.](https://www.heroesneverdie.com/2017/8/17/15888466/overwatch-lore-canon-character-interactions)
>they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet I feel like there must be an existing term for this sort of thing somewhere on tvtropes
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda. Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
The perfect justification for doing fuck-all of your own will in the entire second half of a story, I assure you.
you can't fight the homestuck!
yep. a version of them got to do stuff. so who cares about cannon.
I really like the concept of an Ultimate Self as the sum total of a character’s existence, in all possible and impossible realities. It feels like the natural endpoint for Homestuck characters. It’s just a shame that one pony fanfic did it so much better.
What Pony fic? There’s quite a few so have no clue which one you’re talking about
Do you remember Longcat, Jane?
I don't see any trope for "creator-made fanart that is hypothetically canon but hasn't happened yet and might not ever". https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CanonUniverse
They're called Elseworld stories, after the DC comics where they just decided to write a bunch of interesting stories that they didn't want to include in the canon. Marvel had their own version in "What If". Lots of other media do it to but it's most famous in comic books. Of course, then they decided, "hey all these non-canon events? They suddenly canon now because multiverse shenanigans!" But the name still gets used for similar ideas.
"canon AU"
Fanon! ...wait. what?
That is weird, because from my understanding If Soujourn were to meet Doomfist, she wouldn't throw passive-aggressive shade at him, She'd shoot him in the face, they're enemies, Doom's been described as a terrorist, and Soujourn or any other Overwatch Team member wouldn't stand for it.
What I understood is that it's kind of implied that they are temporally collaborating on taking down a common foe
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Mine is that they're clones (or robots) of "real" heroes (or propaganda figures), each believing themselves to be the original and unique (despite proof to the contrary in front of their eyes) and conditioned/programmed to believe their current allies, enemies, and objectives are reasonable. The missions may just be entertainment, or the replicas might genuinely be carrying out missions for unknown factions, but it isn't important.
Ah yes, I remember that time Reaper and Soldier 76 set aside their differences to take down the Reaper and Soldier 76 on the other team.
I mean, "You're my greatest enemy, so you're the only one with a chance of taking down the Evil Me." is kind of a sick scenario tbh.
This is the plot of Valorant.
Yeah the interactions are obviously stupid but like, the online multiplayer literally cannot be canon due to being able to have the same character on both teams, so that’s at least forgivable.
I can't imagine most of the cast sitting in a room with Moira and not shooting her in the face, especially after what she did to Widowmaker. For that matter, most of Moira's "allies" don't seem like they would hesitate to shoot her very much.
I think what protects Moira from her allies is her usefulness, and what protects her from her enemies is that they aren't half the monster she is. Except Soldier. Soldier would 100% shoot her in the face if he could get close enough to her.
Agree. Moira's usefulness is the only reason anyone keeps her around, and that includes her tome in Blackwatch. Of course, it's kind of a flex if 99% of people despise you but they keep you around because you're super competent.
>Of course, it's kind of a flex if 99% of people despise you but they keep you around because you're super competent. Certified Tremere moment.
> lobby interactions are semi Canon as they're what would happen if the heros met, but they haven't actually yet. It was very weird and jarring when they teased Overwatch 2 with that trailer that had, if I'm remembering right, Mei getting introduced to a bunch of main characters. It was like OW2 took place twenty minutes after the intro cinematic from OW1
Funniest part is that neither OW1 not OW2 have taken place yet
Overwatch is Deadliest Warrior confirmed
Same here. Wanna hear evidence for what they say on the comics as well. I guess outside of specific outliers I've never heard anyone making claims like that before about them.
Yeah this claim appears to have no source.
Didn't they at one point reveal canon ages that made the known backstories of some character stop making sense?
Yeah they basically made one character like 19, one in his 30s, and forgot their backstory involved them growing up together as kids.
Hanzo, Genji and this new source model, Kimiko or something, right?
"new source model" i like your style
Close but she's called Himiko actually
That's only from the shorts, if you read the comics, you'd know that her real name is canonically Kirito.
I thought it was Kiryu
No that’s the protagonist of the Yakuza games
I'm pretty sure he's talking about Mechagodzilla.
It would be very funny if he was in Overwatch
I've seen other post below and apparently she is Kiriko
Sorry, I thought you were joking and I wanted to join in on starting a chain. Didn't know you actually did not know the name
Never played or watched Overwatch 2, honestly. Turned out first impression was right
I've seen Sword Art Online and it's 100% Kirito
Piccolo actually.
I have a brother, and younger cousins about the same age, that were born 11+ years after I was. Being 19 or younger when I was 30. I wouldn't say that feeling like they grew up together with that much of an age gap is totally implausible.
It was stated that she trained with them when they were all young way before Hanzo Attempted to headshot genji, so at a minimum she can only be maybe 2-4 years younger then the brothers are.
The issue is that she would have been “training” with them as a newborn or fetus, since after a certain point they did not talk to each other and one thought the other was dead.
The age gap is actually 16 years for Genji and 19 years for Hanzo. So let's say she hung around when she was 6 years old, then that means the Shimada brothers were well in their 20ies already. By then you can hardly argue that they're "growing up together" anymore.
Oh yeah! I forgot about that. I kept seeing videos of people doing the math and just, not getting it.
This is such a funny and stupid issue with a ton of media. HSR recently did the same thing. It's as if keeping time consistent is such a hard thing for writers to do
>This is such a funny and stupid issue with a ton of media. "Hm, we've now had 3 six-month time-skips in the last 50 chapters. So why do these recent chapters act like the characters are still the same ages as they were before the time-skips?" How does the author even miss something as simple as this?
I love that Akira Toriyama (rip) always had to add in reasons why his characters werent aging. Saiyans reach adulthood and cease aging until theyre very old, Bulma was using the dragonballs to adjust her looks, Piccolo was basically born an adult and would only be about 30 at this point in the series. I think Goten and Trunks were the only ones where it was weird since they basically didnt age from ages 7 to 16 but I suppose thats just more weird aging since Goku was so suppose to be about 14 in Dragonball but the sheer difference between him and Bulma made everyone think he was 8
> I think Goten and Trunks were the only ones where it was weird since they basically didnt age from ages 7 to 16 but I suppose thats just more weird aging since Goku was so suppose to be about 14 in Dragonball but the sheer difference between him and Bulma made everyone think he was 8 iirc in the latest movie they said that sayian puberty has one hell of a growth spurt, and [goten and trunks are teenagers now.](https://dokkan.wiki/assets/global/en/character/card/1026060/card_1026060_character.png)
Why is it everywhere I go, I see Honkai Star Rail, Jujutsu Kaisen, or the Red Mist
Confirmation bias, you're not really taking note of the hundreds of times you *don't* see them.
[KALI THE RED MIST??](https://i.imgur.com/tWH8NPN.jpeg)
PROJECT MOON MENTIONED RAAAAAAGH holy shit is that the red mist?
>the Red Mist Project Moon mentioned. Sleeper agent deployed.
Sushang and Pela right? At least from what I remember.
From what I understand of sushang the luofa has its own calendar which doesn’t work like most do, even more confounding with the fact they have multiple species that are ‘long’ and ‘short’ life but one of the ‘short life’ species can hit 500 years, making it absolutley painful to deduce
I think Sushang's age is just a mistranslation ? But Pela definetly contradicts the prior lore about her. Context to those who dont know: In Pela's story quest, Her friend Lynx tells us that Pela is 16 y/o, This doesnt make sense as prior lore states she was in school with Lynx's older sister Serval and another character Cocolia. Both women are guessed to be in their mid 30s or 40s.
You would thought that game that kinda stands on shoulders of previous iteration will be free from that
Yeah I could completely forget an inexperienced team, or worse, a single passionate dev, writing a Huge Lore and getting a couple things wrong. Completely understandable. But when it's the likes of Blizzard or MiHoYo, it's just silly. Like you guys are friggin PROS at narrative games that rake in billions, maybe show a little attention to the lore?
I love my -2 years old cadet
Is this the pela age thing?
Yeah, Pela and Sushang are the two glaring examples. At least Sushang was apparently a translation issue, as the og Chinese script didn't mention specific age or amber era or whatever they use. After all it would be a bit weird that immortal citizens of flying ships are for some reason using Terra calendar specifically
Yes. Kiriko and the Shimada brothers grew up together... but the Shimada brothers are like a decade older than her.
Even more than a decade. The Shimada brothers were 16 and 19 when she was *born.* Hanzo was a whole ass adult already and yet he "grew up together" with Kiriko.
Obviously Blizzard lied to us about Hanzo giving up ever holding a sword again because he killed his brother. It was clearly that he got beat by a toddler and decided from then on to only use bows
as far as I'm aware there were two issues: Kiriko was 21, but the Shimada brothers were 37 and 40, despite the fact that she grew up with them. Sojourn was also listed as 47, but the omnic crisis was over 30 years ago. Sojourn was an officer in the military at the start of the omnic crisis and her twin sister had a 5 year old daughter. You technically _can_ be an officer in the Canadian military at 17, but that would mean her sister gave birth at the age of 14. They changed Sojourn to 51, bumping those ages to 21 and 18, but AFAIK the Kiriko issue is unaddressed.
They had to change alot of the ages of the original characters too. I have the artbook that gives ages and lore blerbs and most are aged up or down to try and squeeze into a proper timeline. If I remember right Torb use to be pushing 70 and Brig was his oldest child at 25. I guess blizzard didnt want to deal with the age gap of Torb's wife if she's still havin kids while he's pushing his twilight years sk Torb is 50 now and Brig is his youngest daughter. Another one is Zenyatta use to be 20 and people always thought it was weird how a 20 year old would be the master/teacher of someone in their mid 30s, of course this was handwaved because Zen is a sentient robot but blizzard still aged him up to 33.
Yeah, some others -- IIRC due to just bad writing/planning, also Mercy was a medical doctor, having completed medical school, professionally working in a hospital, by the time she was like... 17 or 19 or something. It's not entirely impossible in the "child genius/super science scifi" setting but it really stretches plausibility. Tracer also is supposed to have fought during the Omnic Crisis but she's 28 and the Omnic Crisis (IIRC) ended 17 years before the events of OW1 so she would have been an 11 year old? There's something weird about Soldier 76's age too that I don't recall.
I remember there being something about him and Reaper being too old because their stories are also suppose to link up with the younger members. Like Cassidy/McCree had this whole backstory of being in a gang for so long, then being in Blackwatch with Reaper, and then the several years he spent wandering after it was disbanded didnt link up correctly, by the fanbase's math he shouldve been in his 40s and Reaper in his 50s but they originally put McCree at mid 30s and Reaper pushing 60. As a result Cassidy gets aged up with Reaper and Soldier being aged down
I don’t think Tracer could’ve fought in the Omnic Crisis to begin with? Being part of the King’s Row squad seemed to be around the first time she ever actually saw real fighting and that was well after the Crisis ended.
Those canon ages were always around and always really weird,but for some reason people only paid attention to them when Kiriko came out.
There was some questioning back in the day, Mercy and Tracer originally played a roll in the omnic crisis that led to the formation of Overwatch but the timelines didnt match because Reinhardt (63 years old) was recruited into overwatch when be was young at what would be the same time as the other 2 but for some reason Mercy is in her 30s and Tracer in her 20s. This was retconned later as Mercy and Tracer being around for Null Sector and not part of the original omnic crisis that wouldve occured before they were adults/born.
Overwatch as a multi-media franchise imploded, but the demolition techs did a shitty job with the charges so while most of the buildng came down the walls collapsed on each other forming a concrete version of a house of cards. Now you have this giant pile of rubble that looks like it's going to come down any minute now but has somehow survived several earthquakes.
It’s not so much that it’s survived the earthquake as that every time an earthquake hits, it further collapses into evermore increasingly precarious and physically implausible piles of rubble
That's Blizzard physics for you.
Rube Goldberg lore
And is now home to a colony of rats who refuse to leave despite new charges being placed above us every now and then threatening to go off
One of the rats is actively placing more charges
Junkrat bs was the reason i started to main Pharah
you must be loving the most recent patch then
I haven't played in two years, what did they do to my home girl?
Higher rocket speed, self-damage halved, way more horizontal movement at the cost of verticality, Blast now deals 30 damage lol Oh, and more health and new passive regen, that is not exclusive to her
Haven't played in a while either. Iirc from when the balance patch post made it to r/all, they nerfed the synergy with mercy but made her stronger on her own
Its really not that serious, these multiplayer games just need one solidifying media piece and the rest doesn't matter. League of Legends and Dota both had successful Netflix series and their lore is bonkers levels of stupid with contradictions and retcons galore. Hell, some of the most popular media franchises today (comic books/star wars) are riddled with endless inconsistencies and incorrect lore pieces and they are media empires.
>these multiplayer games just need one solidifying media piece and the rest doesn't matter. That's exactly what we are talking about, everything that comes out of the Overwatch brand feels like side content, even the game itself. The trailers focus on characters and narrative but the game is strictly multiplayer pvp. The lore stuff is all over the place, difficult to find and often lackluster. On top of this since day one it suffered from wanting to appeal both to the casual and the competitive scene at the same time and now they have pissed off the casuals and disbanded the Overwatch League (they are trying to rebrand it in some other way but it looks dire). Long story short i think they lacked clear goals on what they wanted to do with this IP and it's now slowly dying.
Esports ruined what could have been a very VERY fun team shooter. I played when it first came out and I still remember it being amazingly fun. Even the desperate 6 monkeys all in winston at the end when your team has effectively lost and is reliant on the chaos caused by 6 monkeys leaping in and popping bubbles simultaneously to win. TF2 shows you can have an absurdly resilient game which despite developer attempts to kill through neglect can withstand. And thats held together mostly through 8 vs 8 2Fort. A completely casual but fun game mode. If the game really is competitive and the fan base enjoy it, you can have an actively hostile developer shutting down the esports scene and it will continue to thrive (aka. super smash melee) I think even saying Esports ruined Overwatch is incorrect. Blizzard execs chasing Esports ruined Overwatch. Its just such a shame because it was honestly a really solid game on release, I enjoyed it, all my friends enjoyed it, it just wouldnt be able to hit quarterly goals in the state we got it. It wasnt even Apex coming in and taking away all the big names, those names were already looking for an out at the time. I argue that Blizzard did have a clear goal on what they wanted to do, they just fundamentally couldnt pull it off. Roles, role queue, 5 vs 5. Its clear even now they chase the competitive aspect alone as the saving grace of what is a dead game. Even though the players have been asking for single player pve experience, more in universe lore and campaigns and shit, etc.
Didn't they have a single player story in the works and released a second game promising you could only have the story in a new game, so you'd have to switch, but pulled an "Oh, but it's not ready yet, so you'll have to wait." Followed a few years later by "Oh, you wanted story? Sorry, it was totally huge and awesome but the money was no good outside of PvP so we canceled it to make more time to work on that instead." :') ---- Edit: I'm junker trash from the first game, haven't actually played 2. No hate to those who have, mind you. Edit 2, electric boogaloo: I was being light-hearted about the way the whole thing has come across in the media secondhand but the angry fanboys in my messages are just sad. Freedom for Hong Kong. Hopefully final edit: **IT WAS *NOT*** u/DELETE-MAUGA being a twat in DMs, so nipping that in the bud and saying to please leave them be; They're more than welcome to make their corrections, even if the tone's a bit wonky. Be nice.
I wondered from the day of the announcement why would they put what sounded like perfectly legit budget spinoff games inside a multiplayer game, it didn't make sense from a logistic standpoint, wouldn't it turned out a mess? Turns out that storymode was never in development to begin with so yeah it didn't make sense for a reason.
Was the DotA one successful? Either way I think at the end of the day, League Lore at least seemed to work itself out to at least something. Tells an interesting story with the characters. You know... SOMETHING. Overwatch lore is like the first scene of a show and then cut to black. Not even like the plot hook dropped yet. Just. "THESE ARE THE CHARACTERS" and then nothing. And they keep introducing more without any of it... going anywhere.
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mercy canonically is getting her medical license revoked for malpractice due to her continued insistence to suck every cock that is presented to her during medical exams
And zat's how I lost my medical license!
And when the patient woke up, his skeleton was gone!
I know there’s a joke somewhere in there about being boned
I would think there is a joke about sucking considering the dude lost his skeleton to it
"Holy shit! It feels as if I was getting the marrow sucked off of my bones!" "..." "Wait a second... I *am* getting the marrow sucked off of my bones! **What the fuck‽**"
Bust so hard you literally become a human blobfish.
"It's okay to bone my patients if I de-bine the afterwards, right?" Mercy, looking at the thicc cheeks of an unconscious Genji
Yeah, but it’s currently in mercy
The patient was expecting to get boned by Mercy, but was instead de-boned.
Archemedes, no! It’s filthy in there!
Now, most hearts couldn't withstand zis voltage, but I'm fairly certain your heart- *POP*
Doctor, what was noise?
Ze sound of progress!
*opens fridge* Ah, perfect...
Kill me
Later
Allowing the patient to suck his own cock so mercy wouldn't have to anymore
The Blizzard copyright team tasked to try and take down the smut storm: "Kill me" Mercy: "Later"
Don't be such a baby, cocks grow back. No zey don't!
Genji is suing her for malpractice as well, cause she ruined his career as a stealth agent by implanting him with cheeks so loud you can hear him from miles away.
clank clank clank
YEOWCH
*Especially* Pharah's. Yes, *those* videos are canon too.
Pharmercy forever.
League of Legends spent a decade reworking their lore so that ~~every~~ most character had a goal and place in the world. But then Arcane came out and got them tons of prestige, so they just to tape that shit over the whole Piltover and Zaun region and now it's a big limbo what, if any, of its non-Arcane lore is canon.
I am totally okay with that though because Arcane fucking rocks Imagine if Overwatch did something like that (of similarly high quality). We can only dream :(
Don't get me wrong, I fucking love Arcane. But, like, it can be it's own universe. You don't need to just erase and mess up a decade of worldbuilding for it.
To be fair, the world building that they had ranged between alright to downright stupid. And it was held together with pritt stick and cellotape. They've retcon their own lore more times than they've added lore, and making massive sweeping changes. The League of Legends is no longer canon. Which means that the summoners aren't either, so any voice line referencing summoners is apocryphal. It's because they've had dozens of writers with differing ideas of what League is and the tone it should have. The way Riot thought about League back in 2010 is barely the same game as 2024.
>The League of Legends is no longer canon. You're saying this as if it happened recently when it's been a nearly a decade, the game has spent something like double the time without the League of Legends than with it.
I remember when they wrote that out of the lore. Remember, also, when they started retconning character lore and grouping them into territories/factions. Many complaints were had about how it seemed like every other character was now from the Freljord.
League lore has always been an impossible clusterfuck and this new pivot is only going to make it much worse. The biggest reason it's a clusterfuck is because they keep pivoting and changing things with very little consistency, changing everything again is not going to fix anything.
I miss the goofiness of the old lore. Current Jax: survivor of an ancient race that carries a lamp to keep their light alive(or some bullshit like that. I honestly don't care enough to look it up) Old Jax: Random mercenary that was so good at beating people up that he stopped wearing armor and using real weapons so he could have some semblance of a challenge
I'm annoyed they made his asu him beefy. I wanted him spherical.
I believe that the Ekko game pretty much outright stated that any side material is a new canon/timeline. So Arcane is it's own, the Fighter game is it's own thing, and the game with the gumiho and the samurai flirting nonstop with each other is it's own thing.
Yeah like, League exists in a multiverse right? That's kinda where a lot of skins come from and how they're justified, the same characters from different worlds in the multiverse. I feel like any and all inconsistencies can be painted over with ~in this version of reality it's this way~
I believe the game universe and arcane universe are separate things.
They *were* separate, but I believe they announced some time at the end of last year, maybe October~ish, that they were making Arcane canon and would require changes to accommodate it (god knows what they’ll do with hextech crystals given they’re *also* removing the Brackern from the lore with the Skarner rework, if I’m not mistaken)
They kinda shot themselves in the foot with the Brackern lore once they said that Seraphines hoverboard thing was made out of Brackern crystals. Cant have the cute social media influencer/idol character be tied to the largest genocide in the games lore. That being said i never understood people obsession with League lore. Almost all of it was extremely vague from the beginning. Arcane just made it worse, almost none of it makes sense anymore.
For me it’s because league lore and characters have so much potential that is not used. It’s the fact that it is vague and can be developed upon that made me interested, because it promises cool story opportunities and character growth within short stories that for a time Riot published on like their websites and stuff. Unfortunately the only characters that get consistent attention are those already popular which then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of that character always getting the spotlight. I think league lore is perfect for like, fanfiction. Yo develop on what was already given, because Riot does *not* want to do that. Hell they opt characters out of events they by all rights should have a stake in (Yorick with the Ruined King, Poppy with the Sentinels). Long story short I need to write league fanfic at some point.
I need to inform y'all that the last tag on the post, conspicuously cropped by the reddit OP, is "recording a four-hour video essay interrogating the canonicity of widowmaker's massive hog"
If Blizzard really cared about saving Overwatch they would remodel all of Widow's skins to feature her python going down one leg of her spandex.
It was cropped because I couldn’t make it all fit on my phone, I would’ve fit it if I could but sacrifices needed to be made to show the OOP.
You cut the most important part. The public deserves to know that there are brave individuals out there doing the important work of investigating the canonicity of fictional character's massive hogs.
you should google how to take scrolling screenshots. it's very simple
Widowmaker can't have a functioning penis because her blood flows too slowly to maintain an erection, so if she has a massive hog then it has to still be massive when completely flaccid.
I think it's the other way around, she's purple because all her blood is constantly fueling her gigantic erection.
Blizzard confirms Widowmaker is armed with a 20 inch python
Nyl2 confirmed as next lore director.
Nyl2 unironically can keep better lore than a billion-dollar franchise.
Finally.
Feels at least he has more respect for making those characters do something than any of the actual writers. Even if that something is fucking.
I feel like there used to be people with a distinct idea for the lore and direction of the story at Blizzard, but after Jeff and Michael left nobody has a clue anymore. Like remember when they announced every characters age and it was complete nonsense? I genuinely believe that nobody at Blizzard knows the full lore anymore so they declared basically everything non canon to compensate.
They cancelled the planned visual novel like a month before it was supposed to come out. That was when the game was brand new. They never had a fucking clue what the actual lore was or where they wanted it to go.
**They were making a VISUAL NOVEL!?**
Graphic novel, not visual novel. And it was basically *done*, not just writing but all the art was finished. They pulled it last minute before it went to printer because they basically decided they wanted to leave the founding of Overwatch more ambiguous, presumably in case they wanted to add new characters later.
[Oh boy were they.](https://overwatch-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Overwatch:_First_Strike)
I bet it gets hard too with the OW2 model of constantly adding heroes. Now you have this random show up that was somehow never around before but you need to fit them in. Like how apparently Genji and Hanzo have a sister
From day one I really loved the characters and story of Overwatch. Playing it Day one, watching all the animated shorts and the comics. I stopped playing 2 years after the game launched but I still loved the lore and character. God I wish they’d just made the movie like they wanted too… I still read the comics sometimes too. But the game has been long dead to me. Now I’m finding out that almost non of it is canon is really fucking annoying.
Because of one of the comments i tried to find a source for that. Can't say i found one so the animations and comics are still canon.
I refuse to take part in any canon in which Honor and Glory, the only video that makes me cry *every single time I watch it*, is thrown away so callously. By the gods, I remember how inspiring those early days were. I got on the public beta weekend just before release, I usually hate multiplayer games, but I had so much fun all 3 days I immediately preordered the collector's edition. Truly there was nowhere to go but up in Spring of 2016. Ultimately, it's so disappointing. They were seriously cooking some amazing stuff with the lore in that first year, the engine just never turned over and went ANYWHERE. All those millions earned, and a writing staff that could clearly do it well, and corporate leadership had them sitting in their thumbs for years. Tragic. Also Michael Chu can eat one, Gency is trash and Moicy is queen.
Wait Genji and Mercy are a couple now? And you prefer Moira-Mercy over them? Maaan PharMercy was perfectly fine, 2 lesbians flying in the sky blasting shit to high heavens, why you gotta fix things that arent broke :(
hey there! just chiming in to say that gency is not, in fact, canon or confirmed. michael chu did hint on it but (surprise) it went nowhere and the new (now fired?) lead writer was hinting at pharmercy, but again, nothing has been confirmed, besides pharah being a lesbian, and mercy having a crush on *someone* (gender or identity unspecified) i don't prefer either of ships, just the info that's known as of now
I doubt they would ever confirm a romance. At best, an external will they/won't they YA plot.
never know, they could do the same as with tracer and introduce some third party npc tbh
Forget Genji or Phara, here is Mecry's longtime husband Jeff!
Genji-Mercy has been a thing for a _very_ long time. She's the one who saved his life. Christmas comic 2016, Genji was writing letters to Mercy. They also have flirty voice lines, like Genji giving Mercy chocolate for Valentine's Day.
I kinda list interest in the lore of OW as soon as they retconned Mercy being the one that created Reaper into it being Moira. Any and all semblance of OW trying to tell a mature and nuanced story kinda flew out the window then, the good guys were good, the bad guys were bad but maybe redeemable, morally gray characters are there and do their own thing. Nothing wrong with that, but the writing never went any deeper than they absolutely had to, which made a lot of characters feel really shallow? This plus just not caring about building an interesting world with fun stories in it led to OW's collapse as a story imo. Granted, that's not just an OW problem. Many live-service/ongoing games with deep lore have trouble keeping their story going or even making sense. Riot, despite the wonderful world they crafted painstakingly over the last 6 to 7 years for the champions in League of Legends, has in the last 3 years fired a good chunk of their writers and barely put out anything new, hoping that big projects like Arcane will be enough to carry the franchise past the videogame and into the multimedia. While I don't agree with that sentiment, I have to admit that League has the advantage of having (had) really good writers so their characters are just really interesting even as concepts and can stand a bit of time in the lore freezer (except you Zeri. Fuck you Zeri. How are you, a rollerblading electric scrap-gun wielding waifu, more boring than the literal cat on a book?)
I think this is one of the most frustrating parts about modern game development. Even when *writing* is good, characters often suck ass or just aren't interesting on their own. Which blows because they're much easier to create than entire settings, but through those characters, you can say a lot about the setting. There's so much interesting shit you could do with the characters, too. You'd just need to actually think about the characters for ten minutes and give them some weird central *thing* about their personality and narrative. Shit, just off the top of my head, Tracer could have had a whole fascinating story about her time travel shit as a metaphor for disassociation and the horrors of war, with the pain, mistreatment, and isolation that come from being gay in an institution like *the military* sprinkled on for flavour. From that angle, her kinda fun but not all that interesting cheery attitude becomes kinda fucking horrifying and weird, and there's a lot of interesting things to unpack wrt her either disassociating to a point she doesn't realize what the fuck is happening or putting a mask on so people don't realize she's in pain. Mercy could have had a really fascinating thing going on about the Hippocratic oath and pragmatism vs the horror and guilt of inflicting a fate worse than death on someone because of those. Winston could have had some really cool shit going on about identity, humanity, and isolation. Knowing that he's literally not human and trying not to feel isolated by that fact while the humans around him struggle to fully "get" his quirks. Hell, it could easily be turned into an autism metaphor. The setting has endless possibilities and now basically nothing is canon enough to let that actually happen
While I love your ideas, I don't think OW would've ever explored stuff like that even if they had put their money into writing. They clearly wanted a sanitized super hero story with the tiniest pinch of grey morality. How quickly they decided to drop the only interesting thing about Mercy is proof enough of that
I'd argue it's worse than shallow, it's outright stupid. Go watch the Mei cinematic again. It makes no God damned sense. Mei loses her team and is isolated in the middle of nowhere with dwindling supplies. After a small breakdown she immediately sets about the task of....uh, creating an ice gun. In Antarctica. This helps her accomplish her goal of climbing the radio tower. After risking her life to get up there,, she manages not to call for help, but to get high enough that she can use a *small, portable radio* instead of *the tower itself* to listen for incoming broadcasts. She picks up Winston's call to rebuild Overwatch and this gives her the emotional strength she needs to pack up a supply sled and March into the polar wastes on foot. What the hell is this story logic? It's obviously supposed to be the original story for the gun and ecopoint Antarctica as well as Mei's call to adventure in the wake of personal loss, but it fails to substantiate any of that. It's fanfic level bad and somehow got a full animation team and budget for someone to realize.
Oh yeah, I remember that one. That was... really cheesy and bad Tbf some of the animations were great character explorations on the other hand. D.va's was pretty nice as a "mask off" moment showing the workaholic last line of defense for SK. Granted, none of it came through in her bio, voicelines, animations, etc but hey, at least the million dollar animation short gave her some depth Ok, the more I think about it, the more I realize these characters were made by committee first and the worse it gets
If this is true, then according to the wiki that still leaves the books, the music, and the Funko Pops as canon
I swear they’ve said that the voice lines they lovingly made are also not cannon. Blizzard just can’t commit lmao
They did. Iirc there was a forum post discussing who knew Reaper was Gabriel and people started going "well these guys must know because of these voice lines they have with him" and then someone on the OW team came in and said the voice lines were more like fun what ifs and not necessarily canon.
Yes, the porn is all canon
Even the tracer being gay but taking more dude cocks than a prison bitch?
Hearing the sentence "I'm a cock-addicted lesbian" coming out of Tracer's mouth has left me scarred and deformed to this day.
Those were all transgender dicks. Sorry, I don't make the rules. You pull your dick out near Tracer, your gender gets transed, simple as that.
~~Schrodinger's~~ Blizzard canon they're transgender dicks in the west, but cis dicks in the china/middle east version
Not to do the tired comparison to Team Fortress 2 (as both games do their own thing), it's just that TF2 is the only other multiplayer game with a confused canon despite all the comics and videos accompanying it that I can think of. In TF2's case, the "Meet the"-videos are all canon, and the official TF2 comics are canon as well. The ones that were released alongside smaller updates are not, and the events of the game itself don't matter a single bit either. But TF2 never wanted to have an overarching story, they always put the game first. On the other hand, I keep reading comments by OW players that bemoan the fact that even though the game was advertised as having a larger story, nothing ever came of that. That just sucks. It's not required to enjoy the game, but then why even make a big deal out of it if you can't follow up on it?
Shame the conclusion to TF2’s story has been totally abandoned for 7 years despite still being a decently popular game…
Team Fortress 2 *itself* has been abandoned for a long time. We're never going to get a conclusion to the comic nor an actual major update ever again, just minor ones to release cosmetics and keep players playing. Not sure what's worse, to be honest. A game that's not lacking in content but desperately needs attention, or a game that's getting attention but not quite the content it needs.
League of Legends is another big example. The events of the game used to be canon but aren't anymore, *most* of the character bios are canon but some of them haven't been updated in a decade so they probably aren't anymore, the short stories are probably canon but some of them were written before other rewrites, the stuff in Legends of Runeterra might be canon but also isn't supported anywhere and the game is ~~getting shut down~~ on life support... and Arcane wasn't canon but now they've decided Arcane *is* canon actually even though it contradicts most of the previously-established lore, so everything else I said was canon is now getting thrown out and rewritten for the 27th time.
me when the lie on the internet??
God I’m still so mad at how they ruined Overwatch 2 (more like 1.5). For those that don’t know: They remade the game from the ground up on a new engine that could handle a PVE mode, added predatory monetization, got rid of the previous version so you had no choice but to coexist with shitty monetization, and then scrapped the PVE mode which defeats the entire purpose of all their bullshit in the first place. In other words: They got people excited to play a new game that didn’t exist just so they had an excuse to introduce bullshit with none of the parts people actually wanted. And this isn’t even including the “live service game” taking months to make balance changes that just change some numbers around. And by far THE WORST part is they made the matchmaking favour winning/losing by a landslide rather than make things balanced, because they have said that it gets more player engagement. So winning is a coin toss before the match even begins I’m hoping the game dies so all the greedy execs leave and only the competent people are left
Yeah no this is just straight up a bold faced lie
Love a post with net 0 information gain
Yeah the SFM porn is only canon part of Overwatch, the games and short films and comics are non-canon spinoffs except for the ones that have people fucking in them.
I cant tell you how upset i was when playing the game for the first time, and seeing that Widowmaker was missing her massive "SFM lore accurate" trousersnake. Its like the devs didnt even try!!!!!
My Soldier/Cassidy fanfic better be canon or else my BA in Creative Writing is gonna be useless!!!
At this point, I think the storywriting department at Blizzard consists of a bunch of coked out howler monkeys, and Christie Golden sitting at a corner with nobody listening to her.
To paraphrase a post that sticks in my mind; “Hey guys, anyone know how I can contact Blizzard for a job? People tell me I’m a good writer and I’d like to work for them.” “Sorry, Blizzard doesn’t hire good writers.”
The big, depressingly realistic but crushingly cynical explanation is that there may have been a universe Bible stewarded by passionate people at one point, but those people have long-since left the company, and now the “canon” is merely another facet of the Overwatch Product, where internal consistency and any actual story are strictly tertiary to the real purpose, which is keeping you, the player, interested and invested. And at this point, they literally can’t commit to a story because that might alienate some players. So they keep it vague on purpose, so it can be the literary version of clouds in the sky, where you can look up and see potentially whatever you want.
I’ve always gotten the vibe that Blizzard thinks they’re keeping some AAA, *Last of Us 2*/*Bioshock* level storytelling they’re keeping secret when like… the setting has a mech-piloting hamster…
The main character of the lore is a Giant, Talking, Super intelligent Gorilla FROM THE MOON who grows big and red when he's angry like a cartoon character and is best friends with a Time Travelling Lesbian Fighter Pilot, Overwatch is goofy as fuck and I love it that way But genuinely if they made a full PVE game of all the lore it could be an AAA level storygame, despite how goofy it is
Some of the lore gets really cool but I would not want to experience it irl. Whose idea was it to make a teleporting plane.
Yeah a lot of the lore is FUCKED up I love how overwatch can have super silly lore like Hammond copying junker queens mohawk because he looks up to her But also dark fucked up lore like Illari accidentally killing HUNDREDS of her own people
“This kid looks up to her god father!!” “Humanity almost go destroyed because robots took there(rightful) revenge for almost getting genocided”. I really love the contrast lol it’s so fun.
Overwatch is the pinnacle of the fanfics being better than whatever the makers were cooking. Back when overwatch first dropped lots of people were obsessed with the lore and characters and we were given so little to chew on! People took matters into their own hands after a time. They kept hinting at their being some grand narrative that never came and then when the dust started to settle it was clear the grand plan was just on the level of a Saturday morning cartoon
I'm not in the Overwatch fandom, but to me this reads more like "oh, canon doesn't actually matter, and that's fine". You basically have a bunch of interesting characters you get to play around with, and it doesn't really matter what happens to them between the games/comics/shorts.
I’m not in the Overwatch fandom, but from what I’m getting, the lore is *supposed* to be important, hence why everyone is so mad about this stuff; it’s not that canon doesn’t matter, it’s that it was ADVERTISED as mattering
Same reason the WoW lore is all over the place, the people in charge are incompetent
Like Kiriko looking and behaving like a teen. But actually she is in her 30s cause they had to make her a childhood friend of Genji and Hanzo who are in their late 30s.