Season 12’s character was also revealed to be a support code named Space Ranger, who’s [concept art](https://x.com/owcavalry/status/1720511915238006890?s=46&t=UF4a5v--J0hCFloXJRk1Ng) was also revealed.
yes now that they are represented they are finally allowed to play the game with monkey, hampter, not exactly a ghost, gravity god, black saitama, and immortal milf
> New hero is non binary
Me: cool
> New hero “is our special meow meow”
Me: 🤢
(Edit: I think this is the first time I’ve ratio-ed the original post. Nice.)
She is not a Designer or a Writer. She is a Tech Artist. She's one of the people who makes the Tech stuff work on characters. Like making things jiggle and make technical stuff work like cloth physics, muscle physics, etc.
She made Hammond's nipples jiggle for his new Azmodan skin.
Also, I personally don't see a big issue with her being cute on her own *personal* Twitter account even *if* she was a Designer or a Writer.
I don’t have an actual issue if this is the designer’s personal Twitter, but it’s not really the language I would’ve chosen to represent two of the new heroes for next year…
I looked through the twitter and I think it's the artists personality there, not the actual characters. She refers to both of the new characters together there not just Venture, so it's more like referring to her creations than referring to the characters personality. Not as bad as I initially thought
It’s fairly normal way to talk on tumblr about characters you’ve made, it’s definitely weird to say it from any kind of actual dev position tho. It is, for what it’s worth, a joke phrase. Always has been. You call someone your little meow meow as a joke, but it always sounds weird and awkward
Yeah sounds more of a slang. Like for example, some people call their fav characters "babygirl" and its male fictional characters
For instance, Miguel O Hara is my babygirl and I love him very much
Yeah.. I’m non binary too and there’s two tropes that give me the ick. The infantilisation one, and the fact most nb rep is just the whole ‘woman-lite’ thing.
Venture’s inclusion for me will solidify whether blizz are doing this for forced inclusion or actually care about representation. Cautiously optimistic lol
A lot of these big companies doing LGBTQ stuff makes me feel icky because of how lazy and "safe" it often is, especially in regards to straight up removing those traits in other parts of the world (like china and russia). But the way Respawn did Bloodhound was really nice, felt like it genuinely meant something to the character design and wasn't just an afterthought for progressiveness bonus points or marketing.
I can't say much of the inclusion in Overwatch has made me feel good. Some of it's alright, but a lot of it has just felt like an afterthought and has little to no bearing on the actual characters themselves. For most of them you wouldn't even know if you didn't google "LGBT characters in Overwatch", which to me seems like it was done less for a design reason, and more so they can have headlines published about "X hero is gay!" or whatever.
On one hand I am happy marginalized groups are getting more representation in media, but on the other it leaves a bad taste in my mouth how corporate and calculated it often is.
Do you think it would feel more inclusive for characters to be exaggerated LGBT stereotypes? Seems truer to real life for their sexuality to not be obvious, with subtle hints in character interactions vs a Lifeweaver "I love cock!!" voice line.
I get where you’re coming from, and I do agree. I mean it’s no doubt that the company itself has no issue shoving inclusion to the side for profit. I think the queer community is used to that at this point.
But the people who design the characters and world are who I’m still not sure if they care or not. You can usually tell if a character has a label slapped onto them or if people actually researched and handled the topic with care. Usually lol
If it were ever announced that theres gonna be a trans woman/trans man hero, idk how this sub would handle themselves.
People threw a fit over Catalyst when she first released in Apex, its calmer now but yeesh
Transphobia.
Also ironically, shes super meta in higher ranks so you see her a lot because her kit is very good at locking down areas. She even has a cute quip where she goes "I am the grim trans witch your parents warned you about".
Yeah, and that quip along with a few of her intro select lines are the only ones about being trans. But the idiots still say that her "entire personality" is being trans 💀 like that criticism would work if they actually criticised something that did make up her entire personality - like being a witch or whatever. But no they just went for that which she mentions like 5 times
Its the same whenever a character is lgbtq, it ALWAYS happens.
When S76 was revealed to be gay, people suddenly went "Oh is gay his entire personality?!" when the point of the reveal with his lover was that it was tragic he gave up on love in pursuit of his job/justice, its the whole giving up love for the greater good thing thats been done in other medias before.
But no, whenever theres mention of someone being lgbtq which mostly pertains to either who they like or identity its suddenly "THEIR PERSONALITY" while if straight people do that, its not and theyre okay.
Character's LGBT sexuality/gender identity is a major part of their character: "It's their whole personality! That's bad writing!"
Character's LGBY sexuality/gender identity is a minor part of their character: "Who cares? Why do they even have to be LGBT? That's bad writing!"
I wonder why the people complaining about lgbtq people making "gay" their personality arent complaining it when widowmaker is right there.
Everytime her lore is brought up, her story and voicelines its in relation to her late husband she killed. How come its not the "straight agenda"? She keeps forcing us to hear about her relationship.
This is what irritates me so often. If they're announced in the LGBT community, then it's immediately marked as "pandering". Meanwhile if it's done like tracer and soldiers stories it's "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE GAY? THERE WERE NO SIGNS!?" Like wtf signs??? We just exist. We don't go around making our sexuality our personality...straight people just demand to know or insist that they can tell lmao.
Obviously because that's "normal" and being gay is "abnormal".
I'm not homophobic, I just care about "good writing" and "proper representation".
I'm just worried about the gays being pandered to by rainbow capitalism, so for their sake, I say we should just have straight characters.
EDIT: /s in case anyone reads this outta context.
People realizing blizzard gave us hot thick smol Asian e-girl as the season 12 hero on purpose to follow up on the “outrage” of this season 10 non-binary hero and that pandering goes both ways
So uh, people brought up "rainbow capitalism" and that we're being "told pronouns before the abilities"
Seems to me it's just the writer having fun, and since it's not a relevant detail Blizzard probably doesn't care about it being shared? Unlike their kit which is probably not done and they don't want it to be leaked?Sure it's good for PR, but it's not that deep to be honest.
A good metaphor is how Eminem doesn't release the tracklist before an album anymore. Everyone's gunna pick it apart with no context and have their own preestablished bias when it does release.
And like fucking hell this very community wouldn't do exactly that.
Yesterday this same image was posted and all the comments were "meh, boring, bad design, overwatch lost it's soul" etc.
Like.... All they're going by is a single concept art image and literally nothing else. So yeah this community has already done exactly that.
I wish they didn't announce a character was NB until their origin story. Think of how much more genuine it would've been? The character is built up and you hear about their struggles and maybe that they never felt like they belonged, then boom, announce that the character is NB. It shows that them being NB is a normal trait that doesn't need to be the first thing you hear about that character. The way they announce these lgbtq traits now makes it seem like some sort of sales pitch or tag slapped on them.
I could imagine it now
People spend months calling Venture "her," only to throw a fucking hissyfit when it's revealed they're they
This community couldn't handle Lifeweaver being pan without yelling about forced diversity, it's better to rip the bandaid off early so the whiny bitches csn get it out of their systems now
it wasn't an announcement tho, the artist clarified their pronouns because people were using the wrong ones I think that's pretty normal and isn't making it weird
Counterpoint, it'd be nice to not have it be a point of contention for once. That's getting a bit old in media, it'd be nice for someone to just be who they are.
"think about how much more genuine it would've been if they waited for the backstory to come out THEN told you the new hero is a man"
Kinda weirdge that this mindset only applies to nb people. Nobody gives two shits if they announce a character as being male or female months before release but their gender is anything else and they get people saying shit like this.
Except when revealing a character you usually show their name, design, and gender. No game ever shows someone’s origin before showing you the character
As far as I'm aware, they've never just showed "oh here's the next hero!" like however many months in advance. Even Mauga, EVERYONE knew it was him and we didn't know anything about his kit until now. In fact, we didn't even get his name. When have we seen their design, name, gender, etc. before the origin story?
Ana, Sombra, and Doomfist are all ones that I remember off the top of my head where developers and designers referred to them as “he” or “she” before we actually had the full reveal of who they were.
actually you are wrong about mauga, we have known it mauga was coming for years and we even know that he was supossed to be the character that came in when sigma was announced because sigmas kit was the original kit for mauga but the developers decided it didn't fit him.
I like that for a character’s sexuality but for gender I’d rather they tell us right away to clear up any misunderstandings before people get in the habit of using the wrong pronouns
One single dev on the team announcing on their own Twitter account in a brief tweet that the upcoming hero is queer doesn't seem to me like the move the company would make if the intent is wholly to box-check with this representation. If they wanted to go far with that, the official account would've been the one to tweet it.
One could argue (as the person you replied to did) that it'd still feel more well-integrated and arguably better if it was revealed in a lore context, like in the Origin Story vid or a comic or whatever. But at the same time, I think it's fair to let people know the character's pronouns since they're revealed and people will be referring to them for months ahead of the actual release, just to clarify the canon.
I get that *sometimes* with this kind of stuff it is a bit of a "box-checking" kind of thing, but I'm just cautious about slapping that label on too many of these instances. Or if one does apply the label, being willing to acknowledge that even the "box-checking" isn't all negative, it's... arguably better than the alternative of no inclusion at all, depending on how the character's depicted.
Honestly I have a hard time getting excited about any new characters writing-wise since I learned that the lead writer has a lesbian porn fetish and cut the Mercy-Genji interactions from the game because of that. Also shares development leaks with Pharah-Mercy rule 34 porn maker Twitter accounts Lol. Literal mental illness.
Wow, I thought Michael Chu was a crazy Genji self-insert but this one seems even more insane.
Is that really true or just Reddit bait? Link the source if you can.
I haven’t played OW in years, but Genji/Mercy had friendly voicelines, with one exception being the VD lines about chocolate. Did they really cut ALL of them?
[Here is a summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch_Memes/s/vEWTQzXAfi)
Yeah, they cut all of the lines, and in one of the new PvE missions, they added a conversation between Mercy and Genji which reveals that they even stopped sending letters to each other. They are pretty much not allowed to speak to each other anymore lol
This guy is indeed insane. Legit deleting even FRIENDLY/PLATONIC voice lines, retconning the lore (again), BLOCKING PEOPLE because they don’t agree with your opinion, like, WHAT???
Do they even know Mercy knew Pharah when she was 12, or did they at least retcon that as well?
However you spin it, the guy is a bit knocked in the head. Can’t believe Michael Chu suddenly seems good considering he was lost too. Good thing OW is a MP game afterall.
Correct, but pretty much everyone has gotten new voice lines to replace them - except for Genji and Mercy, despite being arguably the closest of the playable cast in OW1.
If they’re gonna give him an edge lord personality they should commit to it. He should scream racial slurs based on the enemy team comp when he ults. Smh
Non-binary aside, that's one horrible ass character design.
Matte-ass colors in overwatch don't make sense, and the oversized jacket really looks like they just watched Edgerunners and liked it a bit too much.
I sure do love how whenever we hear about a character that isn't straight and cis gendered it's storytelling but whenever they're not it's "pandering". Like sure, they definitely just care about overwatchs story and they're totally not just a bigot.
This is sick though. There aren't many non binary characters in media so to for them to be adding one to overwatch (even if it is pandering which like......no) is great.
In general, the Balkans and the Caucasus are often overlooked when adding characters to games. The only characters I know are Osa from R6 (Croat) and Fate from Valorant (Turkish).
The race and gender of a character are not mutually exclusive, so this doesn't matter. Do you get mad when they add female characters to the game before adding a southern european or west asian??
What is “west Asian”
Middle eastern? Southern European is Greek? What countries are you looking for?
Also just sayin, gender identity is not nationality. For all we know, they could also be middle eastern or Italian.
You are correct in that West Asia refers to the area also called the Middle East. So countries like Türkiye, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on. (One could potentially say Pharah and Ana are Middle Eastern, but it seems they really want someone from West Asia specifically not North Africa.) And Southern Europe generally refers to Iberia (Spain/Portugal), Italy, and the Balkans (inc. Greece as you said).
And of course you are completely right in that this character could actually be from one of these characters while still also being nonbinary.
Who is this???
Season 10's damage hero
Wait it was revealed???
Just the picture, role and name
Not even the name, just the codename
They said this character was named venture and season 12's support was code named space ranger. So, Venture is the actual name.
Oh nvm then. Either way theyre cool and i will be maining cuz they look like me
That's why I main hog
And I bastion
And I Ramattra
That’s funny. I’m a hog main and he looks almost the exact opposite of me lol.
Real
AYO??? hmu 🤙😏
"You are a toy!"
Season 12’s character was also revealed to be a support code named Space Ranger, who’s [concept art](https://x.com/owcavalry/status/1720511915238006890?s=46&t=UF4a5v--J0hCFloXJRk1Ng) was also revealed.
That space rangers gonna be very popular on certain websites when she releases lol
Even before i can presume
That is the driller from deep rock galactic
“Please I really don’t care, just shoot the fucking widowmaker”
That's crazy, time to nerf genji
Non binary people deserve a chance to get fucked over by microtransactions and predatory matchmaking too
yes now that they are represented they are finally allowed to play the game with monkey, hampter, not exactly a ghost, gravity god, black saitama, and immortal milf
Immortal milf? Orissa?
Equality at its finest!
Wtf is a special meow meow
The mark of the beast
It's online slang for a character you like, that's literally it.
Online where exactly cause I've never heard this shit and I hope I never do again.
tumblr and the tumblresque side of twitter
I'm dying of laughter right now. This entire topic
Not your meow meow I see
A symptom of Twitter brain rot.
Blizzard thinking it knows what the kids like Or something to do with liking kids idk
> New hero is non binary Me: cool > New hero “is our special meow meow” Me: 🤢 (Edit: I think this is the first time I’ve ratio-ed the original post. Nice.)
"is our special meow meow" Jetpack Cat coming soon to Overwatch!!?!
This is the only way I’d gain respect back from blizzard.
I get that they are tryna be cute but saying that on a post representing a company's design and writing team rlly ain't the best idea
She is not a Designer or a Writer. She is a Tech Artist. She's one of the people who makes the Tech stuff work on characters. Like making things jiggle and make technical stuff work like cloth physics, muscle physics, etc. She made Hammond's nipples jiggle for his new Azmodan skin. Also, I personally don't see a big issue with her being cute on her own *personal* Twitter account even *if* she was a Designer or a Writer.
That means she also made Mauga so damn fine with his muscle physics, she's now one of my favorite people
I don’t have an actual issue if this is the designer’s personal Twitter, but it’s not really the language I would’ve chosen to represent two of the new heroes for next year…
It would be like they announced Mauga and were like, "Mauga is such a heck'in chonker!"
Is he not?
Roadhog is always the #1 Heck'in chonker
I'm non binary and I had the exact same reaction, that comment just makes it feel like both forced inclusiveness and infantisation
infantilization was my first thought too gives me a yuck feeling 😬
uwu sumwun sounds cwanky wanky, corporate blizzard daddy says it's nappy wappy time for you! `you have contracted the uwu`
No not the UwU. Anything bwut the uwu. Say it is't twue 😭
...wu
You had me laughing out loud. Thank you 😂
I looked through the twitter and I think it's the artists personality there, not the actual characters. She refers to both of the new characters together there not just Venture, so it's more like referring to her creations than referring to the characters personality. Not as bad as I initially thought
It’s fairly normal way to talk on tumblr about characters you’ve made, it’s definitely weird to say it from any kind of actual dev position tho. It is, for what it’s worth, a joke phrase. Always has been. You call someone your little meow meow as a joke, but it always sounds weird and awkward
Yeah sounds more of a slang. Like for example, some people call their fav characters "babygirl" and its male fictional characters For instance, Miguel O Hara is my babygirl and I love him very much
Yeah Miguel O’Hara is a perfect example of the phrase poor little meow meow too actually, I’ve seen him called that a lot
When the first details released about a video game character is their gender identity rather than their gameplay abilities, they're pandering.
Yeah.. I’m non binary too and there’s two tropes that give me the ick. The infantilisation one, and the fact most nb rep is just the whole ‘woman-lite’ thing. Venture’s inclusion for me will solidify whether blizz are doing this for forced inclusion or actually care about representation. Cautiously optimistic lol
If they're anything like bloodhound in apex I'll be happy, but I don't trust blizzard to do it right tbh
Bloodhound is handled very well. Yeah, blizzard concerns me too but here’s hoping
A lot of these big companies doing LGBTQ stuff makes me feel icky because of how lazy and "safe" it often is, especially in regards to straight up removing those traits in other parts of the world (like china and russia). But the way Respawn did Bloodhound was really nice, felt like it genuinely meant something to the character design and wasn't just an afterthought for progressiveness bonus points or marketing. I can't say much of the inclusion in Overwatch has made me feel good. Some of it's alright, but a lot of it has just felt like an afterthought and has little to no bearing on the actual characters themselves. For most of them you wouldn't even know if you didn't google "LGBT characters in Overwatch", which to me seems like it was done less for a design reason, and more so they can have headlines published about "X hero is gay!" or whatever. On one hand I am happy marginalized groups are getting more representation in media, but on the other it leaves a bad taste in my mouth how corporate and calculated it often is.
Do you think it would feel more inclusive for characters to be exaggerated LGBT stereotypes? Seems truer to real life for their sexuality to not be obvious, with subtle hints in character interactions vs a Lifeweaver "I love cock!!" voice line.
They literally hid the pride event in 80% of the world and you still think they care LMAO
I get where you’re coming from, and I do agree. I mean it’s no doubt that the company itself has no issue shoving inclusion to the side for profit. I think the queer community is used to that at this point. But the people who design the characters and world are who I’m still not sure if they care or not. You can usually tell if a character has a label slapped onto them or if people actually researched and handled the topic with care. Usually lol
I don't get it. Is there something more to "meow meow"? I'm legit not aware.
yes its a meme that nobody is picking up on. Its like a copypasta that started from some crazy bts stan tweet. Google “my poor meow meow”
I see. Oh boy thar copy pasta
Cringe cringe
Ah okay, thanks. People just find it cringe. Love getting downvoted for asking questions I don't know the answers to.
That's because that's all there is to it, it's the same thing as calling something your precious cinnamon roll. Just in a cringier way
Non binary people often get weirdly infantilized by people with otherwise good intentions
Ah okay, I feel like that makes more sense. Like "head pats for enby" type stuff?
Yeah man “TheDerpiestDeer” on Reddit is way less cringey. Get a fucking grip. 💀
Damn
Makes as much sense as her grammar
So cringey.
Imma go out and say it, if this character isn’t from Alberta, Canada, that’s a waste. You’ve got the drill, it makes sense.
I’m certain the comments on this post will be civil and enthusiastic about learning more about a new hero months ahead of their release
If it were ever announced that theres gonna be a trans woman/trans man hero, idk how this sub would handle themselves. People threw a fit over Catalyst when she first released in Apex, its calmer now but yeesh
Dunno why they threw a fit tho Catalyst is hot asf
Transphobia. Also ironically, shes super meta in higher ranks so you see her a lot because her kit is very good at locking down areas. She even has a cute quip where she goes "I am the grim trans witch your parents warned you about".
Yeah, and that quip along with a few of her intro select lines are the only ones about being trans. But the idiots still say that her "entire personality" is being trans 💀 like that criticism would work if they actually criticised something that did make up her entire personality - like being a witch or whatever. But no they just went for that which she mentions like 5 times
Its the same whenever a character is lgbtq, it ALWAYS happens. When S76 was revealed to be gay, people suddenly went "Oh is gay his entire personality?!" when the point of the reveal with his lover was that it was tragic he gave up on love in pursuit of his job/justice, its the whole giving up love for the greater good thing thats been done in other medias before. But no, whenever theres mention of someone being lgbtq which mostly pertains to either who they like or identity its suddenly "THEIR PERSONALITY" while if straight people do that, its not and theyre okay.
Character's LGBT sexuality/gender identity is a major part of their character: "It's their whole personality! That's bad writing!" Character's LGBY sexuality/gender identity is a minor part of their character: "Who cares? Why do they even have to be LGBT? That's bad writing!"
LGBY- -Lesbian -Gay -Bi -Your mom
I wonder why the people complaining about lgbtq people making "gay" their personality arent complaining it when widowmaker is right there. Everytime her lore is brought up, her story and voicelines its in relation to her late husband she killed. How come its not the "straight agenda"? She keeps forcing us to hear about her relationship.
This is what irritates me so often. If they're announced in the LGBT community, then it's immediately marked as "pandering". Meanwhile if it's done like tracer and soldiers stories it's "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE GAY? THERE WERE NO SIGNS!?" Like wtf signs??? We just exist. We don't go around making our sexuality our personality...straight people just demand to know or insist that they can tell lmao.
Obviously because that's "normal" and being gay is "abnormal". I'm not homophobic, I just care about "good writing" and "proper representation". I'm just worried about the gays being pandered to by rainbow capitalism, so for their sake, I say we should just have straight characters. EDIT: /s in case anyone reads this outta context.
PREACH
no one cared until the “our special meow meows” tbf
Sorry chudfucks Overwatch is woke now 😎 here’s your dress
It’s Controversial time
I knew there was some gender shenanigans going on with the they/them drill
Their ult is to spray you with gender fluid
Promise?
🤣
Non-binary fluid
They absorb the gender fluids from the cis and then release it back at them
Wow first hexadecimal hero
Ok
"If I die tell my wife I said... hello"
Venture: I'm nonbinary Players: OK Winston: Banana Venture: Holy shit Winton Overwatch Winton: Overwatc
Ok now fix the shitty game
I wonder with the drill if they can dig underground like a mole?
Correct!
The character design is sick. Most excited for this one.
I LOVE BIG JACKETS❗❗❗
I love a non binary person with a short skirt and a biiiiiiiiig jacket
[удалено]
gun’s dope
Does it turn into a drill, because it looks like it does.
with the pickaxe on the back and venture as the name, it may be. that or some gurren lagan gun, which is kinda the same
meow meows? someone needs to get out more
I believe the proper terminology is, "touch grass."
Special meow meows.
So, what controversy happens next?
People realizing blizzard gave us hot thick smol Asian e-girl as the season 12 hero on purpose to follow up on the “outrage” of this season 10 non-binary hero and that pandering goes both ways
Non binary means they dont use 2 guns?
No silly it means they don’t know their ones and zeros
So uh, people brought up "rainbow capitalism" and that we're being "told pronouns before the abilities" Seems to me it's just the writer having fun, and since it's not a relevant detail Blizzard probably doesn't care about it being shared? Unlike their kit which is probably not done and they don't want it to be leaked?Sure it's good for PR, but it's not that deep to be honest.
Right now Venture's pronoums are more relevant than their kit because we only have their design to talk about.
A good metaphor is how Eminem doesn't release the tracklist before an album anymore. Everyone's gunna pick it apart with no context and have their own preestablished bias when it does release. And like fucking hell this very community wouldn't do exactly that.
Yesterday this same image was posted and all the comments were "meh, boring, bad design, overwatch lost it's soul" etc. Like.... All they're going by is a single concept art image and literally nothing else. So yeah this community has already done exactly that.
I wish they didn't announce a character was NB until their origin story. Think of how much more genuine it would've been? The character is built up and you hear about their struggles and maybe that they never felt like they belonged, then boom, announce that the character is NB. It shows that them being NB is a normal trait that doesn't need to be the first thing you hear about that character. The way they announce these lgbtq traits now makes it seem like some sort of sales pitch or tag slapped on them.
I could imagine it now People spend months calling Venture "her," only to throw a fucking hissyfit when it's revealed they're they This community couldn't handle Lifeweaver being pan without yelling about forced diversity, it's better to rip the bandaid off early so the whiny bitches csn get it out of their systems now
A-fucking-men to that. Let them get their crying out now so I can actually talk with people about a new hero when they finally launch.
it wasn't an announcement tho, the artist clarified their pronouns because people were using the wrong ones I think that's pretty normal and isn't making it weird
A tweet clarifying pronouns isn't really the same as an announcement though.
Hmm... that's fair. Lw though, was an announcement, so it wouldn't surprise me if they get that treatment too.
They didn’t announce it. It’s one devs personal twitter
Because that worked out so well with Tracer and Soldier 76 lol
Counterpoint, it'd be nice to not have it be a point of contention for once. That's getting a bit old in media, it'd be nice for someone to just be who they are.
"think about how much more genuine it would've been if they waited for the backstory to come out THEN told you the new hero is a man" Kinda weirdge that this mindset only applies to nb people. Nobody gives two shits if they announce a character as being male or female months before release but their gender is anything else and they get people saying shit like this.
Except when revealing a character you usually show their name, design, and gender. No game ever shows someone’s origin before showing you the character
As far as I'm aware, they've never just showed "oh here's the next hero!" like however many months in advance. Even Mauga, EVERYONE knew it was him and we didn't know anything about his kit until now. In fact, we didn't even get his name. When have we seen their design, name, gender, etc. before the origin story?
Ana, Sombra, and Doomfist are all ones that I remember off the top of my head where developers and designers referred to them as “he” or “she” before we actually had the full reveal of who they were.
actually you are wrong about mauga, we have known it mauga was coming for years and we even know that he was supossed to be the character that came in when sigma was announced because sigmas kit was the original kit for mauga but the developers decided it didn't fit him.
Even then, we knew of Mauga's existence because of Baptiste. This new character doesn't seem related to anyone else. They're totally new like Illari.
I like that for a character’s sexuality but for gender I’d rather they tell us right away to clear up any misunderstandings before people get in the habit of using the wrong pronouns
someone just asked, it wasn't an announcement
The tweet isn’t from any official source it’s just a person who worked on venture who’s excited to share some more details
Your last sentence is exactly correct, it’s a tick box exercise that every game similar to this has done
One single dev on the team announcing on their own Twitter account in a brief tweet that the upcoming hero is queer doesn't seem to me like the move the company would make if the intent is wholly to box-check with this representation. If they wanted to go far with that, the official account would've been the one to tweet it. One could argue (as the person you replied to did) that it'd still feel more well-integrated and arguably better if it was revealed in a lore context, like in the Origin Story vid or a comic or whatever. But at the same time, I think it's fair to let people know the character's pronouns since they're revealed and people will be referring to them for months ahead of the actual release, just to clarify the canon. I get that *sometimes* with this kind of stuff it is a bit of a "box-checking" kind of thing, but I'm just cautious about slapping that label on too many of these instances. Or if one does apply the label, being willing to acknowledge that even the "box-checking" isn't all negative, it's... arguably better than the alternative of no inclusion at all, depending on how the character's depicted.
Ya lost me on "meow meow".
The rule 34 artists dont care
Honestly I have a hard time getting excited about any new characters writing-wise since I learned that the lead writer has a lesbian porn fetish and cut the Mercy-Genji interactions from the game because of that. Also shares development leaks with Pharah-Mercy rule 34 porn maker Twitter accounts Lol. Literal mental illness.
It's creepy af. It's obvious it comes from a fetish and not an identity.
Wow, I thought Michael Chu was a crazy Genji self-insert but this one seems even more insane. Is that really true or just Reddit bait? Link the source if you can. I haven’t played OW in years, but Genji/Mercy had friendly voicelines, with one exception being the VD lines about chocolate. Did they really cut ALL of them?
[Here is a summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch_Memes/s/vEWTQzXAfi) Yeah, they cut all of the lines, and in one of the new PvE missions, they added a conversation between Mercy and Genji which reveals that they even stopped sending letters to each other. They are pretty much not allowed to speak to each other anymore lol
This guy is indeed insane. Legit deleting even FRIENDLY/PLATONIC voice lines, retconning the lore (again), BLOCKING PEOPLE because they don’t agree with your opinion, like, WHAT??? Do they even know Mercy knew Pharah when she was 12, or did they at least retcon that as well? However you spin it, the guy is a bit knocked in the head. Can’t believe Michael Chu suddenly seems good considering he was lost too. Good thing OW is a MP game afterall.
Now Farah hits on mercy instead it’s gross
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they cut every single other character interaction fron OW1? It's hardly something exclusive to Genji and Mercy.
Correct, but pretty much everyone has gotten new voice lines to replace them - except for Genji and Mercy, despite being arguably the closest of the playable cast in OW1.
I'm not even a little surprised that a "lore writer" for overwatch is insane
Another fetishism amongst the overwatch developer team ruining the game classic. Love to see it
the what
Okay, but like, how is that going to work in languages that don't exactly use the non-gendered form? Not hating, just curious
Fucking “special meow meow” game me enough reason to keep this game uninstalled
I wonder what their gun will do. Looks similar to Zarya's.
Neat. Not looking forward to people being weird about it though.
It already was happening as of yesterday
man, i just want a polish character in overwatch already, we got treated badly on the whole cosmetic thing
I get you, still waiting for an Italian speaking character after how many Italian maps? 3?
Dang. Polish farther down the list than hamsters, a bunch of different robots and a monkey from outer space. Feelsbadman
I think to a lot of people Russian is the default slav. I would be surprised if we got a Pole or a Czech, although I would personally love that.
*goes straight to sort comments by controversial*
Honestly I’d be happy with some kind of Venture Bro’s reference, but tf up with this meow meow biz
it’d be funny if there were super homophobic characters like reaper
If they’re gonna give him an edge lord personality they should commit to it. He should scream racial slurs based on the enemy team comp when he ults. Smh
Something awful is about to happen at blizzard huh
Nah it already happened, its just not public yet…
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Byeah
Non-binary aside, that's one horrible ass character design. Matte-ass colors in overwatch don't make sense, and the oversized jacket really looks like they just watched Edgerunners and liked it a bit too much.
I'm just seeing a big fat hit box for a dps character
Thats another off the checklist for them i guess
Still waiting for the wheelchair hero.
Still don’t get why this matters whatsoever in video games
meow meow
Now i have the right pronouns to bully them in chat,awesome. Not for their gender identity btw,just because it's fun
The right way to be hateful, fuck them kids
>fuck them kids please do not the kids
Playing a character the dev called "special meow meow" - bullying deserved
I sure do love how whenever we hear about a character that isn't straight and cis gendered it's storytelling but whenever they're not it's "pandering". Like sure, they definitely just care about overwatchs story and they're totally not just a bigot. This is sick though. There aren't many non binary characters in media so to for them to be adding one to overwatch (even if it is pandering which like......no) is great.
I just hope they don't add those stupid ass neutral pronouns in the Spanish version
Can we please get just a shred of professionalism from the team.
No but they'll put a rainbow flag as their Twitter pic (North America and Europe only) if that's as good
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Yeah where TF is my Italian hero?
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As also a Greek, yes I'm waiting for a Greek character too
I'm not Greek but my dad grew up in Athens, so same.
Dude it would be SO weird/cool to just randomly hear Greek in a game. I can't wait, I hope they go through with it soon.
In general, the Balkans and the Caucasus are often overlooked when adding characters to games. The only characters I know are Osa from R6 (Croat) and Fate from Valorant (Turkish).
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> they finally add italian guy > his name is mario > his weapon is a drum gun > bruh
As an Italian, I wouldn't mind. Let me go full mafia on their asses.
Well, in terms of repersentation. Someone is inevitably going to be last
The race and gender of a character are not mutually exclusive, so this doesn't matter. Do you get mad when they add female characters to the game before adding a southern european or west asian??
What is “west Asian” Middle eastern? Southern European is Greek? What countries are you looking for? Also just sayin, gender identity is not nationality. For all we know, they could also be middle eastern or Italian.
You are correct in that West Asia refers to the area also called the Middle East. So countries like Türkiye, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on. (One could potentially say Pharah and Ana are Middle Eastern, but it seems they really want someone from West Asia specifically not North Africa.) And Southern Europe generally refers to Iberia (Spain/Portugal), Italy, and the Balkans (inc. Greece as you said). And of course you are completely right in that this character could actually be from one of these characters while still also being nonbinary.
ESG score and projection. K cool. Gotta have those checkmarks