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bugslaststraw · 1 year

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Overwatch: the art of writing bad stories on purpose

Clocking in at just over 4k words: a semi-coordinated rant on the topic of Blizzard's history of lawsuits, Overwatch'es history of canonical queerness, and the strange marketing techniques that tie the two topics together. Written by someone who got into the game less than a week ago and likes it in a hatewatch "I love garbage" sort of way, intended for those less familiar with the topic at hand. I tried to source claims but it didn't work so let it be known that I did actual research but I'll probably get stuff wrong anyway so I tried to be funny about it here we go:

Section 1: Frat Boy Snowstorm and it's attempts at being progressive.

Try to focus. This is the most boring part.

So as I hope you all know by now, Blizzard is a pretty shit company. I say shit, because controversial sounds too unbiased. Most of us are familiar with the lawsuits against the company relating to sexual assault charges, unsafe working conditions for female employees and a quote "frat boy environment," of which they've been under fire for since 2018, but recently (early April '23 to be precise) they've also faced a lawsuit for sneakily coming up with a way to underpay their eSports champions. (Both of these are easy to look up if you want more info.) However, the company is a giant, that along with Overwatch released Call of Duty and a bunch of other games I don't recognise (fuck me I'm not an FPS person,) and, aside from the money they easily paid out, they really haven't faced any major consequences for their scummy behaviour.

This is exactly what they want, of course: for the whole thing to blow over as quickly as possible. Keep this in mind as we move on. That's the whole reason Section 1 exists: to remind you that Blizzard, like Disney, is a Big Corporate Company that will go to ridiculous lengths to make sure that the actually relevant controversies are forgotten in favour of smaller stupider shit.

If there's one thing Blizzard loves to do more than make their female employees uncomfortable, it's to tote around their progressiveness. Of course, this usually doesn't extend to Call of Duty or any of their more "grounded" "gritty" and generally masculine domains, but Overwatch specifically is a testing ground for all kinds of bullshit and we can't go a season without one billion articles about "Overwatch first game to have character of xxx nationality on playable roster" etc etc etc. People absolutely shit their pants every time the game announces a new queer hero or whatever, because since it's a Big Corporate Company and it's just barely achieving the bare minimum of inclusivity, of course, that's got to be a big deal right? Except of course that like Disney, Blizzard will do literally fucking anything to make sure their games stay relevant and that more people buy and play them, and these attempts at inclusivity can be assumed to be preformed mainly out of a desire to make money and cover up their scandals, and not because the people who call shots actually care. It becomes incredibly clear how Blizzard sees inclusivity as an idea when you consider their viral invention from last year, the Diversity Space Method.

To some of you this may look like a good thing at first, and originally I think it was, as the idea was to keep track of how many of their characters weren't any of these things displayed above so that they could keep that number down, but as soon as someone came up with the idea to assign a certain number of points to each character, the whole concept crashes and burns. You see, according to this chart here, (and as another Tumblr user famously put it), Torbjörn (3) is older than Lucio (2) is black. And I'm pretty damn sure that's not how that works.

No doubt a percentage of the artists and writes for the game had some sort of passion. After all, there is genuine treasure to be found in the character designs, animations and even some of the voice acting. But you know how it is when it comes to inclusivity; the artists so often never get to do more than drop hints and leave people guessing. Which leads us neatly into the next section.

Section 2: This game's kinda shit!

And I don't mean the game itself. Idk about that, I never played it (and my friends who do all have wildly varying opinions.) I am talking about the stories. When I first started "researching" (hatewatching) the shorts and comics for this game, I was angrily wondering why they all felt so hollow. It was like looking at AI generated art, it was like looking into the eyes of what you thought was a person and seeing two camera lenses staring back, it felt empty, it felt bland despite all the good character designs and the lore and the concepts and the colors and the nice clean lines. Something was missing, and it was uncanny as hell! Eventually though, I managed to narrow it down to a few key issues:

A lot of comics and shorts feel like ads above eveyrthing else, they're made to sell the game rather than be good, and they therefore lack passion.

Possibly as a result of this, they operate almost entirely on "tell don't show" rules, thereby feeling even more empty.

These stories still manage to lack substance and they don't really canonise a lot about the world or characters, especially regarding relations between characters, and,

the really interesting storylines are usually left uncontinued or unexplored, possibly due to aformentioned lack of passion and an egotistical but sadly fulfilled hope that people will download the game or at least read the rest of the comics to find out more.

All this put together make for a very strange experience in which you can, if you squint, see the fuzzy outline of a good story, good worldbuilding and interesting characters, and imagine that the details make sense. Which, granted, is usually what people do. If you use your brain or have experience in writing, however, it all falls apart.

Section 3A: Overwatch is a knock-off

Well, not exactly. But it does have a strange habit of borrowing from other games. For example, did you know I'm a TF2 fan? Probably. Did you know each individual TF2 class has an Overwatch equivalent? Me neither, until now. Scout and Tracer, Medic and Mercy, Sniper and Widowmaker, Spy and Sombra, hmm I'm sensing a pattern here, Demo and Junkrat (we'll get back to him later,) and so on.

"That's a coincidence," you say. "They're similar games, of course there are equivalents," you say. To that I says: you may be right. We may all collectively be overthinking this. We may all also collectively be overthinking the Omnic crisis as a whole and why it's so damn similar to Fallout's synths, they've both got robot racism and violent groups who want to kill the robots one of which is in Australia, which is a plot point in TF2 as well oh look at that, but again I'm sure it's all a big fucking coincidence right and sorry sorry I'll stop now.

It is actually genuinely possible that those are coincidences, no sass intended, but considering how Blizzard operates on the whole, I doubt it. They've already proven to be rather lazy with their stories. There's nothing wrong with having similar ideas or being inspired, but when it's as noticeable as this, along with everything else, I just can't help but feel disappointed.

Section 3B: Overwatch is also a porn category

Oh yeah, speaking of never properly canonizing relationships between the characters (and aging their underage characters up to eighteen for hitherto mysterious reasons, and releasing all those horny fanservice skins,) here's an utterly ridiculous fact: when Overwatch dropped in 2016, quite a lot of people didn't know it was a game because there was so much (animated, drawn etc) porn of it that it flooded and quickly rose to the top of the "games" category on most popular sites (hard to source for obvious reasons, but I've had a friend check for me.) It still sits up there, by the way, surpassed only by funny space bean game (I'm not kidding.) Why? Two reasons. One: all the game's female characters are impossibly beautiful and (in every case but like two post-launch releases) skinny and generally conventional as well. No surprise there. Two: the game models are well rigged, high quality and incredibly easy to get at, making it so that people can tank them down and use them for whatever they like without issue. Rumour has it that this is on purpose.

My question is, what has this influx of smut done to the game? You see, if there's one thing Blizzard loves more than making their female employees uncomfortable, bragging about inclusivity, and copying other games, it's pandering. And they pander to everybody, or at least to as many people as possible, usually all at the same time if they can get away with it. This, I have to theorise, is why all the characters seem to be flirting with one another, but only one or two actual relationships are canon. They simply don't want to piss off any part of their demographic, which they force as wide open as possible because money money money money money. This means embracing the porn and making sly references to that part of the fanbase with skins, voice lines, and odd comments in interviews.

Anyway, back to the lawsuits, or rather the consequences of them. You see, canon queerness in Overwatch comes in threefold. This is the story of two thirds of it.

Section 4: Toy Soldier and Knock-off Scout Adventures

This is Soldier 76. And he's gay.

Everybody clap for Blizzard now. It's coyly canonised in a short story titled Bastet. 76 here was never a very popular Overwatch character, lore wise, so I guess this move makes sense. I can see why, too. He's very plain and simple design wise, almost grounded, but not enough that you notice it at a glance. He looks like a plastic toy. Anyway, his queerness wont piss off too many dudebros long-term, since fewer people play him, but it gives everybody else something to chew on, so everybody wins right?. When was Bastet released again? Oh, January of 2019? What else happened around that time? The settling and aftermath of the first lawsuit? Great. That totally wasn't a cover-up for anything. Definitely not.

It's not like 76 is the first character to be confirmed as queer though. Blizzard's favourite Overwatch character Tracer is too, being confirmed as having a girlfriend named Emily all the way back in 2016.

That's good right? I mean, that was before the controversy even started! Surely they did this for normal, innocent reasons and oh who the fuck am I kidding she's a conventionally attractive female character kissing another conventionally attractive female character in a game dominated by male players with male devs and a porn category more expansive than the Bible and we know damn well why that happened.

We can but pray that someone who was in on this gave a shit. Maybe the artist. The writer. Somebody. But this is a barren and cold world and I dare not hope even for that.

Not to mention, both of these things were distinctly one-off notes. It's mentioned once, and then never again, and after 2019 there was a four year radio silence on the whole subject of queer characters that didn't change until the release of OW2. And yet, Blizzard loved to brag about how inclusive they are at every turn even back then. "Look at us," they say, as the characters stare at you from the computer screen with their dead, hollow eyes, "look at how good we are! Please buy our game."

The status quo would change significantly in 2023, however, with the introduction of their latest addition to the roster; Lightweaver.

Section 5: The most annoying twunk to ever grace the earth flings you into the stratosphere

This is Niran "Bua" Pruksamanee, also known as Lifweaver.

He debuted on the 11th of April, 2023, and he's The First at a lot of things, which, of course, made headlines. "First Thai character in a major FPS game" was probably the most common one. I'd feel better about that if I didn't know it's most likely the result of Blizzard trying to cash in inclusivity points. The second First he has is the more controversial one, however: First Overwatch character to be confirmed queer on launch. That's right, after four years of Jack Shit, they're back on it! And, well.

You see, to fully understand my emotions about this you need to know who Lifeweaver is. Despite Overwatch being a game with Mr black-hole-head toes-out "yet another poor-taste representation of DID" Sigma and a football-sized foul-mouthed hamster in a mechsuit in it, neither of them manage to be very funny. Lifeweaver, however, is objectively fucking hilarious, for these main reasons:

His amicable, light hearted healer-character personality clashes with his backstory, in a way that actually works. Lifweaver is a scientist who dropped out of a prestigious academy to stop people from trying to A: steal and B: jail him for his invention: biolight (which is exactly what it sounds: light that grows like plants, or vice versa.) Because of this biolight stuff, he is canonically wanted in seventeen countries and counting. And yet he's so glad to be here, you can hear the smile in his voice, he's kind, he's carefree. And he flirts.

With, like, everybody. Notably Mercy, and apparently he was roomates with Symmetra and speaks very fondly of her. On top of that he's (very) low-key implied to at least want to flirt with Roadhog of all people (can't say I blame him, anyway I'll get back to him,) and, uuh. Baptiste? Who's Baptiste? Nope, never heard of him. Ex-mercenary who regrets his actions and now plays support to make up for all the murder he did? Is what you may be asking yourself. Seriously, nobody talks about Bap. Maybe that's why he's being brought back into semi-relevance now, as Lifeweaver canonically (and smoothly) asks him on a date at a nice restaurant, to which he, unsurprisingly, says yes. He's always been very flirty himself. That should technically make it four canon queer characters in the game, but Baptiste still has some plausible deniability because of his personality, so arguments can still be argued, as they say.

Back to Lifeweaver. More specifically his playstyle. This bright pink healer wants nothing but to help people and further science! His players, however, will gladly ruin your day for shits and giggles. You see, it's become a bit of a gimmick of Overwatch as a whole to let you move your enemies around the battlefield. Junker Queen has her magnetic gauntlet thing, Roadhog has a hook, everybody and their mom have knockback, etc. Lifeweaver, however, can move his friends around. He has an ability to pull his teammates towards himself which he can also use to sling some of them across the map if they cooperate and/or move wrong. He can also raise a platform under any player that tosses them (or their lifeless corpse) into the air. This is incredibly useful in a coordinated team where everybody's using voice chat, eg. the way Overwatch is actually meant to be played. Overwatch is, however, never played how it's meant to be played. Hilarity ensues.

The circumstances of Lifeweaver's release. Here's the thing. On the 4th of April 2023, exactly one week before his release, Blizzard was sued again, this time for underpayment and mistreatment of their eSports champions. Although it's impossible to create a whole character in a week, it's fully possible that at least some parts of Lifeweaver's personality and some of the stuff he calls to canon (we'll get to The Thing later I promise, be patient,) were influenced by this. It's comically well timed that such a controversial character dropped so soon after that scandal, and while the model and animations were definitely finalized before that, any given set of voice lines could've been phoned in on the night of April 4th for all we know.

Put together, all of this is either infuriating or ridiculous. Some days it's one, some days the other, and some days, I'm just not sure. Originally I hated Lifeweaver. He felt predictable to me, a cheap coverup, a stereotype, and an annoying one at that. But eventually I sort of came around, because he got so annoying that I kind of had to respect him for it. From there, I eventually ended up here. And I think a lot of other people, notably the players themselves, felt the same. Go figure.

Section 6A: No scummy marketing tactic is complete without queerbait!

Valuable life lesson: it is very, very hard to tell wether or not something is queerbait by looking at the media itself. The possibilities that the perceived homoerotic tension is an accident, or a hint that's left vague for stylistic reasons, or simply a slow burn, are all present and impossible to rule out. The real way you find out if something is queerbait is by looking at the actual marketing. Listen to what devs say in interviews. Look at promotional material. Et cetera. Because I don't have the patience to watch those interviews, I can't actually say wether what I'm about to discuss is queerbait or a series of unfortunate accidents made as a result of Blizzard's bad habit of pandering, so I'll let you form your own conclusions and possibly go look it up on your own. (And then come back here and tell me about it because I'm so so curious.) I am probably going to go into excruciating detail on this next part. I am so sorry. I can't help but have favourites. So without further ado;

This is Jamison "Junkrat" Fawkes.

Or at least, it was back in OW1. (I promise the full body transparent background image is crucial.)

Anyway, this absolute bastard is a favorite of mine. (Having favourite OW characters? I am cringe but I am free.) He was in the game from launch, and remains one of the more interesting and, shall we say, least soulless characters in the game to this day. Not that there's that much to him. He never shuts up, he's clinically insane as a result of several concussions and a lot of radiation, and he really really likes blowing things up. Together with Roadhog, he's a freelance mercenary with little to no morals whatsoever, taking on whatever job gets them both cash, action, and buildings to explode.

Oh yeah, right. Mako "Roadhog" Rutledge, the quiet, stoic and occasionally terrifying two meter tall shit brickhouse with a stitched gas mask shaped like a pig snout and a massive hook on a chain. Sadly, although he's crucial to the segment, I can't really discuss him as much as I would like to because he has like five voice lines in total (an exaggeration) and half of them are just him telling Junkrat to shut the fuck up (not an exaggeration.) "Stoic, silent characters can be interesting without speaking," I hear you say. Yes, I reply, if they're well written. But this is Overwatch. Never ever get your hopes up about Overwatch.

Anyway, the trash rat and Mr Whole Hog here have an interesting history. Originally, they were simply friends, running around and doing Hilarious Antics™ (that were never very funny, other than in concept.) They feature in several comics together (none of which are very good,) they chat a lot in game and they have their own animated short called The Plan (which is the first Overwatch thing I ever consumed, also not very good, but hey, it landed me here.) And before I get into the queerbait part of this segment, let me just say that studying just this small part of Overwatch tells volumes about the writing all on its own. The tell-don't-show, the inconsistencies, the rampant ludonarrative dissonance... Stars, the comics want you to take Roadhog so seriously. They're leaning super hard into the edge with a brutal backstory and focus on making him as menacing as possible. Meanwhile, in game he, and I cannot stress this enough, walks around ass out the entire time. Google at your own risk. Don't say I didn't warn you!

There is this one voice line, triggered when interacting with one another, where Junkrat says somthn' like "You'll hook 'em, I'll cook 'em!" and Roadhog just sighs in frustration, but then there's another line, triggered the same way, where HE begins the saying, "I'll hook 'em..." "And I'll cook 'em!" In short, fuck you consistency, and this contrast could be really interesting if it was well written. But of course Overwatch will Never Ever elaborate on this, as per usual.

As the years went by, however, things got... A bit weird. Junkrat has always been friendly. According to him, he and Hoggie (he calls him that, not me) are the bestest of friends. And although Roadhog acts as though he hates Junkrat a lot of the time, this is very obviously just tsundere behaviour used to mask the fact that he does really like him quite a lot. But in what way? "Gayass," said half the fandom. "No, fuck you," said the other half, "this is clearly a father-son dynamic." "You're all homophobic," said the first half. "Maybe we are," said the second, "what are you gonna do about it?"

And Blizzard... Did nothing. Well, they did canonise their ages at some point, and there is about two decades inbetween the two (Junkrat is allegedly 25 although I find that hard to believe, I mean look at him, and RH is in his late forties) which one would assume suggests their support of the father-son thing, right? Man, if only it were that easy. First of all, the writing is so nondescript and vague that their actual dynamic doesn't resemble a parental one even in the slightest, especially not on Junkrat's tounge, and seeing as he's both more affectionate and more talkative I'll lend that it's appropriate weight. Predictably, there is also one line that is inexplicable, unexplainable and clearly an innuendo, where if you run Junkrat and eliminate an enemy RH, he'll say something like "I guess we know who's on top now, don't we?" This doesn't appear to be a reference to anything, trust me, I've tried to check. Excuse me while I take a sledgehammer to Blizzard's servers. Again, we can't assume anything's ever on purpose, but c'mon. Who greenlit that?

So, unsurprisingly, Blizzard is being annoyingly non-commital again, so as not to piss off either half of their fanbase. Things went kinda quiet after that. Anything released was, again, purposely vague.

And then OW2 happened.

Section 6B: Subtlety, lack thereof, and the art of applying a metallic texture to a default Blender orb

This is Junkrat, as his current in game model. Sad, right? How they forced him to take a bath before letting him into OW2? How they regrew his hair and ripped off his cooler patches? It's a fucking travesty. People are calling him "Cluttermouse" as a joke now. Why would they do this? They massacred my boy.

Anyway, if you're observant you'll notice he's got an earring now. Yeah, on his right ear. Yeah. What's that? You were on Tumblr in 2016? You remember all the circling posts about "earring on the right ear means person wearing it is gay" posts? You grew up a bit and assumed that was made up or blown out of proportion? You asked your mom one day and she confirms it was a very widely known symbol until around the century change? Some fans must've noticed. Most of them didn't, though, because most of them are twelve. Anyway, I tell myself (and you) that it doesn't actually have to mean anything. If you look at the design again you'll see Rattie here is very asymmetrical, and leaned to his-right-your-left, both of his prosthetics being on that side. (He even walks unevenly, which I love.) It's likely that the modellers simply had no clue about the earring symbolism thing, and just wanted to play into that asymmetry. Right?

...and then Lifeweaver dropped.

And then everyone lost their fucking minds.

Ya see, dearest readers (thank you for making it this far,) Lifweaver, Pink Petal Supporthero McGoodguy, has not one, but two conversations with Junkrat in game. One of them feels fairly normal, with them discussing the price on Lifeweaver's "noggin" and laughing about it a bit. The other one, oh boy, the other one goes like this:

🌸"Are you and Roadhog together?"

🐀"Do~ you ever see us apart?

🌸"No. I meant: are you couple?"

🐀"Yes!! A couple of dashing rouges! Not sure... What you're missing here."

Yeah. I'd lose my shit too. I guess I kind of did, but not for the reason you think. You see, this right here, in terms of pure writing talent, is fucking genius, because it manages to be controversial without actually confirming anything. By that I mean, that because Fawkes said "yes" quite enthusiastically, the half of the fandom that said "gayass" think he meant yes, but because he noped out of that yes with the "couple of dashing rouges" bit, the other half of the fandom think he meant no! This is where I really start to wonder if they called Junkrat's voice actor at 2 in the morning and went "hey bud take a few extra grand and help us record another few lines will you? We just got sued again."

This shit is simultaneously funny as hell, sad, and absolutely infuriating. In reality, Junkrat has approximately two braincells rattling around in his skull, of which he is constantly frying, due to all the concussions. He probably doesn't even know what his relationship to Mako is. That might've been the case, and it would've been a good joke, had Overwatch been a well-written game. Sadly, it's all shitfuck at worst and boring at best, and this latest little oddity just makes me even more convinced that Junkrat and his partner have been banished to Queerbait Limbo for the foreseeable future.

Section 7: In conclusion,

Blizzard is shitfuck company, Overwatch is shitfuck game, I spent at least three hours writing this up and probably more editing it together and in less than a month, it's June and Overwatch'es first in-game pride event drops. Needless to say, I'm scared.

How much time did you waste reading? Did I state fake news? Do you have additional trivia? Do tell. I'm so curious. This has been four thousand words of nothing. Goodbye.

#essay #rant #long post #blizzard entertainment #overwatch #uuuuuuu i spent hours on this #btw i am not ripping on your favourite characters I feel bad for them for having shit creators and they're my ocs now #i won them over in the divorce. g'bye.#blizzard #bbugseye taps #tjs worst fix ever

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