Another rant about incorrect Ages and Mercy's creepy age

Story Discussion
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So we all know at this point that Overwatch completely fumbled its character ages, however instead of riding that train I want to focus on something that REALLY stuck out to me.

Mercy’s age and what that implies.

So let me come swinging out the gate. If Mercy’s age is lore accurate, she has the body of a teenager. No seriously let me take you down the road of Math.

Mercy is 39 (Though originally she was depicted as 36, I think they changed this to make her older than Genji?)

Overwatch shut down 20 years ago. This means best case scenario (Which is a lie btw I’ll get to that) Mercy was 19 when Overwatch shut down.

However, Overwatch fought a ENTIRE WORLD WAR and that takes YEARS. To the point that Blackwatch had to be established because of how long Overwatch had been active.
Angela is a FOUNDING MEMBER OF OVERWATCH. Meaning that she would have been in her early teens fighting as a CHILD SOLDIER in a World War. Granted I know the Omnic Crisis was a very VERY dangerous attempt to Genocide humanity, that still doesn’t justify making a child a active combat medic.

OH BUT WAIT, here is the fun part. Angela’s suit and powers stop her from aging. This process STARTED WHEN SHE CREATED THE SUIT. Which was there for the FIRST DEPLOYMENT OF OVERWATCH. This means that Angela was a minor, possibly a VERY YOUNG MINOR when she created her suit and stopped aging.

Granted you could say that when she isn’t wearing the suit she continues aging however we know this not to be true because Ana said so. Multiple characters remark that Angela hasn’t aged a day. And this is just Angela, Genji is younger than her. Meaning he was also a CHILD SOLDIER during Overwatch’s days.

I get that Blizzard likes breaking human rights laws, but I didn’t think they’d break the Geneva Convention as well.

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if you don’t know what the lore is like, at least go to the wikia to refresh yourself before complaining about completely wrong things :grimacing:. with order for avoid disinformation on what you say:

  • Mercy has always been older than genji, although by a few years. and that’s not a problem.
  • Overwatch didn’t shut down 20 years ago. are considered to be about 6-8 years before the present of OW2. Storm rising dating is a confirmation;
  • Genesis and the in-game files specify that the Omnic Crisis occurred 28 years ago and ended with Aurora’s awakening 26 years ago. This obviously didn’t stop some omnics from resisting, but the worst was done by isolating Anubis.
  • Mercy is NOT a founding member of Overwatch, the only recognized ones are Reyes (reaper) Morrison (S76), Reinhardt, Torbjorn and Ana. This misunderstanding arises from the photo of Ana origins which however is set when Pharah is around 11-12 years old and mercy is NOT part of overwatch but a prodigy medical student visiting Overwatch (she is a friend of the Lindholms).
  • Mercy has no power to prevent old age. it is an extremely logical discussion and of which michael chu specified in the past that the only person in the lore who has NOT aged is Mei, whose biological age must be associated with a “+9” for the state of hibernation.
  • Genji is not a “child soldier” either: he entered blackwatch after hanzo tried to kill him, it is literally written in the official biography.

the only characters we know so far that are 100% wrong age are kiriko and sojorun (too much youngs). for everything else I recommend that you FIRST read the lore on the wikia pages and THEN make these rather uninformed comments :neutral_face:.

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go outside bro, touch some grass bro

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Wrong, she wasn’t.

She was always older than Genji by a few years.

Wrong again. It was 7 years ago.

Wrong. Issue adressed sevral times here in the forum since 2016.

Free advice? Maybe stop believing fanfiction is canon, and learn about the real lore from canon media, and by talking and asking questions to fans that have followed the lore for quite some time.

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sadly there are Fanfics out there, which are far more belieave than the current lore, thanks to all the retcons, illogic, plotholes and missing temporal continuity that are part of it since years.

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There are some that are very good, true, but fanfiction is still fanfiction.

The retcon we’ve had are :

  • Cassidy’s name change
  • “Dragons are not magic” (hello Kiriko! s)
  • Zenyatta new age (which makes way more sense now than his old age in bio)
  • Sevral group pictures where Jack, Gabriel and Ana look way too young and should look older.

Now, the issue is Sojourn’s age (did she joined the army at 15? Really?), Kiriko’s biography that contradicts a YT short and makes her age weird because of that :

When she was twelve years old, the head of the clan, Sojiro Shimada, was assassinated by the rival Hashimoto clan.

So either say that she was younger then (because 12 + 12 = 24 / 21-12 = 9 - or they count the 12 years ago from Asa"s letter as the old timeline and 2 years have passed, then it’s more 21-14 = 7, which is the age they gave in this YT short
They just have to make up their mind on that xD

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Widow also had a Retcon of her backstory.
Original the backstory was read as, that the conditioning also brought her back to Talon after Gerard death and that all “modifications” where kinda forced on her since it all happens under the conditioning.
Now it sounds like the conditioning was only for the kill and she chose to go back to Talon, that she CHOSE to get all the modifications.
This is making her a pretty bland Villainess.
(it feels like everything is being sanded down, make it more streamline and uninspired since OW2) Reapers Backs

Also comparing Overwatch and OW2. She behaves differently. i dont know if all the old Voicelines are still used but all the new ones paint a far more sassier and blood hungry picture of her as before. Also, for example, her spawn voiceline:
Overwatch: One Shot, One Kill
OW2: I aim to devastate.

The first one suits a sniper far better. A sniper is not a blind destruction machine but a scalpel.
Also that she now leans far more heavily into the spider theme.
You really notice that there is a different team behind it and is interpreting a lot of things differently.
And that’s where we come to the question of what is canon anyway, because in theory I could become lead writer on team 4 and then interpret, rewrite and retcon everything again.

Disney did this on a grand scale with Star Wars by quickly turning the entire EU into Star Wars Legends and thus throwing it out of the official canon.

The canon in such corpa projects is always what the official people declare it to be, not what the original creator wanted.

(Yes, I am absolutely not happy with the current lore situation surrounding OW2, especially when it comes to Widow, and yes i am a bit salty about it, just a bit) Reapers Backstory has apperently a similar fate, but im not that deep into his lore.

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The new bio just give more information and dive in depth of her mind after killing Gérard, and filling some plot holes. But I’m not a huge Widow fan, so that’s why it doesn’t bother me that much.

But you are right tho, there is definitely a retcon with Widow story, and it’s with Ana’s comic Legacy :

“Amélie Lacroix? Impossible? She was kidnapped after her hursband’s murder. We thought she was dead. Wait… She must have killed Gérard – Oh no.”

I mean, yeah, Ana could think that she was kidnapped( again) It wouldn’t be a retcon if the new biography didn’t say “Amélie was hunted by police and Overwatch alike”

So, yeah. Retro continuity is broken.

But it’s a retcon that actually makes sense. Amélie is brought back from kidnapping, psych eval showing nothing, she goes to her hursband, her hursband is found dead and she goes missing again. She would obviously be the Suspect Number One. No way Overwatch and the police investigators would think something else.

It’s basically the same as Widow : too little lore (biography was bare and very open to interpretation), fans filled in the gaps in between and wrote some amazing (and less amazing) fanfictions and headcanons.

And when they gave them after YEARS of thinking and brainstorming what his backstory could be, they go with “was a cop in the stups before joining the army and then Crisis happened, then OW because he wanted to make the world better but got bitter along the way, Doomfist got in his head with his words and charisma, then HQ explosion happened, Moira saved him and he had nowhere else to go so he stayed with Talon”…

I mean, I can see the disapointment.

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well yes… basically a small correction on the official biography (ages) is literally enough to resolve the most controversial problems. it wouldn’t be the first time: they changed mccree’s age shortly before the 2016 release and brigitte’s during its release. the only difference is that we always had a narrative director who was careful to tell us “you’re right, now we’ll fix it”. :sweat_smile:

Well, probably the most horrible thing about “communication” with developers in OW2 is that everything always happens in stealth without any real reassurance. and all this silence of confirmation makes us paranoid. :pensive:

(anyway, I hope they NEVER make these shorts again. it is one of the worst formats also aesthetically, and as we have already noted several times, even disinforming)

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Mercy has always been older than Genji 2 years. Also, I have a fun fact info people really need to know. Wether mercy accessed to slow age or not… she will still look the same even as a 39 year old woman.

This is a biological fact, the reason why you may see some people already looking old at their mid-end or 40’s (even 30’s) is due to stress and not taking care of their body

Mercy is like any hero taking care of their health and try not to stress themselves up for upcoming missions. Like, look at Ashe, she’s like in her early 40’s now and she’s not old at all. Overwatch characters take care of themselves very well (except some like junkrat or roadhog lol)

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