Can someone explain McCree's outfit to me?

General Discussion
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From a narrative perspective, I mean. The meta-narrative perspective is pretty obvious - he’s a cowboy so he looks like a Clint Eastwood western character. Most of the other characters’ outfits, though, make sense from a practical standpoint or at the very least don’t seem to hinder, but McCree’s outfit I just don’t get.

I get the chest plate, I get the mechanical arm and the sci-fi retro-style revolver, I even get the hat - it’s a personal style choice, same as Lucio’s snake dreads. But the rest of his out fit… Well, it makes me ask questions:

Why does McCree wear chaps? As far as I’m aware, they’re used by horse riders to protect their legs when riding through coarse brush, and sometimes by modern-day bikers to guard against weather and road rash. What exactly does McCree do which requires chaps? I’ve not seen him ride a horse or a bike, and I don’t think he’s wearing those chaps for chainsaw protection.

Why does McCree wear spurs? Even if we assume the chaps are for some kind of leg protection, what are the spurs for? Not only is he never seen riding a horse, I’m not convinced horse-riding is even a thing in the Overwatch universe. I thought maybe he’s fallen on hard times and had to resort to older styles of locomotion, but then he’s seen wearing spurs in his Blackwatch skin, back when he wasn’t on hard times. What is the purpose of them?

Why is McCree wearing a poncho? This is the part that confuses me the most, since it’s draped over his Flashbang hand and has to get in the way. Of all the uses for a poncho I could find, McCree doesn’t seem to have any, so why is he wearing it? Why, to the point of all of his skins contriving something to serve as a poncho, including a towel for his beach skin?

I know these are nit-picky questions, but that’s what I mean when I criticise McCree’s look. All of the other characters I can think of who have distinctive garments, from Reaper’s coat to Tracer’s jacket to Symmetra’s dress either serve a purpose or at least don’t seem so ODD. Nearly everything on McCree looks like it serves to his detriment for the sole reason of making him look like a cowboy.

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He does have a spray of him riding a horse, although I am not sure if it’s just a “for fun” spray because I think this was a Summer Event spray. But I am not sure if it was intended to actually be lore based.

As for the poncho, yeah I don’t get it either. Honestly, hero design came before lore or story, so they just wanted a cowboy in a semi-futuristic FPS. But later down the road it seems weird he wants to cosplay as a cowboy all the time.

Like even in Blackwatch he dressed like a cowboy. It’s like:

So I kinda get the nitpicking.

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Why does McCree wear chaps?

He is an outlaw so he’s probably had to hide or trek through the desert to avoid capture on several occasions. As someone who lives in the desert, trust me when I say that you do not want a jumping cactus clinging to your skin in the middle of no where. Since he can’t take himself to the hospital he has to try an avoid injury as much as possible. As for how he survived losing an arm, hopefully we’ll get some lore to explain that.

Why does McCree wear spurs?

I honestly have no idea. I can’t think of a practical reason he would need spurs. Maybe to help him get out of binds if he’s been captured (like if his hands are tied behind his back and he’s on his knees he could use them to cut the rope) but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Why is McCree wearing a poncho?

Desert nights get surprisingly cold. As an outlaw and drifter, McCree’s likely had to spend several nights camped out in the wilderness. He needs something to keep himself from freezing to death. It could also provide additional protection against desert brush or sand storms that whip up suddenly. It may also be a sentimental item. Be nice if we had some lore about it . . .

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He is originally from the gang that dressed as cowboys.

Also, I suspect he just likes westerns that much. “High noon” in particular.

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He’s like the little boy who always watched westerns and played cowboys, that never grew out of it. It’s adorable. He’s living his cowboy fantasy proudly. It is without a doubt his life’s purpose.

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Hey, these responses are actually a lot more positive than I’d feared. Thank you :slight_smile:

On the note of wilderness survival… Yeah, I can kind of see that. While reading up on chaps, I did find references to them being used for general brush protection while trekking, so I guess that does make some amount of sense. I don’t know what McCree’s deal was with the Deadlock gang, but I can kind of see them camping out in the desert to avoid the law. The comic that was centred on him did show him as a wanted man and something of a drifter.

Crucially, McCree’s Blackwatch skin doesn’t actually have chaps. It has a costume detail reminiscent of them (well, reminiscent of thigh-high stockings) but it looks more like a skin-tight high-tech suit. So the chaps are clearly something he adopted AFTER leaving Overwatch, probably as a necessity.

I can also buy the poncho being used to guard against the cold at night. I’m a city kid, but I do know enough about the desert to know temperatures drop significantly at night. If you’re trekking light (i.e. without a sleeping bag, which a drifter might be), then having an extra blanket, essentially, can’t hurt. Just simply wearing it would also be an easy way to store it.

McCree’s Blackwatch skin does have something like a poncho, as well, which makes me slightly dubious. However, that’s styled more like a cape, so I can accept it as an ornamental piece. Most of the Blackwatch and Overwatch skins seem to have ornamental elements, from stupid hats to dangly bits of fabric, so I can accept that. Yeah, it’s a bit odd as a coincidence that his uniform had something like what he’d be forced to wear later, but I can look past it for the sake of visual identity.

The spurs, though, I still don’t buy. Unlike chaps and ponchos, I don’t know of any uses for those outside of horseback riding. Worse, McCree has the spurs even on his Blackwatch outfit, where the “he was forced to ride a horse” excuse REALLY doesn’t work. I really wish they’d kept the spurs out of his classic skins, to be honest. I can accept these people having turned into cartoon characters in their old years, provided I can be shown a time when they WEREN’T cartoons.

The traditional Overwatch uniforms from the Uprising event do a great hob of this, enforcing a consistent visual style and showing me that these people started out in regimented uniforms but then slowly drifted away into more exotic, customised looks. The Blackwatch skins… Kind of don’t do that. There’s no obvious stylistic link between them, other than Moira’s outfit admittedly looking like Mercy’s current one - a nice touch for “the other Overwatch medic.”

But fair enough - I’m a little more willing to accept McCree’s outfit now. Thank you for the extra perspective. I really hope we eventually get a comic or a short showing how McCree went from a secret agent to a homeless guy.

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Why does McCree fan the hammer on what is clearly a double-action revolver? How does the Rip Tire actually steer? Why is Roadhog’s chain attached to an impractical coil that would require him to rewind it each time it is used? Why are D.Va’s arms and lower torso exposed in her combat mech? Why does Widowmaker’s sniper rifle have a laser sight, which would both alert the target and allow observers to trace it back to her location? And why is her outfit so impractical?

Such a lack of realism in this game. Clearly it’s the worst title in the ArmA series.

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While I realise that this is a bit of a necro, the McCree animated short sort of addressed my primary concerns in this thread, albeit in a roundabout way. Well, that and the Ashe backstory slideshow. It’s not exactly the answer I was looking for, but it’s AN answer.

Basically, the answer is “the Deadlock Gang.” I’m not entirely clear for what reason, but they seem to deliberately style themselves after the old Cowboy movies. I suspect this might have started with Ashe given her backstory - a rebellious teen who doesn’t fit in society but found new life as nomadic bandit in the old Western style. And while I’d normally see this as a bit contrived, there is precedent for it. Los Muertos, for instance (from the Soldier 76 short) are a similarly themed, almost costumed gang, so it’s not actually that far-fetched.

I can accept a certain amount of creative flair, and Overwatch does seem to borrow quite heavily from super hero comic books in a lot of aspects. Having a strong theme to the various major factions - be they organisations, gangs or super teams - makes sense from a “visual storytelling” aspect and it gives the world a bit more depth by contrasting the different factions against each other. After all, the Junkers don’t all have to look like Mad Max rejects, but having a cohesive visual style helps set them apart.

My main problem with McCree and why I made this thread in the first place was that he felt SO out-of-place within the broader art style of the game. Here you had this urban sci-fi world of soldiers and robots… And also a cartoon cowboy. I’d seen Route 66, I knew about the Deadlock Gang, but he still felt like an aberration. Seeing Ashe, Bob and the rest of these guys, however… Well, he doesn’t seem like so much of an aberration any more. And I think it’s the “Young McCree and Ashe” photo on the bike speedo that really cinched it for me.

It kind of doesn’t matter what purpose the poncho and the chaps and the hat would serve for McCree now, in the present of Overwatch - even though they probably would, as you guys pointed out. He’s a jaded old man who can’t move on from his past. He grew up in a gang cosplaying as cowboys, where identity likely mattered more than practicality, and that’s simply who he is now. “It doesn’t always have to be like this,” but it always does anyway.

Much like how having both Roadhog and Junkrat in the game helps both of them fit in, so having both McCree and Ashe helps the same way. It makes his look and style feel less like pop-culture caricature and more like a man who deliberately style himself as an in-universe character in order to fit in, until it became his identity. It’s amazing how much those shorts help flesh out the characters, but I was NOT expecting to ever “get” McCree like this.

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