After waiting almost a year for the next cinematic, and for any DVA lore, I (and apparently a good chunk of people) have to ask “was that it?” Animation wise it was spectacular, but writing wise… this was seriously the weakest of the cinematics to date.
Game DVA and Cinematic DVA are two completely different people.
This was the most confusing aspect. In game DVA comes off as a cocky and competetive gamer girl with an attitude but layers behind it showing a kind and friendly superstar. Cinematic DVA is pretty much every stock anime mecha protagonist ever. She’s absurdly noble, doesn’t care about the stardom aspects, obsessed with defending the city and doing it herself so others can’t get hurt. Like…Blizz did hire new writers right? I mean besides that being the most generic character type they could give her did NOBODY point out how vastly different this made her from her in-game counterpart’s personality?
Edit: Okay since this keeps coming up: If the point was to show that “Iife is a game GG” gamer DVA is a persona she puts on and this is the real her…they handled it badly. There was no build up at all to this character’s change of…character. Like if they had a scene of her trying to not break down and psyche herself up, then go out to the public acting like her usual “GG gamer girl” personality we’ve known for 2 years it probably would have come off better. But they didn’t and this is why her personality in this short is so JARRING.
We STILL don’t see the Kaiju Omnic
After years of hype around DVA’s backstory involving a giant war omnic, we still don’t see it, just another brief glimpse of it in a flashback, and instead she fights a little squad of random tentacle bots…yay.
Practically no lore/backstory/or anything moving the main “plot.”
This is perhaps the most infuriating aspect of it. There’s nothing to the plot that moves the main narrative of Overwatch returning, we get ZERO backstory on DVA (the beginning teases it but cuts off) we end with pretty much everything we already know about DVA (outside of this bizarrely different personality), and she fights some random flying missile bots, the end. Hell her “lesson” is just a watered down anime version of the lesson Reinhardt had to learn in his short: “You can’t do this alone!”
All in all, after waiting so long for a DVA short or a short period, the writing for it was mediocre…and for Overwatch’s cinematics that’s pretty unacceptable.
Yeah because there’s never been people who joined an army for glory and money. I’m not saying DVA should have been a jerk who didn’t care about her job, but she felt extremely neutered into some sanitized “my first manga” goody goody protag in this short compared to her personality in-game.
D.va being this cocky, hilarious stereotype of hardcore gamers made her an absolutely unique and interesting character. She came across as someone who lived in her own crazy little world, but was so awesome at it that it wrapped all the way back around from crazy to sane. Her conversation with Soldier where she literally tells him she sees life as a game epitomized this: she sees everything as a game, but she is so deep into it that it somehow works.
The D.Va we got in the cinematic totally dropped that, though. It’s going to be legit hard for me to look at D.Va during gameplay now and not realize that she actually doesn’t care about anything she’s doing. The Selfies, the arrogance, the spotlight-stealing…it’s all fake, and the real D.Va doesn’t care about any of it.
This so much. Like I said, in-game DVA’s personality and this bland anime mecha protagonist version of her in the short are two completely different people. And the Cinematic version of her is BORING. So, are they retconning her entire personality into this sanitized noble heroine archetype? Because that’s pretty sad.
She also streams every fight for her fans when she’s in game, no?
She is a star for public, but as normal as any other people. She cares about people she’s protecting, about thousands of them, that’s a big responsibility. Risking your life to fight omnics is so much fun, why is she so boring? What a joke.
Way to avoid all of our points. The point is we don’t see any of that DVA. We get this sanitized high school level writing manga hero protagonist who’s absurdly noble and lacks any reasonable character flaws beyond “she wants to do it alone” and again, does not match up at all to her in-game personality. Keep trying to white knight bad writing though.
Alright, but this is a comic book, not War and Peace. They can’t put Nobel Prize for Literature content in comic book cells, you guys are kinda expecting a skyscraper to be stuffed into a three story apartment building. The style is different, like it’s suppo9sed to be.
If you don’t like it - don’t eat it. You are free to dislike it, no one promised you any lore anyway.
People on this forum have such high expectations.
Even if you use the “comic book/cinematic junkfood” defense, this was still mediocre writing even by those standards. Like, this is something a high schooler who just watched shonen anime would first come up with, not paid writers.
Yeah, and she didn’t stream the fight in the cinematic, did she? In fact, she flat out told her friend that what they show on TV is BS.
We always knew D.Va cared about people–after all, she gets very serious for a second when talking about Russia and Eichenwalde, but we also had the impression that she chooses to enjoy it and live up to the fullest. But that isn’t what we get in the short.
And that’s boring as hell.
Because we can see that she DOESN’T find it fun. in the cinematic, she isn’t fighting because she likes to do it–she’s doing so out of fear.
And it’s not like Tracer or Reinhardt–those are people who clearly enjoy what they do, but also feel the weight when they fail. Tracer gets very depressed when she fails Mondatta, and Reinhardt is still struggling with the guilt of what happened to his master because of his actions. But, at the very least, we can see both sides of their personality.
The Hana in the cinematic was just ALL SERIOUS, ALL THE TIME…and she’s the LAST character who should be portrayed that way. She’s supposed to be “us”–she’s supposed to represent the way we would WANT to behave if the games we play became real. Yes, the reality is that if any of us were thrust into that situation, we’d probably be as terrified and focused as Hana in that short…but the “reality” isn’t what made Hana fun.
Right, like Stephenie Meyer made untold amounts of money off Twilight? What precisely is “professional” writing to you? Because her fans consider her “professional,” even as the literary world cries tears of blood.
It’s not junk food, it’s comic books. Comic books have action, heroic noble heroes and so on. People have been demanding lore for D.Va for a long time, she’s an anime girl in a mech. This seems to be the rright kind of lore to write for her.
I just have to point out that this whole thing is a bit disingenuous: Overwatch lore is being created for Overwatch, but you say it’s not good enough for Overwatch? That doesn’t sound like you have a problem with this cartoon, it sounds like you have a problem with Overwatch lore in general – in which case there’s basically nothing these people can do to please you no matter what they do.
It’s the most relevant example of what my issues with this short’s writing and characterization is. But delving into personal jabs over defending your points. Already resorting to those tatics eh?
I was not disappointed at all. I like the lore behind it and how there’s a group of them in Mechs fighting big Monsters. I didn’t know about that. I thought D.Va was just a rich esport gamer in a mech. I didn’t think she would be fighting off Monsters like that. She has a ton of heart and is very down to earth. Very different from her bubble gum chewing / selfie ult. I got very emotional when her arms got ripped off.
I don’t care what you or any other think of the cinematic. I liked it, someone didn’t. Yeah they could add more to her, but man, you guys just can’t be pleased with anything.