I'm starting to lose interest and hope in/for the lore

Story Discussion
1

The problem is that this lore is full of plot holes, retcons, and the lack of temporal continuity.

Jeff Kaplan said in an interview that the OW2 story takes place about a year after the recall. But it has now been confirmed several times that it has been two years.
According to the codex, the Mondatta assassination was years ago, although it took place on the day of the recall and now the age of the heroes has been added to the website (including birthday) and all heroes are 2 years older.
What happened in these two years? Apart from Tracer and Mei, did no one really respond to Winston’s recall? Seriously?
Everything we’ve had so far has indicated that it will all take place within a year. (Recall to Paris/Rio)

Cass recruits some heroes. This starts with “Reunion” (Die Ashe, McCree, Echo cinematic) and then runs through the comic series and ends in the end cutscene of PvE Rio. This time frame should be less than a month. Meanwhile, Cass tours the world with an ORCA, collecting Pharah, Baptiste, Zarya and D.Va. So, where did he get the ORCA? Winston was very surprised in the cutscene, as if he didn’t know what Cass was doing and Athena must know about the ORCA. The heroes also change their equipment from one comic to the next. Cass changes his arm, Pharah gets a completely new Raptorion suit and in the last comic D.va fights with her original (rebuilt) mech and suit and maybe a few hours later she is in Gibraltar and has a completely new mech and suit.

Kiriko is another example. Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko trained together as children, but Hanzo (40) and Genji (37) are TWICE as old as Kiriko (21).

Temporal continuity and logic really don’t seem to exist in the lore.

Then the plot holes, how can it be that in the year 2077 absolutely no one notices anything about Null Sector and then dozens of Helicarriers suddenly appear. After the first omnic crisis, the USA, China, Russia, NATO and India must have increased their efforts to prevent something like this and invested trillions in the military and satellites.

And then the story itself. Somehow I have the feeling that we’re going to get a very basic story.

A book on Overwatch lore is supposed to come out at some point, I’m curious to see how many (if any) plot holes will be filled (logically) and especially how much retcon will be included.
Unfortunately, I assume the worst.

The lore for me is now practically dead. The only thing this lore is good for is serving as a loose baseline/inspiration for fanfictions.
The bad thing is that the lore was one of the key elements for me in buying the game, because in it I saw the foundations of a fantastic world that was worth diving into. A fallacy as it has now become clear, as the story was and is treated very neglectfully, almost amateurishly and not seriously.

1 Like
2

The lore so far has been

  • Winston Pushes Button
  • 7 Years Later: “Hi, I’m Lucio”
4 Likes
3

unfortunately, the only thing that i hope that they confirm is genji x mercy… i dont expect that they will though : (

2 Likes
4

I personally believe that the biggest inconsistency for us users is that we did not “perceive” this 2 years during all the events of OW1, also thanks to a teaser of the info that was extremely slower than what made the idea of "rebellion against the Petras act ” that Winston started with Tracer and Mei. 2 years is honestly plausible for “new generation” lore like Orisa (Hero of Numbani), Lucio (her fight against the vishkar) and Brigitte (training as a shieldmaiden). Soldier also had his part of the lore against reaper, Zarya’s investigation on Sombra, etc. I mean, with “new Blood” we objectively saw many more plausible adventures for Cassidy in more months of waiting than for Tracer and Winston. Orisa herself has an extremely good lore of her 1 year of life thanks to her novel and perfectly combinable with the liberation of Doomfist (where were Tracer and Winston at that moment?). Even Sombra has had a lot of adventures in two years!: an ARG against LumeriCo, the assault on Volskaya Industries, sought after by Zarya, a role in the Numbani lore, and even a secret first contact with Baptiste. yes, even Reinhardt who could have hypothetically taught Brigitte in combat for two years.

Winston and Tracer? they acted in an Overwatch museum and in London: end of their “no at Petras Act”. GG to Mei with her travels (her diary). :sweat_smile: I would have honestly found it palusable / forgivable if I had seen more action and adventures of Tracer and Winston in addition. I can ignore a Kiriko lore that is wrong due to distraction (even if not very forgivable from the now canonical artistic point of view)… but here we are talking about making the PROTAGONISTS who start the events by breaking the petras act REALLY stupid and lazy. and this story… is NOT London Calling, which is very badly written in its last volume which only creates unsolicited egocentrism for Tracer while nothing more of what happened in King’s row or with Iggy is explained. We can imagine a recovery period of… how much? few months? ok, but after the attack on the museum where were they at the time of the disasters in Numbani? to the news of Doomfist’s release? No, we only know that they celebrated Christmas together :christmas_tree:. It’s this gap of time spent with this unnatural tranquility that makes Overwatch’s lore annoying while at least for the others they almost all have a “justification” for what they did. :man_facepalming:

for me the best fix for this 2 year old lore would be to have a new story of what winston and Tracer did, technically the “protagonists” of what is the return of Overwatch from its first teaser.

5

but even if they add something like that, nearly no one reacts to Winstons recall for like Two YEARS? like wtf. the Whole “New Blood” Series could take place within one Month.

Sojourn was 19 at the beginning of the Omnic crisis and her Twin Sister has a daughter at the age of Five. meaning her Sister gave birth at the Age of 14!!!

In “Calling” (Sojourn Cinematic) the Agent says “they intercepted the Recall a while back”, while this term is not defined, i would interpret “a while back” as some Month, maybe a Year at max, but not two whole years.

Speaking of agents, After the museum fight, why weren’t Tracer and Winston put on an international wanted list thanks to the Petras Act? The authorities can certainly know where both of them live. Especially Lena Oxton.

Im certain, if we dig even more deeper we would find even more such things.
Im currently seeing The House of Cards, what the Lore is, starting to fall apart.

6

At this point they should’ve just kept things vague and removed all references to specific dates and time, Overwatch always had timeline problems, but it’s getting out of hand now. There’s a difference between something maybe not making entirely sense and something definitely not making any sense and we’re now at the latter.

1 Like
7

Well, it depends on who you’re talking about:

  • Mercy had always rejected the return of Overwatch also for humanitarian reasons and a different approach from “a task force that saves the world”. replying late is in line with what has been said about her.
  • torbjorn, like sojourn, are deciding in the moment of total emergency to unite;
  • genji was solitary from the beginning. While it’s unclear how he canonically left Overwatch, his spiritual retreat was already more isolated than that of other Overwatch agents. apart from his visit to Hanzo, it all depends on how they handled his time with Zenyatta which is never clear.
    -Reinhardt is perhaps the only one we cannot honestly justify for not having given any news about himself having said that he would give an answer. Brigitte’s apprenticeship is the one that justifies it in terms of time, but not on why Winston or Tracer should be amazed by their intervention in zero hour. here is the inconsistency for him.

those who in my opinion are abnormal are ONLY Tracer and Winston, who in two years could very well do what Cassidy did: look for new allies in Orisa or Lucio right away. but I have another type of hypothesis that I will explain to you shortly.

here you corrected me thanks to something I didn’t think about: the liberation of echo coincides with the latter’s direct journey to Paris for the Zero hour events. without a reunion in the middle, hypothetically even Cassidy’s lore was salvageable thanks to a long journey that would have made only d.va’s volume coincide with London Calling. but I have another opinion, and it concerns the development: the developers wanted to “cheat” with their work. I’ll use starcraft 2 as an example:

[How starcraft2 lore works]
To explain the inclusion of new playable units in this RTS, during the story new leaders of a faction join the protagonists’ journey and bring their help. it is perfectly in line with the gradual and complete inclusion of all the characters in a story, and it is especially evident with Legacy of the void which talks about the various protoss peoples. for obvious reasons, starcraft 2 has rewritten a lot of the lore of the previous chapter… but it has a complete linear story within it.

[How OW2 works]
Once again, I blame the fact that Overwatch 2 took TOO long! OW2 is a game born in 2019, and lucio’s hiring also happened at that time. I think that the developers’ original plan was to dedicate a new recruitment to each chapter of the lore that would significantly vary the gameplay. a perfect example is the mission in Gotheborg, where Torbjorn and Bastion engage. But Cassidy and New Blood? here’s where the developers “cheated”: they created an immediate recruitment story that saved entire pve chapters dedicated to all those characters. Imagine if the resolution of the mother and daughter relationship had happened in PVE with an Overwatch rask force mission instead of Cassidy. O d.va that it would have given greater satisfaction in interacting with the MEKA squad. or a nice mission to Volskaya Industries that would eventually lead to hiring Zarya. I’m literally talking about trem issions that have already discarded three necessary recruitments on the to-do list, enriching Sojourn’s mission in Toronto in an (objectively) heavy way on which heroes can be selected. they didn’t include Orisa because it’s impossible to talk about her without involving the lore of Doomfist 8 and therefore the second enemy faction, the Talon).

For me, New Blood has always had this flaw: unnecessarily rushing the involvement of characters not officially members of Overwatch just to make the first PVE chapter richer. their presence seems almost forced in Toronto, and only makes the variety of strategy for what is only the second mission of the game too full. indeed, it is clear that they have made the choice of characters optional and free precisely because they have removed the talent tree. :pensive:

Yes, I noticed it when I reread the book. certainly a narrative freedom that the author of the book did not think of when she made Sojourn a “twin” (but here I blame the developers who decided to define the ages of the new heroes only NOW)

yes, I agree with you, unless we’re talking about a “message that can only be encrypted by former overwatch members”. at this point it is absolutely necessary to remove the “few years ago” from the codex about mondatta’s death, which is canonically what makes it 100% wrong.

I’ve been saying for years that the Petras Act should have greater relevance in the lore of Overwatch, just as a recognized crime. the only progression I’ve seen in it so far is in Calling on Sojourn (although immediately withdrawn for emergency reasons on site) and in a codex recording. I like to think that it could give the possibility of a new playable character in the future, a government member who wants to enforce the Petras Act. the problem? that it’s late, again. XP

1 Like
8

I know a lot of people started playing OW when they were young and didn’t have a lot repertoire, and that’s why they think it had good lore. Or it’s just nostalgia. But it has always been like this, a lot of style (animated shorts and art) with little substance. But a big difference is that now it’s delivered in a consistent manner (with variable quality). We have a lot more information about a bunch of stuff that we’ve asked since OW1: how the omnic crisis happened, the characters birthdays, more interactions between characters, the result of the Recall. The problem with it, is that they had to go back and set somethings in the lore straight, so they can move the story forward, and the foundation is showing its problems. Because in OW1 they left a lot of things without a proper explanation and wrote in a more open ended manner, so things are not fitting properly (that’s when you get retcons). There is also that weird transition point where a lot of the leadership, including all of the writers left, so some of it must be the consequences of that.

The rushed timeline was always there, Tracer’s age never made sense from the start. She finished military and piloting training, became a test pilot, had the accident, disappeared for a while, got better, became an OW agent, Uprising happened. Almost all in the same year.

I’ve posted in the past, that the worse decision the writers made was make a story that takes place after the dissolution of an organization, that was made to fight a war that took place before the organization was created, and its intention was to win the war (a war that we didn’t know the details until this year!). I’m not saying it couldn’t work this way, but it created a big timeline to work with that is easy to create inconsistencies.