putting aside the criticisms of “McCassidy” or whatever you want to call it all, there is only one thing that really bothers me about this retcon: being inevitably present in the narrative reading.
I would like to focus on Reunion: it is a beautiful product, but it will always ruin the consistency between the names. and I doubt Blizzard will be able to republish a new version on Youtube unless we only have so many dislikes, but it is also true that there are some of us who prefer narrative coherence to unresolved inconsistencies. we like that there is completeness behind such a drastic choice at some point.
no one is satisfied in the current setup, but I would like to propose a “soft” solution for everyone: publish a new dubbing version (with cole cassidy) of Reunion only as a downloadable download in the “Press” section of Blizzard. In this way we can keep the emotion felt by the original video published on Youtube in 2018 BUT those who want to avoid destroying their narrative reading of OW can still download the new version and appreciate the new narrative coherence of this retcon.
it would be ideal were it not that Echo calls him Jesse in Reunion but in the recent re-dubbing in game she says “cole” while talking to Ashe or when Echo complimenting him.
and you have to consider that deadlock revels is not yet published in europe. if in Italian, Spanish translations etc. we will see the name “Cassidy”, this theory will inevitably have collapsed in the retcon rather than in the logical solution of the narrative.
With the way blizz does things, there’s no way they’d do this. It’s all or nothing with them - don’t touch it at all, or redub and remove the original.
More realistically though, I highly doubt blizz cares enough or wants to spend resources (especially in its current state) touching old stuff like this. Voicelines are one thing since players are still going to hear that. An old animated short is another.
The game isn’t set at any particular time. Echo would have learned Cassidy’s name when he returns to Overwatch post Recall. Calling him “Jesse” during Reunion is still canonically correct.
From what I understand, his original name is Cole. He left that behind and took on the alias McCree in his outlaw life (when he was part of the Deadlock Gang). That’s largely why Ashe would know him by that name. He then kept with it for a while, even after he got jailed and subsequently joined Overwatch/Blackwatch, hence why everyone else like Echo knows him by the name too. But after the years go by, he decided that the reforming of Overwatch (in OW2) is a good time to stop running from his past and embrace his real name again.
Honestly, it may lose a few customers who don’t know the full story, but I feel like it makes perfect sense to leave things the way they are.
At least they tried to explain it away logically instead of just saying “yeah his name was entirely retconned and we aren’t going to mention it lore-wise.”
You would be absolutely right, but I have begun to notice a major flaw amid this reorganization by Blizzard and perhaps even editorial in Europe. To avoid a copy and paste, I invite you to read the considerations made in this other topic:
In short, my doubt about Reunion arises from two major future flaws: a re-dubbing to “Cassidy” of the Retribution event (in which the name “Jesse McCree” is repeatedly mentioned) and the name changing in the European translations of Deadlock Rebels. The novel has not yet been announced in Europe, but if it were to change the name “MCree” to “Cassidy”, the theory that McCree was called “Cole” from OW2 also breaks down here. combine these elements with the recent tweet:
If the dubbing of retribution or the European (but also Asian) translation of the book Deadlock Rebels changes in “Cassidy”… all this is recalibrated in retcon. and already from the internal files of the game of the patch the characters involved in Retribution no longer show the lines of dialogue that quoted “Jesse McCree”.
So your problem is . . . things that haven’t happened yet.
The lines in Retribution that were removed could be rewritten to just avoid calling him by name - awkward, but it maintains consistency with the idea that the Blackwatch team knew him as Jesse McCree. It’s also possible that the Archives event will be retired entirely when OW2 comes out, so the dialogue won’t matter.
The foreign language releases of Deadlock Rebels are less of an issue, since only the English release is considered canon. According to AndyB, none of the old lore will be edited to accommodate the new name.
The short story sample makes it clear that this is not a retcon, regardless of what changes or isn’t changed.
It will probably stay McCree because this happens before he decided to go by his real name. His short story hasn’t released yet, but it will in November, which will make all of this still accurate. In game he is no longer being called McCree because he goes by his true name now, Cassidy, but in the cinematic, he still went by McCree, as that was in the past before he made this decision.
The time line itself makes sense and is coherent, but to those who don’t read into lore or care about the story won’t understand why he has two names.
I’m sorry but here you’re pretending it’s not a problem. Not so much for the event that changes mode of use in OW2, but to really assume that it doesn’t have to matter if it will exist or not in the future of the game despite being a canonical event and widely cited in the lore as uprising. In the future, however, there must be access to that story, somehow, and here we certainly cannot ignore the cassidy / mccree choice with the lore for an entire mission.
It is true that it is still to be determined whether they will actually replace all the deleted voice lines (currently in the game, extracting the retribution voicelines there are no phrases with “jesse mccree” in moira, genji, reyes and blackwatch pilot) but IF it were to become Cassidy, so what would you like to say? let’s ignore it, is blizzy right with that tweet?
I’m sorry, but I think it’s fair for us to point out from NOW that this is a continuity issue, just to make that tweet plausible to a decision of the cowboy’s name in the OW2 events mentioned in that tweet.
either they create the Reaper / Reyes difference in retribution names but with cassidy / mccree or this is a retcon. Officially a retcon if in all other countries in the world we will have “cassidy”, teorically.
you would probably be right, unfortunately for us Europeans (and considering the recall translations). But this in some countries, so how it will be in ALL other countries?
but editorial feedback may still apply to Overwatch Anthology Expanded Edition, which will be released in a few months. if it is reasonable to think that the postponement of the editorial publication of the art of overwatch is due to the press of “Jesse McCree”, it will be interesting to note if the same approach has also been applied to this narrative product.
