The Lore Is Scattered

We have animated shorts, comics, short stories, books, hero trailers, etc. The lore is all over the place, jumbled up, and not easily accessible. I’ve been playing Overwatch since Christmas of 2016 and even I have little idea of what is happening/happened in the story. I hope with Overwatch 2 they add a mode/menu where you can have a complete timeline of the story with resources like where to find the shorts, comics, etc.

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I think this is one of the team’s strengths actually, as the voice actor of Sigma said in an IG live, the less they think about lore, the more we do, as we try to fill in the blanks (with fanart, fanfics and discussions)

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That doesn’t effect pre existing lore??

I hardly see that as a strength… do you really want the community still thinking Soldier: 76 or Reinhardt could be Pharah’s father? Personally, I wouldn’t lol

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You know, at first Jack was just Jack.
Then Blues added his interaction with Tracer which just indicate Blues incorporated father-like personality into Jack.
Then Mercy and Genji interactions like in Valentine or in Storm Rising.
Then D.Va likes unhealthy food what her Halloween grave and Shooting Star show.
And so on, so on…
It’s just Blues doesn’t add everything our Overwatch Community imagine, they are just looking into our lore thoughts, our wishes then they take what they like, what they never imagined before but fans did, and make them cannon in one way or another.
Oh, Sigma VA actually said it I see.

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It’s definitely cool how they decided to play out some of the characterizations that the community gave characters like the Dad: 76 thing (very ironic considering Torb and Gabe are the dad’s of the bunch, but whatever), Biker Pharah, and D.Va’s whole chips and soda thing, but I meant more of how the community was left to speculate on a lot of things early on and it only resulted in them getting things and characters’ dynamics wrong, like how they thought Mercy was actually evil and was the one responsible for Reaper’s current state.

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Moira VS Mercy is excellent example that Mercy directly being responsible for Reaper’s condiction isn’t what Blues liked but fans did. Instead Blues created Moira who is directly responsible for Reaper and made her took some of Mercy’s research in her own research. Did Moira use Mercy’s research on Reaper? We don’t know, we only know Moira took Mercy’s research for something.
Maybe
[Mercy] What happend to you?
[Reaper] You tell me doc.
is the answer for that question but it’s not clear answer, it just suggests that Moira used them for it.

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Here is a thought: Moira’s character(2018) is a direct result of that fan theory. At first, I would say it was just a coincidence. However, when you have the writer that made the hero, directly responding to that fan theory(2016) on Twitter and the forums, things get more blurred.

I even remember during that time a tumblr post that went on details about “evil mercy’s” personality and among the traits, the user associated her with was “a superiority complex” and “a bigger interest in scientific advancement than ethics”*. Sounds like Moira, right?

*the writer even commented on one of the posts debunking the “evil mercy theory” that Mercy is very ethical(which’s not correct, but whatever).

Personally, I don’t like devs/writers/artists making these fanon stuff canon. Because it’s almost like taking something from other writers/artists and claiming it’s yours! Sure, when you checkmark that box to create your account, you give them the rights about everything you create using their platform. But just because they can legally do it, doesn’t make it right. If I was a dev/writer/artist I wouldn’t agree to do such things.

(So, if any of you enjoy making fanart/fanfic for any big propriety and one day you see your idea in their content, you can’t complain and have no rights to it. Even if it’s almost identical.)

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I agree 100%. I think the lore is very inaccessible and is one of the reasons I don’t usually post on this part of the forums. Something that I think makes it worse is how in game only certain things are canon. We know from interviews that the soul mechanic that Reaper/Mercy used/use was just that a mechanic meanwhile certain voice lines are canon. Then we have certain stories starting as cinematics and getting sequels as comics (or with the tracer comics I guess it’s the other way around).

On top of all that, there’s also the Sombra ARG which is full of story bits but these are even more inaccessible than the rest. The number of people that still thinks the expresso machine spray is a play on word for “been here all along” and don’t know that it’s the coffee machine she hacked in the ARG is impressive. But the thing “story bit” that feels the most forgotten is when people thought that she was the one who awoken Bastion (which we never got confirmation or anything to deny that) because at one point in the ARG something said :
“Transmission finalizada - finalizado carga…
Carga finalizada. Unidad Bastion E-54 compromedia…”

Also this whole ARG is never included in lore videos and feels almost retconned since it wasn’t part of a short story or anything.

P.S. I believe the ARG was amazing (except when we hit the timerception at the end) and that they should try to make another one at one point because it was really fun.

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I’m preparing an in-depth Overwatch timeline with links to sources and explanations from various interviews and developer posts. when it is ready I will share it on the forum (included the ARG sombra timeline)

I am an Italian user, but I will be happy to accept collaborations for an eng version :slight_smile:

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I am pretty damn sure there’s already timeline in Story Discussion made by DoctorSix.
But have fun anyway.

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