THEY FIXED SOJOURN'S AGE - Sojourn's age is a problem

I’m a little confused, where did you extrapolate this info that Ana would have a daughter during the crisis?

Pharah is 32 (34)
and the Omnic Crisis was 30 years ago (Winston Recall)

Crisis started 28 years ago. They gave us a proper timeline with PVE now.

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not anymore. that “30 years” should now be considered as an approximation to indicate 28 years now confirmed in the current lore (codex, age of ramattrra), not as a precise date. I explained before how they changed it.

oh ok, I found some info order.

well, the calculation is “pretty simple” that if Ana is 62 and Pharah is 32 then she had this daughter at 28. In the new date of Sojourn (or rather, of her twin sister Velentine) the new age gap for Bonnie is 4 years. Therefore:

51 (age of sojourn) - 28 (time of the beginning of the crisis of the omnic, as well as of the book “sojourn”) = 23 years. in the book.

From Sojourn’s lore (again from the book) we have several dates confirming her back story):

  • Around the age of 4, the first operation is performed for her illness;
  • at 13 years old, replacement of the spinal column, eyes and heart with cybernetic parts;
  • at 16, due to her particular genetic condition, she was allowed to join the Canadian Primary Reserve (it is actually said in the book, in chapter 6), but despite this she completed her high school studies;
  • A tiny detail in the prologue of the book is that Sojourn would have 4 years of active duty in the military. this therefore coincides with the fact that she would have officially enlisted at 19 (23-4=19)
  • Bonnie (daughter of her twin sister) who is 5 years old in the events of the book would have been born when sojourn was 18 years old (23-18);

What I’m missing is… what the hell does Ana have to do with Sojourn? both from the point of view of when she would have had pharah, and from the point of view of when she would have enlisted, how exactly should she influence the age of sojourn, having however a gap of almost 10 years (51 vs 62) ? Not surprisingly, Ana was already in Overwatch as a founding member having gained experience in the Egyptian army, she already had a daughter… so what problems would she have with Sojourn?

… for an analysis of the white hairs that arrived early according to Verguco :no_mouth:? Seriously? :face_with_diagonal_mouth: perhaps we should calm the visual speculation from the (already confusing) official dates we have in hand. :sweat_smile:

Founding Agents of Overwatch during Sojourn novel:

  • S76: 58-28= 30 years
  • Torb: (I don’t know the age because the website won’t let me access their page, but I assume they gave it a +2) 59 - 28= 31 years;
  • Reyes: 60 - 28= 32 years;
  • Ana: 62-28= 34 years;
  • Rein: 63-28=35 years;

So:

  • Sojourn: 51-28= 23 years

Basically the youngest among the founding members (Morrison / s76) has an age gap of 7 years. why would it be implausible that he got credit for being part of the founders of Overwatch compared to sojourn who was noted with -7 years of military experience? Also because in the book Sojourn she is not yet confirmed as an Overwatch agent, she collaborates as a Canadian soldier. The proposal to become an Overwatch agent is made to her in the last chapter but she postpones this mockery. Really, I still don’t understand why it would be a problem that she’s 51. on the contrary, giving her more years would make it inversely implausible why she wouldn’t have been proposed for Overwatch right from the start after having demonstrated her military capabilities in more years of experience, right?

From what I’ve seen, Sojourn’s new age solves her problem highlighted previously and… it doesn’t create any with Ana, nor as a military career, nor with the fact of having a daughter (this comparison is completely nonsense to me :face_with_raised_eyebrow:).

Indeed. the point is that people are obsessed with Winston’s Recall video (what he said for agents) when we now have to take it as an approximation of that date now fixed at a specific moment. :grimacing:

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I am aware of that. That’s why I directly cited Winston’s Recall as the original source. I was more concerned with the fact that this is the base of what @harmicist meant with Pharah.

Personally, I have to say that I absolutely don’t like that the cinematics are retconed. Personally, I see the cinematics as the most important elements of the lore, the foundations, so to speak. Everything else should be based on the cinematics. But if the foundation is already crumbling, that is very critical.

The cinematics are the most important part of the lore because they have by far the greatest reach. If someone wants to delve into the tangle of Overwatch lore, even if only superficially, the first thing they look at are the cinematics. Therefore, the cinematics should be irrefutable/unchangeable under all circumstances.

The “Are you with us” cinematic is also definitely the most watched cinematic ever. It only has 2.7 million on YT but it was played for every Overwatch player the first time they started the game.

(If I ever install Overwatch 2 again, I should activate the intro in Settings.ini, I wonder if this is still the “Are you with us” cinematic. That would be also pretty concerning.

Edit: maybe someone of you, who has the game still installed, could check that.
you should find the Settings_v0.ini under \Documents\Overwatch\Settings. In the first part
[Cinematics.1]
ShowIntro = “0”
Just change the 0 to a 1, save the File and start the game.)

For me, the whole retconing shows that the lore is irrelevant/a side project to the devs. They are often completely unnecessary and amateurish mistakes (especially the whole age debacle). I mean, why were these dates (eg. Omnic crisis) changed in the first place? Completely unnecessary. I have the feeling that the devs themselves no longer have an overview of their own lore.

This is an interesting question, and I’ll give a trivial example:

  • old OW1 lore: for many there was a beginning of the omnic crisis indicative of 30 years almost everywhere (very often it was said “around”), and Sombra bio indicated 30 years as the age:
  • New OW2 lore: omnic crisis 28 years ago (- 2 years from original date) and Sombra at 32 years old (all heroes are +2 older than ow1);

So my question is “why this 4 year gap between omnic crisis and the narrative of the game’s original 32 heroes?” I suppose to bring the memory of the war closer to the present, but it’s not entirely clear to me why EXACTLY 28 years ago.

But it does not really answer the first either. Because why would you want the war to be closer to the present? I dont see any meaningful advantages doing that.

.

Question: How long does the Omnic-crisis last? If we take OW1, the Crisis started 30 years ago and it ended with the omnics becoming sentient (atleast thats the start of the end of the crisis). in OW1 Zen was 20 years old (since becoming sentient) which results in a minimum duration of over 10 years of War.

OW1: Omnic crisis ended 20 years ago
OW2: Omnic cirsis ended 18 years ago (16 for the time of Recall)

oh crap, i just got another argument for my “the OW2 Story/Nullsector invasion does not make sense”. We have the Gwishin in East Chinese Sea and the Siberain omnium. Two Active Omniums (out of formely 5) who actively fight. This means, the World is aware, that the Risk of a second Omnic crisis or smaller Conflicts with Omincs is still high. Therefor the nations of the world would invest a lot of money and make great efforts to keep these omniums under control and prevent something like this from occurring elsewhere. How can nullsector build dozens of these gigantic helicarriers without anyone finding out and trying to stop it when the world is already on high alert anyway? With technical progress (especially if you look at our current status with satellites etc.) it is virtually impossible for Nullsector to get even one mothership ready.

My guess would be : Lucheng Interstellar.

There have been… hints and new VL from some characters related to Lucheng, and they are - for now - my best guess because of what we know.

You mean that Nullsectors Factory is on the moon? While yes, Lucheng has lost contact to the Lunar colony its highly unlikey from a logistical point of view, they still need the materials and i doubt that enough is on the moon and can´t be producetd (eg. plastic).
Furthermore Lucheng is working around the clock to gather new information. We just dont know the Timeframe.
If Lucheng build those on Earth, it would also not be unnoticed and other Nations would also build similar aircrafts (especially the US).

and i found the next retcon/inconsitency.

“Two decades after Overwatch ended the Omnic Crisis and saved humanity, it was brought to its knees by a series of shocking allegation”
So, taking Recall as the orientation. the Swiss Headquaters where destroyed 5-6 years ago and around the same time Overwatch was disband.
This means the Omnic Crisis ended around 25-26 years ago which does not align neither with Zenyattas original Age of 20 but it also does not really align with the current “the Crisis was 28 years ago”, because (taking the +2 years into account) it would mean the crisis lasted just some month, maybe a Year, which seems kinda short for a Global War.

The more you dig, the more cracks you find. i hate it. I should really stop to care or even be interested in the lore at all. The Lore is flawed through and through and that since the beginning.

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You are very right.

The articles you use are very old, and the world wasn’t as defined as it is today (hopefully). Don’t forget they cancelled a whole comic in 2016 that was nearly finished (first strike) because of inconsistancies and taking the lore to a different direction (this comic would have been a real mess, probably)

And the rule in lore is kinda : The newest lore is - by default - the new canon.

They filled in gaps and plot holes sinces, but there are still plot holes and things that don’t fit, but after a while, yeah, you just have to accept the fate that some things that were true before are not anymore today, and like you say : it’s flawed.

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She was proposed to overwatch at the start. She turned them down. This is canon to the Sojourn novel, which was released less than a year before the OW Invasion retcon. It is important to note that the reason for the comparisons to S:76 and Ana are because she held the same position in OW as Ana did. She was a Captain, just like Ana. She held the same level of authority as she did, they have a daughter and a niece around the same age (because no, Bonnie is still 5 during the start of the crisis no matter what given the lore from the sojourn novel. and Pharah would be six at the start of the new date of the crisis, there’s not a 4 year age gap. If we went off the old date, Pharah would literally have been 2), and we’re told they’re both respected, high-ranked members of their respective armed forces. That’s why it’s weird Sojourn’s so much younger than Ana.

At the time that most people deeply invested in the lore were in the fanbase, we didn’t have any sources for S:76’s official age. We only knew that he was a founding member of overwatch, brought in by Reyes, who was a little bit older than him. We didn’t know how long he had been in the military, and the sources at the time implied it had been a rather short stint in the military. Given that was the state of lore for him from 2016 to 2023, I’ll admit to being a little chuffed that they added such severe additions. Same with the date of the crisis. The only date of the media we were given was the Overwatch Recall short, for almost a decade, and now they’ve got a new team, they’ve changed the narrative. They didn’t always intend for this narrative, that’s plainly clear from the way their narrative includes somehow Kiriko training with Genji and Hanzo when they were all kids and being nearly two decades their junior.

There’s no issue with Ana. The issue and reason why people bring up Ana is because there shouldn’t be an issue with making Sojourn older. They made her as young as they could, originally younger than even feasible. There’s nothing wrong with having her be older. Why are there like literally over half a dozen men in over 50 and only two women?

Secondly, and this is key; the new dates are just the irritation iceberg people focused on. There is no consistent lore or promise they won’t do this again. The lore I was using was the lore that existed…for almost a decade. It’s the representation of the bigger problem: that they don’t have a vision for their story. That their narrative department is in shambles. And with that being the state of affairs, why should anyone care? It’s clear that they don’t.

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… and excuse me, but so when Sojourn joined Overwatch she wouldn’t have had the requirement to be at least as respectable a Captain as Ana for those 11 years of difference? Storm Rising doesn’t diminish her as a high-ranking member compared to Ana, for example. She really doesn’t have any kind of annoyance to list with Ana’s lore, why do we have to create this type of problem… unnecessary but above all uninfluenceable between them? Ana is a senior member, Sojourn arrived not long after but still more experienced than the other agents (mercy, cassidy, etc): end. :man_shrugging:

ok, so let’s not bring it up as a problematic argument by finding connection points with pharah, ranks, etc. Let’s close this chapter. :open_hands:

As for “why she has to be younger than Ana”… well, to make her a specialized soldier who is gaining experience during the onset of the crisis, I would say. Sojourn is extolled throughout much of the book about how useful her prosthetics are in the military. This would have made her inconsistent in the narrative where she was not part of the founding leaders of Overwatch despite her particularly unique prosthetics. Ana, Morrison at that point in the lore would have gained the military experience necessary to entrust him with the training of Overwatch (and more precisely to Morrison for the leadership skills). Assuming a sojourn with an age closer to that of Ana and the others perhaps would have made her INCONSISTENT in the fact that the United Nations did not involve her in the project.

By now they had written up a novel that was noticed by Morrison for an initial attack on the Detroit omnium. It would have been more inconsistent for her to be a character who wasn’t called to form the task force despite being a citizen of one of the first Overwatch missions since the crisis began. The only underestimated mistake: having made it too young by creating and not adequately calculating the information in the novel. and now that that’s settled, it’s Kiriko’s turn to have some insight into her timeline. That’s it: Sojourn is much closer in age to Moira (50).

well, and we in the community are here to notice and argue it :face_with_monocle:. Sojourn? Done, we win with this feedback. :white_check_mark:. And it wasn’t the first, just as it absolutely won’t be the last (kiriko is in the crosshairs). It’s natural for a Live service to lose information along the way, especially when the years pass and the authors change. Do you seriously think this ONLY happens in Overwatch? At least we try by talking about it , otherwise we’d just be haters who come here just to say “incompetent authors” without adding literally anything about where they’re wrong. and when we’re tired… we say it and leave :wave:. but “leaving” seriously, not like some hypocrites looking for attention on the controversy of the month like Samito and Your Overwatch do. :roll_eyes: