Why does OW have so little lore? What is Blizzard and their writing team doing all day? PART 2

General Discussion
1

Two days ago I made a thread asking this exact question.

The discussion on that thread was very civil and respectful.
All we wanted to do is get an answer from the OW team explaining this issue.
Hence I do not understand why such a thread warranted deletion.
Many players agreed that we have little lore, the updates are too slow and when we DO get something it is lacking severely.
Why are they lacking you ask? They shed very little light on our questions and all storylines introduced, whether a flashback or current scenario do not have any continuation.
We have been waiting for two years and we still do not know basic questions.
Even games like Call of Duty have more story content than the OW team is delivering and that’s just sad to even contemplate.

Main story line questions

  • How did OW get disbanded? What exactly happened?
  • What happened when Winston called the remaining OW team?
  • And what is happening now that the OW team has gathered despite the wishes of the world? Are they criminals now?
  • Is Reaper and the rest of Talon still assassinating the old OW members?
  • What are the various missions that players are participating in every day?
  • What do these missions mean for the overall story? Is there a progression?
  • When we last saw Doomfist he was planning a new world war, What happened next?

There are probably others I do not recall but these are some of the most obvious ones. After two years we have very little idea as to what is going on currently in the OW universe.

Character Backgrounds

A few characters have gotten some shorts, some shorts have been able to introduce us very well to the character and answer some questions but more often than not we get very little continuation.
I think the two best shorts that ACTUALLY gave a full story on character backgrounds were Bastion and Reinhardt.
We still do not know how exactly how Bastion ended up in OW because last we saw him he was running around in a forest.

Actually we do not have the origins of how they joined the old Overwatch or the new Overwatch for a lot of characters. Lucio? Dva? Symmetra? What is their story? Why did they join OW and what are they doing now?
Even the latest hero Hammond. Do we know anything about him and his relationship with OW?
Why are Junkrat and Roadhog part of OW team? Or are they Talon?
If only OW team could give us the full story…

No Story Progression

Every couple of months we may get a comic or more rarely a short cinematic.
I certainly wish we got more of these more often. The game has gotten stale.
And the reason it has gotten stale is because there is absolutely mediocre story progression.

Every OW event, cinematic, comic book’s story is completely halted after their creation.
Does anyone know what happened to Reyes and his team after their extraction? Is this what lead to the breaking of OW?
Does anyone know what happened to the Sombra, Katya Volskaya and Zarya issue?
What about Mei walking alone across the Arctic?
What about Tracer’s girlfriend? Or is she her wife? Who is Emily? Is she another hero or just a civilian? its been almost two years since her reveal and we don’t know anything about her. Will she be used against tracer at some point?
Widowmaker was someone who talon turned against OW. So its not unheard of.

TDLR / CONCLUSION

The story updates for OW are too slow.
The little story that is presented is never fully explored and left up to fanfictions.
New character reveals like Emily are just forgotten, Old character origins like Lucio, Dva, Mcree, Young Genji/Hanzo and many others have no origin story of who they were before they joined OW and what are they doing now.
Blizzard has all the money and staff necessary to give us these contents.
But they do not.

I ask my fellow forum posters this.
Do not get distracted on divisive topics.
If you think Lore is lacking on this game then comment, show your support.
Let Blizzard know they are responsible to tell the compelling story they promised.
Most players don’t care about OW League, we want more content oriented towards average players. Namely the lore.
It is unacceptable we have to wait for the Archives event on a yearly basis to get SMALL glimpse of the past.
Its even more unacceptable we have to wait for new characters and somehow hope they are connected to old characters so we can get some back story on them.

31 Likes
2
  • This has actually been explained. Overwatch was disbanded because of Blackwatch, Reyes’ team was acting outside of what the UN considered acceptable parameters. It was a big enough controversy that Overwatch itself was labeled as a criminal organization and shut down.
  • We’ll probably find out in more future shorts, but I’m with you on this one.
  • I think this is left intentionally vague for gameplay reasons.
  • As shown in the Sombra short, it appears so. Talon has some kind of agenda in attacking or capturing politicians and former Overwatch agents to sort of “clean up” what they consider rogue variables to whatever mission plan they have going on.
  • Good question.
  • No clue.
  • I wish they would make an event out of this, or something. That would be really interesting.
3

I want more lore, but creating it is actually very hard. Your title implies creating lore is easy peasy, and is actually very rude to Michael and the rest of the writers.

They aren’t just writing a story, they are writing an entire universe. It’s not like writing a movie. Most movies don’t care about plot holes, and will just produce something to draw in an audience.

4

Was this event specifically what was shown in the last Archives event or was it a separate event?
On the rest of the points I want to point out the issue with our speculations, due to the OW team constantly giving us short glimpses we are stuck imagining the rest.

There are plenty of games with plenty of lore and an entire universe in them that the writers and art staff managed to deliver.

But two years and a financial success that OW is we have seen little content in regards to story.

It is Blizzard’s job to deliver this.
No one said it is easy, they are getting paid to do so and the community has the right to criticize them for their lack of output.

9 Likes
5

Reyes killing that one politician was probably at least the start of Blackwatch undergoing UN inspection and controversy.

After all, a man was murdered. Criminal or not Reyes technically operated outside of the operational perimeters that Overwatch was given as it was founded. They were created to help fight the Omnics, not commit the equivalent of political assassinations. It’s why McCree was so angry and disappointed in Gabriel for the entire mission.

6

I find it hard to believe this 1 event lead to the entire organization being shut down when they have literally saved the world from total destruction.

Surely arresting Reyes and his companions and bringing them to justice was the more measured response.
But obviously we have little to go on so its hard to make informed conclusions and rely on speculating why it happened.

7

I get the feeling that they attempted to bring Reyes and his team in for questioning and something went wrong.

Keep in mind that Reyes and Morrison had a falling out that ended up with people thinking they both died. That is probably when Overwatch died officially, on the books. But things like Blackwatch leading up to that point were likely starting to push the narrative that the organization was going to be disbanded because it had mostly served it’s purpose; the omnics were much less of a threat and Overwatch was becoming a new threat.

8

Maybe,

Honestly the timeline is confused and we are back to speculating again.
Do you agree we do not know enough but should?

Its been two years since this game launched and yet we still don’t know exactly what happened. How many years before we get the full picture if we keep up with the current trend?
3 years ? 5 years ? maybe 10 years from now?

9

Didn’t you know? You’re not allowed to criticize the dev team on this forum lol. Nor use their names.

4 Likes
10

He is the lead writer and has posted here before…

1 Like
11

I would like Blizzard to put some more lore into the game or provide additional lore to interested players, but I think it’s like some who have studied the lore in the past have said.

“There isn’t much actual lore to work with, and it’s possible the lore development team have written themselves into a corner.”

12

I don’t agree that they have written themselves in to a corner… not yet at least.
Well lets summarize what we DO know.

Overwatch team were being assassinated among many other key individuals.
Winston Calls Overwatch.
Doomfist plans a new world war.

The other storylines are all flashbacks and character pasts.
The story seems vague enough to go in whichever direction honestly.

More events (game modes or maps for gameplay) on various Doomfist plans of attack and the new OW team stopping them.
And past events or origins that are an open book on what can be introduced since its all in the past.

2 Likes
13

hey op i’d remove Michael Chu’s name from the title. Its against the code of conduct and this thread will get deleted by the mods. I don’t want this thread to die cuz I feel the writing team deserves to be put on blast

3 Likes
14

Yeah do it quick, I got banned once for talking about a specific member involving the deathmatch spawning formula in 15mins. Criticism is hard.

15

I took it down.
Best not to give them excuses.

They removed my last one with no name mentioning.

16

it is easy when game is bunch of cliche and stereotypes

3 Likes
17

As far as I remember the final scene of the event was actually Reyes being scolded by Jack and someone else (not sure who however). I thought this was the first incident that caused oversight committees and UN changes to the organization. It was a tipping point, not the final straw. At least as far as I know? Correct me if I am wrong.

18

At this point, I am literally less interested in the lore and more interested in what the writing team actually does. Like, seriously, day to day. Why even have them at this point. Just in case?

3 Likes
19

Just desperate for more lore here. Or has it stopped entirely? I had a feeling Hammond was the writing team throwing it in and giving up on the story they launched with.

I want to know if we’re getting more or if I should move on?

20

I feel like the team has given us quite a bit of lore. Having said that I wouldn’t mind it being expanded more, even if it was through a different medium… like a short animated movie or series of novels.