This So Gives Me The Ick, Like Why Do They Need To Put A Label On What They Have?? It's None Of Your

Spitting facts, Blizzard making cannon decisions whilst drunk, upside down, and spinning in circles! ;-;

The constant rolling disaster that is Overwatch's game development aside, what really perplexes me about how Blizzard is handling the broader franchise is their continual insistence that a canon narrative exists in spite of their equally continual refusal to tell anyone what it is.

Like, okay, the events of the games aren't canon. Fair enough: the games are multiplayer-only, and you can't account for player actions.

Oh, and the animated short films aren't canon either – they're properly understood as in-universe propaganda, not depictions of actual events. That's a little high concept for you guys, but fine.

But surely the comics are canon, right? Well, no; some of the comics (we're not telling you which ones) were canon at one point, but the writing team has decided to go in a different direction.

My dudes, what is left? The weird Source Filmmaker porn? Is that canon? Well, apparently it's at least as canon as anything else!

Replayed the Toronto mission with my duo today and here’s a quickly recap of what happened -

My trying to squish my duo and discovering I can instead whack the trees 😌

Aggressively screams at duo to drink bean juice ☺️

Accidentally buys the only train ticket 🥲

“What would you do if you came onto the train and people were sitting like this?”

Look very closely as to where Sojourn is :)

“I can shoot him in the head if that helps?”

“Would you like a mechanical brain?”

“Oh look, it’s the annoying guy.”

Nothing like making the enemy team rage quit!

I'm usually on the fence when it comes to hero Re-works but this acc sounds decent??

Re-Watching Origin Stories

I was re-watching Origin stories and was only a few in when I came to Kiriko's.

Everything is you know, not making sense because of the age differences between her and the Shimada brothers, and then, it starts to just make even less sense.

She basically says in her story that she didn't pick either her mothers way of protecting people, or her Grandmothers, instead she combined the both into a more renegade style.

Cool, chill, whatever.

Then it shows this at the very end:

Like who are these people??

They all look pretty young, and by the looks it it they're all dressing up as Japanese spirits or Yokai.

Those are five sick character designs and all we've heard about them is this single screen grab and some possible references in the Yokai short story?

In the Yokai short story, three characters are mentioned, Ryōta, Nobuto and Sakura. We're introduced to them as Kiriko is meeting them for a festival.

We also learn that Ryōta and his friends do illegal jobs on the side to slight the Hashimoto gang - which are the group of thugs that run the area, Kanezaka, where Kiriko lives.

Here are the bozos in Kiriko's short:

This fight always gives me chills ngl, it's so well animated and staged, it's a wonder to watch.

Also, just have to point out a little line of consistency (that could also be considered laziness considering you've view on it).

But, this Bozo: (from Kiriko's short)

First appeared in Hanzo and Genji's short:

Which came out seven years ago now.

I guess it depends on your point of view. Would it be considered lazy because they couldn't be bothered to make another lackey. Or, is it consistent to use a character they'd already assigned to the Hashimoto group seven years ago.

Guess it can be a little bit of both.

Anyway, getting a bit off topic.

The Yokai short story basically depicts Kiriko stopping her friends from blowing up a warehouse in-case it caused collateral damage, and instead they just sabotaged the weaponry inside the warehouse.

She brings them around from the destruction by telling them a story she heard the Shimada brother's father tell them when they were younger.

At the end of the story they talk about forming a group of that strikes from the shadows at the Hashimoto, and the word Yokai was specifically mentioned.

Which is what these look like:

I'm not sure about the two women, but I'm fairly sure the green one on the right is supposed to represent a Kappa and the brown animal mask on the left is a Tanuki. I'm assuming the one in the back is supposed to be an Oni, sort of like Genji's skin.

So, could this group contain some of the members mentioned in the short story? Are some of them Ryōta, Nobuto and Sakura?

Just from names alone, I would assign the Oni in the back as Ryōta, the Tanuki as Nobuto and the girl holding the umbrella as Sakura.

It would make sense for them to be there if they were mentioned in the short story, which honestly, I feel like should have taken place during their little groups peak.

And included descriptions.

The writing of the short story was kind of weak as well and I just skimmed over most of it quickly. There were a lot of flowery descriptions and analogies, but other times things were too blunt and straightforward. It wasn't a thrilling read to say the least.

Although, it's difficult to make 6 pages good or thrilling, so I suppose they worked with what they had.

If the short story had taken place when the gang had all come together, and it detailed a more complicated heist against the Hashimoto it would have been a much more interesting read.

Plus Blizzard would have had the opportunity to develop more lore, instead of putting loosely put together ideas out there for the sake of time.

Trust me, I know what people will be willing to cut out and half ass all for the sake of meeting deadlines. I'm an art student.

So, I feel the writers are less to blame here and the Blizzard managements are more in the blame.

They keep mass producing these heroes with the bare bones of lore, and then chuck them into the game. It makes more sense for the newer heroes to have less lore, but some of the older heroes have just as much lore as the newer ones; less in some cases.

Surely the writing team hasn't been too pre-occupied with OW2, since well, there was a shortage of new heroes for years and the missions turned out to be... not what we thought.

I just don't understand how Blizzard can keep putting out these strands of lore and then not follow them up.

It drives me up the wall.

If Blizzard was a blanket they would have too many lose threads to count when it came to Overwatch Lore.

Just! Please give us something more concrete Blizzard!

Write more books, draw more comics, release more lore, release more lore centred events!

The Overwatch universe is a plethora of amazing stories to be told and Blizzard is missing on almost everything!

I AM DECEASED

Then a couple of months later they released the 'Honour and Glory' short:

Then another year or so later the 'Shooting Star' short was released:

A couple of months later the 'Reunion' short was released:

The the infamous OW2 trailer 'Zero Hour' was released, casually three years before they were ready to release the thing:

The first Overwatch 2 short 'The Wastelander', was released a astounding three years later, with no filler shorts in between:

Shortly after the 'Kiriko' short was released:

And last but not least, the newest trailer, released in the summer of 2023 is the 'Calling' short:

Fingers crossed there will be more shorts in the future though and it won't be the last one for long lol

Overwatch Animated Shorts Master list!

All the Overwatch Animated shorts in release date chronological order <3

Naturally, the 'cinematic trailer' came out first :) ->

The next trailer that came out was the 'We are Overwatch' short:

The next short was the 'Recall' short:

Quickly following that short, was the 'Alive' short:

Not long after that one either, the 'are you with us' Short was released:

Following that was the 'Dragons' short:

Then not even two weeks later the 'Hero' short was released:

Then a few months later 'The Last Bastion' short was released:

A month of two later the next short, 'Infiltration' was released:

After quickly putting out so many shorts, Blizzard took a break just shy of a year before releasing the 'Rise and Shine' short:

Healer Gripe -

When a Tank or DPS runs around a corner, away from you or out of your line of sight, and you desperately try to keep up with them and not die. Then when they inevitably die, they SPAM THANKS.

Like sir, please use your brain and stop blaming me...

The Decline of the Anniversary Events, Part 2

2022 didn't actually have a singular anniversary event, per say.

It experienced a series of Re-mix events, the first one being in April instead of the archives event.

Personally, this really pissed me off at the time. The achieves event is my absolute fave event, and it also always happens on my Birthday. It was something I looked forward to, and then they just... stopped doing the event. No explanation. Nothing.

Instead they gave us this 'you can copy my homework, but change it slightly so no one knows' event collection.

Literally nobody asked for this. Nobody. They're not original skins just crappier versions of the originals. I'll put the originals below so you can see what I mean.

Personally, I think the originals are much better than the re-mixes. What makes it worse in my opinion though, it that some skins they chose to re-mix already had two colour variants. So, they end up giving one skin, THREE different colour pallets.

I also hate how they white wash all the colour from the originals skins in this re-mix event.

So, not only have we not gotten any original skins, they're not even amazing recolours either. There aren't any suitable changes, just a colour pallet wash. So lazy.

And before anyone says, it's because they were busy with OW2, busy doing what? OW2 feels like it has less content than OW1 and the only visible differences are the UI and the missing second tank.

To make this event even worse, they recycled special event challenges for the weekly challenges.

As a long time player, I already had all of these, and the only new content I got were a few sprays.

Needless to say, I was livid.

The re-release of these skins was so badly executed. It was completely unfair to any player who already had these skins and Blizzard didn't even try very hard to provide new content.

Just remembering it now makes me feel petty.

The next Re-mix happened mid next month and lasted until June.

Once again they just released re-mixed skins, but worse this time.

These were the re-mixed skins, now I'll show you the originals.

What makes these ones worse in my opinions, aside from the horrible colour schemes, is that fact that they chose two skins that already had two colour pallets. There are so, so, so, many skins in the game, why chose two more that already have a twin skin?!

Then once again they 're-wind' or recycle (as I like to call it) previous special events.

Like I love the Mercy and Sigma skin, but please Blizzard I unlocked them when they came out.

I understand you want the newer players to have a chance to unlock them, but please, please, please, reward us consistent players with something new.

I ran out of picture space again, so now there's gotta be a part 3 lol

When he calls her 'Sweetheart' :0

Ok, ngl I kinda ship Baptiste x Sombra now haha