Ok, so, bear with me, this is going to take a lot of little points for me to peace together to make the bigger picture here.
So, we know that Gabriel Reyes worked as a police officer and was know for arresting lots of criminals, but then he didn't find his work having any sort of impact of the criminal rate and figured that to destroy crime he had to cut it off at the source, correct?
And he was born in 2018, making his 58 in the current (Overwatch) year of 2076. We also know the Omnic crisis started exactly 30 years ago, when he was 28.
Then (If we're going with the earliest years possible for everything) Overwatch was founded a year later and he was put in charge of Overwatch as Strike Commander when he was 29.
If we're approximating that the Omnic Crisis lasted about 3 ish years, then he was 32 when it ended and his Command was switched to Blackwatch.
He was 32 when Blackwatch was created!
The sting operation that resulted in Jesse McCree (or Cole Cassidy whatever you want to call him) joining Blackwatch took place when McCree was 17. Which leads me to the question of who was Gabriel Reyes even working with on missions before hand? Did he have a strike squad before he picked up Jesse McCree?
We also know there's about ten years age difference between Gabriel Reyes and Jesse McCree, which means McCree was 12 when Blackwatch was formed.
And Genji joined Blackwatch in 2066, which is only 10 years prior. Making Gabriel Reyes 48 and Jesse McCree 38. That is a huge age gap and what do we even know about what happened during that time?
Roughly a year or so later we know that Gabriel Reyes invites Moira into Blackwatch and she starts her experiments on him? But like, we know nothing about these experiments, only what they did. And if the short story 'Code of Violence' is being added into the mix, then we're led to believe that the initial experiments that Moira conducted on him did not have as dramatic effect. I don't really know what that entails, but it could mean that he could mist and move around a little bit, but was otherwise a full man. In the 'Code of Violence' short story it's mentioned that Moira is the one to find Gabriel Reyes after the explosion of the Overwatch facility, and to 'save' his life she pumped him full of the chemicals she used in her prior experiments, the results being Reaper. It meant his body became more mist like and he had to concentrate on being a full man almost every moment of the day, it also meant he was in constant pain and his anger was harder and harder to control. He also started to find gratification in the more gruelling and cruel acts. Or at least that was the impression I got from the story. But my point is, the most we have referencing the experiments Moira conducted on Gabriel Reyes are this picture:
And a paragraph or two in the story 'Code of Violence' which more focuses on his internal struggles immediately after the incident.
Then, (getting back on track, that was a bit of rant sorry) we know the Venice incident took place 8 years ago, when Gabriel Reyes kills Antonio Bartalotti and reveals Blackwatch to the world, and putting it under the investigation of Jack Morrison, Gérard Lacroix and Ana Amari. As seen in the end scenes of Retribution and in the photo below:
We also know that somewhere in between the next two years Genji moves from the Blackwatch divison to the Overwatch strike team including Tracer, Mercy and Winston. We also know that his cybernetics have been updated in this time. But, I'm not entirly confident on the idea that he was moved to Overwatch from Blackwatch, there's nothing that we know (or I've found) that supports that idea, other than him appearing in the Overwatch strike team during the Storm Rising archives mission and his updated cybernetics.
Then, 6 years ago the Overwatch Swiss HQ is blown up and Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison are presumed dead. The Petras act is ratified and Overwatch is disbanded.
A lot of investigation is put into Overwatch and Blackwatch's activities between the time period of the Retribution achieves mission and the Petras act's ratification. Which is a time period of roughly 2 years.
My point is, there are huge gaps in the timeline and not all the information is concrete, a lot of it is inferred from what we have. (Blizzard I beg give us more lore).
There's the 5 years between Blackwatch being founded and McCree being bought into the organisation, where we know next to nothing.
Then there's 21 years between McCree and Genji joining Blackwatch. What happened in those 21 years? Surely there are some important events to note in 21 years?
The later years of Blackwatch are less murky, but there's still no solid dates or years being handed to us by Blizzard and it's been 7 years! I mean come on! All the dates and ages I used in this are drawn from the Overwatch Timeline on the fandom Wiki, and those are only approximations that make sense with the ages we've been given for the current game.
Anyway, I just wanted to complain about this because I feel like I don't hear enough people complaining about it. It's probably the same for Overwatch, but at least we have more of an idea what the Overwatch organisation was like. We roughly know that there were a lot more foot soldiers than Blackwatch had, at least that's what I thought was implied every time it was bought up or featured. It's easier to fill in the gaps between the years as general peace keeping, but Blackwatch was supposed to handle the more rogue missions (Can't really think of a better word for it). There's only so much guessing and filling in we can do Blizzard!
If you read this far thank you, you're a real one.
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!
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.”
Ashe in November of 2018:
Baptise in March of 2019:
Sigma in August of 2019:
Echo in April of 2020:
Echo was the last OW1 character released, and the following characters were released after the release of OW2.
Sojourn in April of 2022 (in the OW2 Beta):
Junker Queen in June of 2022 (in OW2 Beta):
Kiriko in October of 2022:
Ramanttra in December of 2022:
Life Weaver in April of 2023:
Illari in August of 2023:
There's are all the origin stories released so far :)
Links to the Youtube Origin stories in Chronological order of hero release <3
Most of the base Roster doesn't have an origin story, but there is this short for Roadhog and Junkrat:
It's not in the same format as the rest of the origin stories that follow, but it's the closest thing that resembles an origin story for them.
Soldier 76 is obviously one of the outliers of this standard (being Blizzards golden boy and all I suppose), and I'm fairly sure his was the first origin story put together in this format:
Another of these outliers is none other than the poster girl herself, which I guess makes sense:
That's all the base roster got, and the following origin stories all belong to heroes that we released after the release of the game.
First of, Ana came out in July of 2016:
Then followed Sombra in November of 2016:
Orisa in March of 2017:
Doomfist in July of 2017:
Moira in November of 2017:
Brigitte in March of 2018:
Wrecking Ball in July of 2018:
Props to Tom Beansons for going the extra mile and getting coffee making hands 😚
Some more dvattra doodles (plus a bonus zen)
When OW2 came out, it took me a while to adjust to push maps, but over time I got used to them and learned how to play healer well on them. They're now some of my favourite maps to play Mercy on.
BUT what really makes the push maps is obviously TS-1, (I expect a TS-1 pop blizzard!) and his adorable voice lines. Bless his little heart, when the point is being contested for a period of time he'll say something like "conflicting orders" or "please resolve your debate"! He's such an honest to go sweetheart.
Like obviously top left is Rio and it looks like the bottom middle is too. The middle right looks like it's somewhere like eco point antarctica, and the bottom left resembles the place Zarya was in the new blood comics.
Not sure about the rest though.
I've played Overwatch for six years and I need mental help. 21. She/Her.
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