Hero interactions aren’t enough to carry Overwatch’s lore

When you load into a lobby in Overwatch, you get to hear hero interactions where the characters on your team riff back and forth. These are really cute, and getting a bunch of them in bulk can be full of tantalizing clues and hints on where the lore is heading! The problem with lore interactions is two-fold:

1. Some of these interactions aren’t even canon, they’re just an exploration of what characters would say to each other if they did meet. The game’s latest patch includes a really cute interaction where Genji reluctantly lets Lucio hook his music set-up to Genji’s ninja lights. Did that happen? Do the two men even know each other? Who knows!
2. Even the interactions that we know are canon aren’t enough to carry a story on. For instance, in the anniversary, we found out that Lucio’s father has a history with Vishkar and is the inventor of Lucio’s sonic technology. That’s the start of a really juicy story, and one that could potentially connect Symmetra to the larger Overwatch cast. Months later, we have had no follow-up on that... and now we have a new bulk release of interactions, with tantalizing story seeds like Tracer feeling immense guilt over failing to save Mondatta.

The entire Overwatch story has become timid, and its hard to tell whats lead to the staggered release of content. “Shooting Star,” the latest D.Va cinematic, set up a lot of story that could potentially lead to a bigger world of Overwatch. The content that we are seeing isn’t a victory lap; it comes across as the developers preparing for a big story that is, as of yet, unrevealed.

The entire approach ends up coming across as timid, like Blizzard is afraid of not just killing the goose that laid the golden egg, but like each golden egg must be cradled close to the chest. It’s a weird approach, especially after the developers chose to follow up the “Infiltration” short with a comic, Searching. Searching was fantastic! I’d love to see more of Searching, or media like it, but we haven’t had a new Overwatch comic since the Winter Wonderland 2017 Yeti Hunt!

Listen, maybe there’s some kind of master plan I just don’t know about. I’m willing to entertain that notion. But in the meantime, I beg of you, Blizzard: lay off the lobby interactions. At this point, we’re just doing circles on information we already know. Everyone hates Sombra, Tracer’s the best Girl Scout in the Overwatch universe, McCree and Pharah have a cute sibling-esque relationship, and Moira is the best villain in all of Overwatch and she is my wife.

We’re coming up on the next BlizzCon, where we’ll likely hear more about Overwatch; chances are we’ll be getting a new cinematic and hero. Perhaps we’ll end up getting some more lore as a bonus.