As fun as it is to play, Overwatch is a bit thin at the moment. There are 12 maps, each of which is tied to a specific mode. Besides the various combinations of heroes you could play each map with, that doesn’t make for a lot of variation, especially when there’s no single-player or PvE component playing backbone to the slick multiplayer. After playing each of the 21 characters to death I can say I’m ready and willing for new content to drop.
Thankfully, Overwatch comes from the people hammering away at the sixth expansion to the 11-year-old World of Warcraft — the revenue from which basically gives them free rein to do whatever they want. If that weren’t enough Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan promises that not only are new maps and heroes coming, they’ll be completely free.
Later, Kaplan mentioned “a TON of post-launch features and content” while adding “It’s going to be a pretty amazing summer…” Though the forum post has since seemingly disappeared. Possibly because Blizzard wouldn’t like to hold itself to any sort of schedule, or perhaps simply because it was posted in regards to the now redundant beta.
But what sizes, shapes, and colors might this post-launch content come in? Having nearly exhausted myself with what’s already on offer in the game itself I turned towards the last act of a desperate man: I started digging into the lore. Here are a few of the things I found during my mad spelunking that could, should, or I desperately hope make it into the game sometime soon.
That Gorilla City on the Moon
One big, lovable, mascot-type character in Overwatch is Winston. Having been in the announcement trailer, opening cinematic, and first character background video for Overwatch he’s gotten more Blizzard cinematic time and treatment than any other character in the game. Clearly, the developer has a soft spot for him.
One aspect to the character that’s touched upon, but not really explained, in these videos is that the big guy comes from the moon. Specifically, the Horizon Lunar Colony. Here he was genetically modified and got that big, cuddly brain we know and love.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one, and his brothers and sisters in science weren’t nearly so friendly. In fact, they did a murder on the human staff and took the satellite as their own. Winston built himself a rocket and escaped, but the rest stayed behind to do whatever it is super-intelligent apes without a cause do.
Much like Winston himself, Blizzard seems to have an appreciation for the now ape-run moon. Several of the Overwatch cinematic linger longingly on the orb, even when the video itself has nothing to do with Winston. You can also see it hanging in the sky on the Dorado map.
The “easy” answer here is for Blizzard to release a map (or three) in and around Horizon. Perhaps one(s) with low gravity, making for some interesting side paths built high into walls or ceilings.
Personally, though? I’d like to see something a bit more cooperative. It hardly makes sense for who-knows-how-many human-hating gorillas to just let Overwatch and Co. traipse through around. Especially after they’ve had years to alter the colony as they see fit. To that end, I’d like to see the heroes and villains of team up to stop a full-blown super-gorilla invasion. Something not too dissimilar from the Mann vs. Machine co-op mode in Team Fortress 2 — a game to which Overwatch clearly owes a lot.
You could fend off waves of attacking, non-player apes or cut through their ranks to different kinds of objectives — hopefully both Earthside as well as on the moon. There’s even something of a further clue of an ape invasion in the form of a poster on the Hollywood map. One of the films produced and directed by the talkative payload — Hal-Fred Glitchbot — is the alien invasion flick “They Came From Beyond the Moon.” The poster for which shows an invasion spearheaded from the titular sphere.
Although, right now might not be the best climate for Blizzard to release a load of killer gorillas. Though being tone-deaf to culture and current events hasn’t really stopped the developer before.
Whatever form it comes in, I’d put money on Overwatch’s lunar fixation being more than just slick art design. Maybe not today — maybe not tomorrow — but we’re going to the moon, people.
Doomfist the Successor
We already know that new characters are coming to Overwatch. Kaplan said as much. What we don’t know is what form they’ll take. There’s a fairly solid lack of super-powered, or otherwise exceptional, extraneous characters in the game’s lore.
That is, with one major exception.
“Doomfist” was first referenced in the Overwatch announcement trailer. Here they’re not so much a character as a MacGuffin. Widowmaker and Reaper are trying to steal the figure’s signature, ultra-powerful glove from a museum exhibit. At which we see a banner depicting three different Doomfists from throughout the years. The gauntlet later returns as the payload on the Numbani map.
Between the game’s announcement and eventual release Blizzard story-person Chris Metzen has hinted that Blizzard has thought about making the character playable in a future update.
Metzen further specified that the Doomfist name is “generational.” The title gets passed from person to person. It’s a device they admit was lifted from comic books. Wherein the title of, say, The Flash was passed from Jay Garrick, to Barry Allen, to Wally West, to… Barry Allen.
Doomfist, The Successor is the current, active Doomfist. Their goal is apparently to rile up tensions between humans and robots (called Omnics in Overwatch). That’s a motivation which immediately brings to mind a human character because, so far, mistrust between humans and Omnics has been shown as an exclusively human thing. Zarya, Torbjorn, Junkrat, and Roadhog hold racist views on robots. Humans acting out against robots was also a plot point in Soldier: 76’s animated short.
In interviews on the subject, however, Metzen is very careful not to use specific pronouns when referring to the character: always referring to the current Doomfist as “they,” or “them.”
Once again, this is likely so Blizzard doesn’t feel tied-down when designing the character. The
“successor” is even conveniently silhouetted in the first trailer. There is, however, one interesting detail about Doomfist that didn’t get black out. Unlike the first and second characters to bear the name, the text beneath the “successor” is written in a load of angled, squiggly lines.
This script appears elsewhere in Overwatch — on the promotional materials for Numbani. That’s a map in the game itself, but within Overwatch fiction Numbani is a zone where humans and Omnics live together in peace. This script might well be the language of the sapient machines, and that Doomfist is themselves an Omnic– one none too happy with a human world that went to war with their kind and won.
Despite Omnics being such a major part of Overwatch lore (the organization itself was created to fight them) they don’t feature prominently in the current roster. Of 21 characters two are Omnics. One doesn’t speak, and the other is an unbridled good guy. I’d say adding another meaner Omnic to the list would make for some nice variety.
Those 75 Other Soldiers
Despite being a pretty fun character to play, Soldier: 76 catches a lot of flak for being boring. It certainly doesn’t help that his name is literally a number, adding fuel to the idea that he’s just one in a long line of disposable first-person shooter protagonists.
But wait! If he’s Soldier: 76, what the hell happened to the other 75 meatheads from his production line?
Honestly, I have no idea. A fictional news report from the world of Overwatch states that 76 — formerly John Morrison of rural Indiana — was one of many participants in the “soldier enhancement program.” Which is almost certainly where he gets his numeral from by the time that Overwatch takes place. It also left him with superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes which apparently manifest themselves in the game in his uncanny ability to sprint.
Another such inductee to the program was Gabriel Reyes, better known now as Reaper. The two of them joined Overwatch at the very beginning, but it’s never stated that everyone who underwent enhancements went off to fight Omnics. Much less that they all just up and died while doing it. That leaves at least 74 super-soldiers unaccounted for in the world of Overwatch.
It also bores a decent hole into the conflict between Overwatch and Talon, the mercenary group featured prominently in Overwatch cinematics and comics. These baddies are on the hunt for new weapons and tools to use against the goodies: a list of Overwatch agents, the Doomfist gauntlet, and a cosmic cube or something.
It’s no stretch to think Talon might want a few dozen trans-human warriors on its side.
Especially when they’ve proven they can be very persuasive to those who won’t join willingly. One of their best agents, for instance, is Widowmaker. A character who isn’t so much a villain as a victim. The former wife of an Overwatch agent, she was lucky enough to be kidnapped and have her mind destroyed by Talon. Her replacement personality was Widowmaker — named so because she was ordered to kill her husband — who then joined up as a tool of Talon.
Besides being incongruously nasty fiction, Widowmaker’s backstory shows what Talon might have in mind for other enhanced soldiers. Maps and modes in which you escort or defend these enhanced soldiers would make a lot of sense.
I’d even like to see Blizzard introduce an event where players chose a side — Talon or Overwatch. Depending on which side you chose (and which was the winner) participants might receive loot boxes, or exclusive cosmetics. Such a thing would almost need to be time-limited, but the World of Warcraft devs are no stranger to that sort of thinking. Neither are competitive online games like League of Legends, Dota 2, and even Team Fortress 2. All of which keep up community interest through smaller, seasonal events.
Exploring the conflict between Talon and Overwatch seems like a no-brainer, even if it’s not tied to this particular plot beat.
Confidence aside, I can’t actually promise any of these plot beats will make their way into the game. I am, however, very excited to see where the game goes from here. Because goodness gracious, I could do with new ways to spend my next hundred hours in the game.
