Overwatch 2 Needs To Treat Its Queer Characters With More Respect
Công cộng Nhóm
Công cộng Nhóm
While the main tank functions in this way, the off-tank is doing every tanky job the main tank doesn’t h... Xem thêm
Công cộng Nhóm
mô tả nhóm
While the main tank functions in this way, the off-tank is doing every tanky job the main tank doesn’t have time for – protecting support heroes, supplementing damage heroes, and tending to any objective that requires a big, chunky health bar. From Roadhog’s hook to Zarya’s bubbles, each off-tank has some degree of authority over space manipulation, too, which allows them to use the main tank’s anchorage to support more active area control. They’re an essential part of fluid, facile, and fantastic Overwatch – and guess what? They’ll be the first on the chopping block when it moves to Before you post this on your angry gamer subreddit, hear me out. I think paid video game loot boxes are vile. They are predatory in nature, designed to exploit players and obscure the real cost of in-game items. I think every country in the world should outlaw them, and I’m glad Overwatch got rid of them. At the same time, Overwatch 2’s monetization is terrible. In the transition to free-to-play, we lost the ability to earn things for free. Though I’m mostly positive on the gameplay changes, it’s hard to ignore that Overwatch 2’s progression is worse in almost every way. I don’t love admitting it, but Overwatch was better off with loot bo There are two at-risk groups that loot boxes exploit: gamblers and collectors. By axing loot boxes, Overwatch has removed its hook from the first group while simultaneously doubling down on the second one. If you had a desperate need to collect every single skin in the game, you would have been able to do it for much cheaper in the old system. Even if you only want one specific skin for your favorite character, you’ll either have to pay $20 or grind out those weekly challenges and save up. It will only take you 32 weeks to earn enough Coins for one legendary s That’s an issue for another day though. Today, I want to focus on the Archives skins, particularly those of our queer characters, Soldier 76 and Tracer. The Archives event is running until April 27, and brings eight new skins to the game, each designed around a given character’s cultural history. Both Soldier 76 and Tracer are included in the event, but it’s extremely telling that neither of their cultural histories includes any reference to queerness. Soldier 76 is becoming Soldier 1776 which, I admit, is a good pun. The American soldier is donning the jacket of the Revolutionaries, these days probably best known from the musical Hamil As a – very – casual Overwatch fan , the characters have always been my favourite thing about the hero shooter. They only tell vague stories, but they’re so well designed and are bursting with such life that they feel like bigger characters than they actually are. They’re similar to comic book characters; you don’t need to have read the decades long history between Batman and the Joker, you just see their iconic designs and you instantly feel as if you know them. Whether it’s Ashe and her Wild West gunslinger aesthetic, D.Va’s e-girl vibe, or Winston the science monke, the character designs tell their own stories. That’s why the recent Archives event feels like a big missed opportun Despite my praise for the designs, Overwatch 2 Skins|Https://Overwatch2Fans.Com/ is not a game with in-depth characters – it’s all skin deep. Any attempt to flesh them out usually comes through fine print in the lore, promo reels, or external material like comic books. I understand why fans want these great designs to be built upon further, and I appreciate that a hero shooter all about utilising powers and fast PvP play is not the ideal genre for deep, interconnected stories. Overwatch has two queer characters, which is more than most triple-A games, but it’s hard to give it too much credit when their queerness has been so completely downplayed. It’s often lauded for its diversity – it even once had a GLAAD nomination – but that fact is its two queer characters are white, cis, and straight passing, while there are more playable animals and playable robots than there are playable Black women. That’s not too much of a stretch though, given that there are zero Black women in Overwatch’s heaving roster right now – Sojourn will join in Overwatch 2, but that feels too late for a game with playable 32 charact Another controversial one? I don’t really know enough about Kiriko yet, but I don’t get friendly vibes from her. She seems a little too contrived – I know all Overwatch characters are created by a team of designers and developers who go through reams of concept art and try to hit the right demographic markets, but with Kiriko that feels especially blatant. She doesn’t strike me as having much of a persona at all, so middle of the list she g Mercy has become symbolic not just of the Support role in Overwatch but of what it means to be a healer in a video game. It stands to reason that she’d be near the top here, and she only misses out on top spot because she’s too much of an ideal. She’s the kind of friend who’s very nice, very sweet, very polite, but who you can’t help but feel bad around because of the emanating aura that she gives off. Mercy is just better than you. She sits at her oak kitchen table in her designer clothes, opens a bottle of wine and casually leaves it to breathe, then leans in with a smile and asks you what’s wrong. You mumble something shyly until she strokes the back of your hand with her thumb and tells you that whatever it is, she’s sure it will be alri