Ever since Overwatch was released, there has been a strong following surrounding the lore and story of the game, but unlike most games, the story is mostly told outside of the game. For Overwatch, a majority of its story is told by the use of animated shorts that are uploaded to YouTube and comics that focus on one character, or on a certain event that takes place. The interesting thing about this is that when actually playing the game, the player isn’t required to have any knowledge about the story in order to play the game, there are interactions between the characters that are only explained by the lore, but they are not vital to the core gameplay.
Because of the nature of its story, I wanted to give a few examples of the different forms of media that Blizzard uses to tell Overwatch‘s story. So, in this transmedia project, QR codes will be provided from the lootbox, so all you gotta do is read aling scan whatever QR code I tell ya to.
To intorduce the world of Overwatch, Blizzard, the creators of Overwatch, released a cinematic trailer to introduce some of the characters and the world of Overwatch. The video introduces questions that are either answered later, or are still not answered to this day.
SCAN QR CODE 1 FOR CINEMATIC TRAILER
Now that we have been introduced to9 some characters, it is time to see some of the gameplay and meet some more characters. Here in a gameplay trailer for Overwatch. The video gives the viewer a good idea of what the actual gameplay of the game itself. the game itself has little bits of story tossed in, but they are not vital to the gameplay, so if the player has no interest in the story, then they will most likely receive no information about the story. However, if the player wishes learn more about the story of the game, then there are plenty of options available.
SCAN QR CODE 2 FOR GAMEPLAY TRAILER
In the gameplay trailer, there is an interaction between the characters Hanzo and Genji where Genji calls Hanzo his brother. Though this is unimportant to the gane, this is an interesting factor of the story and Blizzard knows this, so they created the animated short “Dragons” that helps explains their storry a little better.
SCAN QR CODE 3 FOR “DRAGONS”
In this video, the character Sombra is introduced, as well as showcasing other characters. Just like all of the other media we’re looking at, this has no importance in the game, but it is still interesting lore that is valuable to those that are interested in the story enough to go out of their way to watch the animated short.
SCAN QR CODE 4 FOR “INFILITRATION”
There are a lot of different animated shorts that Blizzard has released, and they are my personal favorite way of learning the lore, but along side the videos, Blizzard has also released numerous comics that go even deeper into the lore. The first comic we’re gonna look at is called “Destroyer. In this comic, we get more background information about the character Torbjorn as he goes on a mission to take down a huge enemy.
SCAN QR CODE 5 FOR “DESTROYER”
In the next comic, the characters Soldier: 76 and Ana are searching for each other, but they end up finding something else that they weren’t looking for.
SCAN QR CODE 6 FOR “OLD SOLDIERS”
There are a lot of different videos and comics that have been released and they all add a lot to the story of Overwatch, but if we were to look at all of them, we would be here for a long time, so these have just been a way to dive into the story without going in too deep. If you did become interested in the story of the game, then any of the videos or comics we looked at today should have links to other videos and comics.
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