Spitting Facts, Blizzard Making Cannon Decisions Whilst Drunk, Upside Down, And Spinning In Circles!

hehe

Edgy emo team….

And then there’s mercy

Props to Tom Beansons for going the extra mile and getting coffee making hands 😚

Find a group feature

Ok, so I've been on holiday in Malta the last 10 days, which means I've missed out on a large portion of event play time for the Underworld event. That means I have some serious grinding to do for achievements. I managed to complete every challenge except the legendary modifier one (so far, fingers crossed).

It's time like this when I really miss the find a group feature from overwatch 1. People who played the archives event on legendary mode know that the best chance you get at winning and earning the achievements is by searching specifically for a group, then using pre-designed tactics to make it though.

It's the only way I ever got those achievements, but since they've removed the find a group feature in Overwatch 2, they've somehow indirectly made these legendary missions even harder 🫠

Gabriel Reyes <3

That's it. That's the post.

Blackwatch timeline

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.

Nothing like making the enemy team rage quit!

Hello folks and on today's episode of I complain about Overwatch Lore, may I present Gabriel Reyes' son?!

And his freaking wife????

We're introduced to them during the 'Code or Violence' short story and we don't really get to know much about them, other than they met after the Omnic crisis and she found another partner after Gabriel Reyes was pressured dead.

They mention a 6 year old son in the short story and that has to be the kid in the picture, no doubt.

But it bring to question, when was he referencing his sons sixth birthday? How many years before Overwatch was disbanded was that? Presuming it was the last one before Overwatch disbanded he was be 11 in the current Overwatch timeline. Why have we heard nothing about a little Reyes running around in the world? Why are there NO in game voice lines about his son?? Or wife????

And his wife! How did they meet? When were they married? How long were they together? Does she still mourn him and want him back or has she accepted things and moved on with her new partner?

Give me more Blizzard I beg 😮‍💨😮‍💨

The Archives events Part 1 - Uprising

Uprising was the first achieves event introduced into Overwatch and was released in 2017. It was also a huge hit. It was introduced some four or five months before I started playing, but just reading through the comments and from my personal memories surrounding the event. I can say for certainty it was a hit.

I'll start it off small. they introduced a series of banger skins for this event, and until this day some of them are still my favourites.

Obviously, on top of the skins and the cosmetics, the mission was released.

This was the introduction video. Unlike the following two events, it didn't have an outro cutscene, just this short one at the start.

The uprising mission story itself, is simply stop a war before it begins. There's an null sector invasion in London that needs tackling before it progresses into something more, and Jack Morrison sends in a small strike team.

Their goal is to gain control of the large artillery guns scattered across kings row and take down their defences so Overwatch can move in and save some prisoners stuck in the factory, aka the final payload location.

There's also a lovely little pre-lude to the mission in the form of a comic. Said comic is also called Uprising and details the finer complications of Overwatch's actions in London.

It shows the complicated nature of the relations between Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes, and the strain Blackwatch was having.

It discusses the politics of Overwatch and highlights how much Overwatch was under fire at that point. It also gives us a look into Tracer and how she handled the start of her first mission as well.

Because, yes, this was Tracer's first ever field mission.

It also just gives us a nice little jewel, and shows us where Tracer got her "the cavalry's here" line.

All in all, the Uprising event was delivered with Grace, lore, cosmetics, and interactive and fun gameplay.

Overwatch 2 could never.

<3

Had such a positive game earlier. I was queuing DPS and was in the widow mood. We were attacking first on Rio, and being the sane person I am, I did not autolock widow and instead went for the Reaper choice. I honestly wasn't playing well, it was later in the day and I was tired and all my good plays have been drained out of me at this point. I was seriously behind out other DPS in kills and damage, but we still managed to take the point. I switched to Widow after that, since it's easier to attack as Widow after capping the point. I played a bit better on the character I wanted to play, but I was still behind our other DPS. We pushed the payload almost right up till the end, but we were just shy of the third point.

I thought I was going to get flamed for throwing, and I wouldn't have blamed them, but they didn't flame me at all. In fact they were super nice and everyone was saying 'Gr' and 'Wp' in the chat. Even when it is my fault if we lose a game, it's still not nice to have that thrust in your face, so to see such enthusiasm really made my day. It's not often you get nice players.

I switched between Ashe and Widow on defence, and actually managed to catch up with the other DPS a bit, and we ended up winning the game.

Kindness and praise always does so much more than blaming someone in my opinion. It's called moral for a reason.

When he calls her 'Sweetheart' :0

Ok, ngl I kinda ship Baptiste x Sombra now haha