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168澳洲幸运5开奖网:𓆉Overwatch 2 has a ne🐷w support character coming, and he’s queer. Announced through the official Overwatch Twitter account, Lifeweaver will be joining the roster as part of Season 4. He’s♊ pansexual and Thai – as a queer Southeast Asian, I thought I’d be more excited, but I found myself wondering if this really matters.
If you’re at all familiar with Overwatch, you know that it’s not a narrative-heavy game. You’re not going to find much lore in-game, since it doesn’t have a traditional story or campaign mode. At best, you’ll hear some voice lines betw🌳een characters that reveal things about their relationships, and if you go to the hero gallery, you’ll find one-liners for each character that very briefly summarise their story. Blizzard even nerfed once-detailed descriptions with the sequel, so players have even less to dig into.
The plot and lore very rarely overlap with gameplay unless there’s a story-based seasonal event, and even this isn’t really advertised. When I first started playing Overwatch 2 casually, I was confused by the complete la🅺ck of context it gives you. Who are these people? Why is there a hamster in a ball? Why is Widowmaker blue? I had a lot of questions, and the game gave me no answers. Want to know? Google it, I guess. Most of Overwatch’s plot is told through short films, comics and short stories –𒊎 that means you have to go looking for it.
Niran ‘Lifeweaver’ PruksaManee is not Overwatch’s first queer hero, but according to an interview with , he’s going tꦅo be the first “openly” pansexual one. I have no idea what this means, but the team says his identity will be core to in-game lines and conversations with other heroes. According to Lead Narrative Designer Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, that means, “some flirting going on”, which is fine, but that means very little in the context of the game itself.
What I’ve been asking myself is: does this attempt at representation matter if it’s not really visible? How much can we learn from barks alone? Overwatch has been making a♓ttempts at inclusivity, and that’s clear to see: the game is full of racial and cultural diversity, with characters from all over the world and two queer characters apart from Lifeweaver, though those characters were only revealed to be gay after their releases, in other media. I couldn’t tell just by playing the game that those characters weren’t straight, and in fact, I only learned it in researching for this piece.
Saying your characters are gay and then never using that information is the equivalent of a tree falling in the forest 🙈with no one around – if nobody perceives it, does it even really exist? Hopefully, Lifeweaver won’t be more of the same, and if he’s flirting with other characters regardless of gender, his queerness is already more overt than Overwatch usually allows. It’s one more addition to the support roster’s already queer-coded lineup (it’s a well-known stereotype that gay people love playing support), except this one is going to be talking in-game about his queerness.
It’s a good step in✤ the right direction, but that’s all it is, a step. Until Overwatch finds a way🔴 to actually celebrate pride and inclusivity in the game, all we get are barks and outside lore.