phish do better with your pcs. 3000$ and i only get a slightly better cpu (depending how you see it, the i9-12900KF is ranked 29 for speed and the i5-13600KF is ranked 18th) only 16GB of ram (It doesnt even say 2 sticks, and newer games will possibly want more than that). Still only 1Tb of storage. (each one comes with 1Tb and games cost a lot of storage). Still a 750W power supply (not even a 750W Platinum). i just went to microcenters website and built your "$3000" for $1600 (not including case because you guys dont say what case you get) please talk to them and try to rework it out or something. sell pcs to your subscribers but dont over price the hell out of them.
In Reaper's defense, he's mixed, born in the states. Most of his culture uses words that can't be in Overwatch. The biggest thing they could do is give him an undying love for Dragon Ball.
Nigerian here, so the conception of doomfists gauntlet actually comes from the Hausan (one of the main tribes in Nigeria) martial art called Dambe. Its kinda like boxing, but with only one hand being wrapped with multiple layers of rope for punching (and fights are usually a lot more brutal 💀).
Technically, I think it’s just the Outback that’s been turned into a barren wasteland. We see in comics and a Lucioball map in Sydney that there are other areas in Australia that are basically functioning as normal.
8:18 as a reaper enthusiast i have to mention that his mask isnt a human skull its an owl and im pretty sure it refers to mexican folklore about a woman who takes the form of a white owl to get revenge on people who wronged her (you know, like overwatch / blackwatch) Owls also just symbolise death so maybe im thinking too deeply into it
@@yorukage5926 yeah, the character called reaper who is an assassin with supposedly mexican heritage so he tries to emulate day of the dead celebration dont use a skull mask
As an overwatch lore geek I was crying because some folks brought up stuff like “I wish the characters did this” and they do in lore! For example Mercy used to have voice lines with Genji disapproving him getting her chocolate because it’s not Swiss chocolate
as someone who only got into ow last year, how can i get more into the lore especially from years ago ? i am interested but idrk where to start. the cinematics ?
@@nutellaluvrI’m so sorry for the info dump in the random comment section but you asked for it Yes start with cinematics!! You should be able to find full playlists of them in both release order and chronological order, I’d recommend chronological since it makes a bit more sense that way, but you can piece it together kinda well in release order. I will say you should start with the 3 part series of animated shorts called “Genesis”. They give the backstory of the world of overwatch! There’s also origin stories for many of the characters, which will give you their backstories! There’s also quite a few comics and short stories you can read! They’re all available for free on the overwatch website! Just look up overwatch comics or overwatch short stories! You can download them as pdfs or read them right on the website. There are also tons of videos on smaller lore details, as well as character backstories that aren’t as fleshed out in cinematics or comics! I hope this wasn’t too overwhelming and I wish you the best of luck on your overwatch lore journey!!
@@nutellaluvrYeah, the comics and stories are your best bet for lore deep-dives. Usually they're companion pieces for the cinematics, so maybe watch those first, and then move to the comics, and then the short stories.
As a Pacific Islander, I feel I can have input over how they Interpreted Mauga's character. For the most part, Mauga's portrayal of a Samoan is pretty spot on. I could point out the fact that they got a legit Samoan tattoo artist to do his tattoos. I could also spit out the fact that some of the voice lines use actual Samoan words in the language which is pretty cool. Personally wise, it was perfect. Samoan's and other Pacific Islanders, we have a way with our words that makes the tone very inviting, but when the chips are down, all hell breaks loose. Another thing about personality, others can see islanders as simple minded, however just like mauga, we're not dumb but we love the underestimation people give to us. The only tiny gripe I had about mauga is the fact that sometimes in his voice lines, he uses ōlelo Hawaii instead of Samoan. While it may seem like similar languages, I can assure you they are different. My final thoughts are that for a long time my culture wasn't being voiced enough in our media. Since Mauga is a part of a rare collection of Polynesian characters in the media, I feel that of all the characters involved, Mauga is easily the best interpretation of a Polynesian to date.
Us islanders hardly ever get characters that are like us in things so it's cool when they're done right. I think with Mauga he especially excels in character design because of the tattoos being spot on and his shape is so big and wide but not fat and I think that is a huge misconception and stereotype of Islanders body types.
@@TiMonsor Maui isn't fat tho, I mean he kinda is but I would say he's more big than fat, but to answer your question, they are just as good as each other when it comes to how they depict us
In the same way every Japanese character in Overwatch can climb walls, the two Maori characters (Roadhog apparently and Mauga) can make you want to uninstall the game
@@derangedfreackingtwistedps5048 While Mauga isn't part of the Maori and instead a Samoan, there are times when they absolutely want to make me punch my screen (Specifically Hoglander)
Ok, I'm Irish, and I can tell you for a fact that the person they brought on to review moira Knows Absolutely NOTHING about Ireland. Literally everything he said is an irish stereotype and What Americans ( mostly new York and Boston) think Being Irish Is like, the majority of them are about 6-7 generations removed however at least
I'm not Irish at all, but isn't it a common joke that Americans say they are Irish (maybe to seem special?) and their parents, grandparents, parents of grandparents and grandparents of grandparents are not Irish.
@@mariustan9275 it's not really a joke a lot of white Americans have family who immigrated from the Ireland, Italy, and Germany. A lot of Irish immigrants came over to the US during the great potato famine but the Americans with that experience would be generationally out of touch with their Irish heritage by now. My family actually is part of this scenario and I have family still living in Ireland but I know none of them I only know they exist because of ancestry websites and I know nothing about my Irish heritage besides the fact my ancestors came to the US during the potato famine and the fact my last name is Murphy. It's not to be special. We are Irish but we have been assimilated completely as Americans so we are out of touch with the heritage now.
@@DharmaPunk111 Yeah that's fair. I learned a lot about the Irish Potato Famine (what the heck English) and I know a lot migrated outwards because there wasn't any food availible. But it does become weird to bring it up in a place like this that talks about culture because an Irish American that is generationally out of touch with Ireland itself is not a good person to judge Irish representation in media, which is what is happening here. Like there was a thread somewhere where people complained about how the person representing the Irish just used stereotypes. Gaelige IS taught, if not used all that much, and a lot of Irish exports are from science (vaccines, toxins, blood, integrated circuits, etc).
@@DharmaPunk111 Yeah, it's a lot more like taking pride in their heritage, but for some reason (part of me feels like it's because the person is American that they do this) they take it really literally and act like the person is an idiot.
This was a fantastic concept for a video, Phish. Really enjoyed this one. I'm Dutch, and I remember brainstorming with a friend of mine, before Sigma came out, what a Dutch hero would look like. We got stuck on things like windmills, a focus on water, maybe something to do with engineering, but a lot of what we had in mind would end up being very similar in gameplay with Mei. And then Sigma came out, with 'De Kuiper' as his last name, and we were like 'oh, right, the *astronomy* stuff'. It was neat.
I saw a vid about aussie representation in games and the guy made a really good point that I'll always remember. Beyond every character being Steve Irwin or Mad Max, there is a real missed opportunity for Indigenous representation. There are so many different cultures to draw from and they are the original Australians, we did to them sort of what white Americans did to the American Indians, except very few people outside Australia know about them.
Whoever represented Ireland here did a poor job. Irish (Gaeilge) is a core subject and mandatory in all schools across the Republic. Beyond that, Ireland has a rich legacy of scientific and medical contributions, with many breakthroughs in various fields throughout history. We are, quite literally, the land of poets, scholars, and innovators. Having an American with Irish heritage speak about Ireland was definitely a choice.
Agreed. I was quite a bit offended by the person they got to speak here and I hope if this video gets a redo or sequel they get somebody who is actually Irish to speak for moira
@@novayazemlya6852 Yeah. The kun reading is usually shinobu while the on reading is nin. the character can be read as "shinobi" without okurigana but only in very specific instances, like 忍刀 (shinobigatana)
You know…reaper could’ve watched skibidi toilet as a kid. He was born in 2018, which means as of right now in 2024 he would be six years old, which is prime slibidi toilet age
As a Brasilian I have to say that "Lucio" could simple exist here for sure but He is THE MOST STERIOTIPICAL brasilian caracter ever that a person of outside of Brasil could had created. 😂 If you dont know really Brasil but you think about here you would probably imagine someone like Lucio
If ur brazilian can u tell me why almost every brazilian character in video games are represented as exotic dark skin ones but when i travelled Brazil most people there are white/tannish skin? Or is just brazil too diverse
@@CouchPotatoCrusader there are a lot of black people in South America who came from the Carribbean. I'm not Brazilian myself so I can't tell you specifically about Brazil. A far share of Colombians are black (about 10%). But since most stereotypes and super famous Colombians are fairer skinned all of the Colombian characters are fairer skinned. It probably just comes down to some of Brazil's famous people like Pele being quite dark and then people generalising then further pushing the stereotype.
@@CouchPotatoCrusader Brazil is one of the most diverse country's in the world because it's history with both being a colony and being a tourist attraction
Sigma being a tall genius and rather friendly, is just about as Dutch as you can get. He also looks like at least three of my teachers, from when I was doing my bachelors in mechanical engineering. His voice lines are stuffed with typical Dutch sayings (props to the va). But I do miss seeing even one skin that is over the top stereotypical. But I guess they'd quicly think of weed, which is really just Amsterdam. I give it 9 out 10 stroopwafels
2 bonus facts about Widow in the french text/dub, she's literally called "Fatale", and her VA in both original and dub is the same, which isnt the case for most characters of OW
Same thing with Illari's voice actor. You can tell how fluent and thick her accent is in Latin American Spanish I argue she sounds better in Spanish than what she sounds in English
Moira is much better Irish representation than the guy you picked to tell if she's good representation lol. We refer to our language as Gaeilge rather than Gaeilic (Gaelic would refer to the sport of gaelic football) and Lucky Charms are not a thing here. That guy definitely seemed more like an American with Irish ancestors rather than an actual Irish person. If he is Irish, it seems weird that he would play into American stereotypes of Irish people especially considering the topic of the video. Also he says that we're not known for our scientific achievements and are all farmers which really made me cringe a lot. Just google our biggest exports and you'll see that most of our economy comes from the sciences.
i agree, im not irish, but that guy in my opinion did not really understand what he was being asked of. good representation vs bad representation. moira in my opinion is good representation considering how other irish people are being represented (green clothes, fake ass "Irish" accent (just to be clear i mean is what americans think irish accent is) or nothing exept irish under nationality on the wiki). shes not stereotypical, but its not forgotten that she is irish after all. her not being some potato farmer and wearing green clothes, while still having that little nod to her lineage like her red hair and the language. And in itself in my opinion that little nod is important. why? because I myself are lithuanian ( lithuania gets like 0 representation) and the most well know character given that nationality in mass media is Hannibal Lecter, Who was simply created as a lithuanian to make him exotic and european at the same time, while having nothing to say about lithuania at all. Its important to not to forget when making a character of certain nationality their nationality. as well not fall back on stereotypes.
@@KinZenyatta Yeah i completely agree. Another example would be Happy Chaos in Guilty Gear. He's supposed to be Irish but you wouldn't know unless you read his wiki. Having a character speak a little bit of their native language or at least having an accent is very appreciated. Moira feels like home to me because her voice and her appearance has that familiarity. I don't care what they do with the character as long as they feel like they're from the nation the claim to be from.
In some regions we do call the language gaelic too but honestly she doesn't really feel Irish bar the stereotypical ginger hair & speaking some Irish there's not much of our culture incorporated
"we have the emo cousin, the sassy cousin, and the metal teeth cousin" sent me and I'm no longer able to see the characters the same now. They need to make it canon that reaper and venture watch anime together, that's all I'm saying.
as a Nigerian, i didnt realise Doomfist was Nigerian lol. But Orisa is definitely Nigerian. She is named after the Yoruba deities called 'Orisha', its pronounced 'Oh-ree-Sha'. Plus i do hear some Yoruba greetings in her voiceline.
Swedish person here! I like how Torbjörn has that one voiceline "For the last time, Im swedish!" Since we can get confused with other scandinavian countries since accents are similar, and especially with Norway. I like Brigitte's swedish voice lines. "Skål" is something we say before drinking our drinks during a toast/speech, like during midsummer dinners and such. I like the engineering stereotype they both have. I would like swedish voice lines from Torbjörn & the midsummer skin idea is so good!! I would also love swedish folklore skins like Torbjörn being a troll or a nisse while Brigitte gets skins inspired by Mara or Huldra.
Torbjörns actor is actually not swedish, he's american, so its no surprise that his accent is non existent and has no swedish voice lines and can't even pronounce his own name xD I think honestly that they should pay the voice actor to get him to take some swedish lessons or have the voice actress of Brigitte teach him how to atleasy say "hej" "tack" "hejdå" "tjenare" and for god's sake "torbjörn" and not "torbyern / torbyorn"
with reaper being from LA I'm sure hes's chicano mexican-american cause if I remember in one of the comics it mentions he grew up in echo park where its a heavy Chicano neighborhood . he does look a foo to but some don't be fluent in Spanish . also phara native skin is based on the coastal native tribes that extends from PNW to Canada and Alaska inspired by totems and formline :)
As Russian wanna say that it's really funny that Zarya has russian accent when she speaks english and a little american accent when she speaks russian. Also it's kinda nice that Blizzard modernized image of the stereotypical character from Russia. We have a lot great sportsmen and sportswomem in many categories, so I'm glad they emphasize on that. The track suits maybe are funny and memeble, but it won't go beyond that. So have to say, good work
TBH her russian lines bug me. It's obvious that its not a native speaker in almost all of them. The proverbs are nice tho. And considering that some heroes do not get lines in their language AT ALL, it certainly could be worse. It's a shame that she doesn't have a traditional dress (кокошник, косы, все дела) or a slavic myths-themed skin. There was smth like Богатырь but it didn't look very authentic. The sports ones were great. I usually use the Alien skin tho.
I don't wanna Russia-splain Russian stereotypes to a Russian, but Zarya's iron-willed machine like sportswoman character calls back to the perception of Russian Athletes / Olympians during the cold war. With the way international sports acted as a narrative stand in for the conflict, the image of the brutaly disaplined Russian athlete/gymnast/ballet performer, etc, became a pretty ubiquitous Russian stereotype. If you have seen Rocky 4, Zarya is basically a spiritual successor for the state trained Ivan Drago.
That makes total sense, thank you for pointing it out. But we like Ivan Drago, he is an example of funny stereotypes about Russia. We call it "the cranberry" (клюква, don't try to connect dots with this word, there isn't). It's when russian stereotypes are put to absolute point just for fun in any media. Drago and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat are good examples. Personally I like Zarya as representative of my country. She is stoic, confident and suspicious as most of us are, but she is really kind to people (for example her jokes with Reinhardt and Winston) and will give everything in order to protect them
@@Veirdjil oh, I wasn't really making a statement on right/wrong, just the basis for the stereotype and that it has some embedded messaging in its trope. Characters like Drago were usually not portrayed as "evil Russians", but people disaplined so thoroughly in service of the state, that they were robbed of some element of their personhood. It is a very cold war Idividualism vs collectivism political messaging that isn't really as relevant today. Obviously zarya isn't intended as political aligory, the tropes that she derives from just happen to have been created for that purpose. I'm just a cold war nerd who wanted to point out where the stereotype comes from, and if you enjoy that kind of representation/portrayal, I think that's great.... I'm stuck with junkrat and would happily trade.
as a russian, im kinda disappointed by zarya bc she's yet another "russian character from north asian part of russia but is actually just white". it wouldve been nice to see any native representation or not make her Siberian at the very least
I'm venezuelan, but I swear I hate when americans think that just bc their "ancestry" is from a certain place then they have "blood from there" and by consequence they're somehow from there, here if you grew up with us and don't know a sht abt your parents native culture, then don't play with us, you're from here
I wish people would understand that Irish-American culture isn't the same as Irish culture. If they truly want to connect with where their ancestors came from, they should take the time to listen, learn, and explore the real culture, rather than repeating stereotypes and outdated ideas about what it means to be Irish.
Junkrat's dance emote is a call back to the "Melbourne Shuffle", a dance style that came to prominence nearly two decades ago in Australia. The voicelines of both Junkrat and JQ are good, but they're definitely putting on the mayo a bit to ocka them up. And any Aussie skins are either sports, beach or Mad Max related. Overall, both characters are just caricatures of what the world thinks of Aussies, but it's not far off.
The actress who plays Ana is literally PERFECT! like i've never seen a better arab representation in other games. We need more arabic voice lines for Ana blizzard! as for pharah idk i kinda hate her whole personality she feels more canadian to me
yeah, i think part of my issue with pharah is she doesn't feel as authentic as ana. obviously not helped by ana being voiced by an actual egyptian woman, and pharah being voiced by an american doing a kinda confusing accent (one of the things overwatch got much better at post-launch was casting more accurate voices for their characters). it feels like blizzard tend to forget pharah is half-first nations canadian too.
@@silly6517 i heard pharah's vc is of an israeli descent, if that's true it just adds more insult to injury. Also you can tell there was a clear shift with pharah as a character when OW2 dropped, i guess they wanted to give her more personality but she still feels lifeless to me :(
Lucio is Brazilian as much as any other character in the game, and thats not saying he doesnt look or behave like a Brazilian person, its just saying that ANY Overwatch character has what it needs to be Brazilian, you can go outside in Brazil and encounter the entire cast of Overwatch.
That guy is not irish.. he’s (literally) a stereotype of an american who claims his dog is irish. We do not refer to the irish language as ‘Gaelic’ but ‘Gaeigle’. All the ginger jokes said with a clear american accent just made me shiver. You couldn’t have picked a worse representation of an irish person.
I'm an American with Irish heritage. My ancestors came over during the great potato famine and I know nothing about my Irish heritage. I wish I did because my last name is Murphy ffs
Yeah I definitely don't like Venture as Canadian representation. I can't speak for Mexicans but it feels like Blizzard just picked two random nationalities and didn't put any effort to making him feel like he's from those places. Sojourn is top tier tho imo.
as a Nepali, it kinda stinks that our representation is limited to the maps and 2 robot monks... Not everyone in Nepal is a monk and neither Zen nor Ram speak any Nepali which sucks, and the OG Nepal map is kinda just Mt. Everest. However, Shambali is honestly crazy accurate to the parts of Nepal I've been to and I think it's a step in the right direction!
i do think it’s kinda lame neither of them speak any nepali, it’s always great to get more languages in the game… would be cool if they had a new human chara from nepal to fix both issues at once but idk how that’d fit lore wise
they aren't really supposed to represent Nepalese people though. sure, they were monks in Nepal, but they aren't supposed to be Nepalese. they're robots who came to life. Zen and Rammatra also symbolically represent MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. so their lack of representation isn't really a lack, I think.
@@Mrs.Magix58 yea this makes sense too but i can see how it sucks from a representation standpoint in their view that they’re technically “represented” bc their country is in the game but neither chara is intended to be representation of them even tho it can make sense bc they’re omnica
I’m pretty sure Rammatra is supposed to be Indian. His VA has a lot of different nationalities from his families’s, but Indian is part of it. And “Ram” is a common name in India.
Regarding reaper and Sombra. I kinda see reaper as a chicano as he doesn't speak Spanish. I knew he was mexican due to his last name name being reyes which is a Hispanic last name. I think reaper as a character doesnt represent Mexican culture that well. He does however represent it through his mariachi costume. Sombra speaking spanish what's every once in awhile is okay. I think sombra as a character would rather talk to others in spanish but she mostly talks to herself in Spanish, her day dia skin i think is a good representation. Im not gonna lie i had no idea venture was mexican
Vietnamese Canadian here. Wanted to give my thoughts on Juno. WOOWW I was so excited when I realized she was Vietnamese. Vietnamese characters are rare and I had been hoping for a Vietnamese addition to the game. Her pronunciation is very good. Her design doesn't really have any Vietnamese elements besides I guess her name, Teo Minh, written on her chest. I'm hoping they add more voicelines in Vietnamese and an Áo Dài skin. "Chúc mừng năm mới!" and "Thằng này..." could be good voicelines. All her purchasable voicelines so far are in English. I picked her on the Toronto map and she said, "Father said there is authentic Vietnamese food in big cities! What should I try first?" and ohh my gOOOODDDDDDDD. Never felt more seen in my life. A Vietnamese girl talking about Vietnamese restaurants in Toronto? Wtf? She's me fr 😭 I think her mom, Jiayi Teo, is Chinese and her dad, Khiem Van Minh, is Vietnamese. Which makes sense because there are a lot of half Chinese half Vietnamese people, including people I know. When I first saw her name on her jacket I was freaking out because I was so scared that she would be another Chinese character. No offense, but like we have Mei, Sage, Iso and more. Let me have this one character be Vietnamese 😭😭😭AND SHE IS! 🎉 Anyways, I’d give her like 4 phởs out of 10 for Vietnamese-ness currently. I want to do a cosplay of her bc I'm built like her and we both Vietnamese but her blue tinted transparent helmet that goes around her whole head is seeming impossible. I also didn’t know Venture was Canadian until now. I agree with what was said about Sojourn and Venture in the video. And lastly, for the secret third (half) Canadian Overwatch character Isn’t Pharah’s voice actor a white American doing a fake accent..?
OMG life changing!!! I thought she was just Chinese because of "Auntie Mei" but now I'm stoked that we got some Viet representation! She's not perfect (could be a little more tan, but Viet ppl have a wide range of skin tones so I don't mind). I also think the story of literally being from Mars gives a very sci-fi, palatable take on diaspora and Viet Kieu. A lot of us came from refugees, we were displaced, we are in unfamiliar territory but we still open our hearts to others. I really hope they add some more Viet culture into her skins in the future, some historical fashion would be super sick to see
Mercy's analysis was spot-on. She is more German than Swiss, and especially a person like her would have some fluency in Swiss German and French. The Swiss dialect (note: there is no such thing as _the_ Swiss dialect, there are hundreds of them which could place you within a radius of maybe 10-20 km) sounds very German. In the German dub, it's a bit better, but it's still being performed by a German VA, so there is some fakeness in there.
As a full-blooded ‘Murican, I do think it’s funny that all of our characters are either cowboys/cowgirls or military, but I would like to see what Blizzard could do outside of those stereotypes
@@justinmorrell3446Awwwwww, what about our Midwestern Princess Dad or our average Ohio resident??? Or Florida man, he’d give Junkrat a run for his money :(
I'm German and I think Reinhard is a very stereotypical character. He could only be more stereotypical if he were from Munich (Bavaria) and not from Stuttgart (Suabia). This being said I love that they made him a bit goofy. It's a great counterpoint to the stereotypes and humanizes him. Something about Rein, that I think many people don't pick up on is that he's quite contemporary with the issues he has: Reinhard isn't just a "knight", he's a knight because he's kind of stuck in his ways - struggling to accept that the tech he's used to is a bit outdated and insisting that it's still the way to go (Ring a bell, Germany?) Germans are having a hard time letting go of the tech they excelled with in the past (like everything car-related for example) and hence sleep on innovations. Reinhard in a nutshell.
Every time I think of Germany, I'm firstly reminded of my time in high school learning German (loved my German teacher, he was very well-spoken and a great teacher), but outside that I'm then reminded of Germany's weirdly backwards Green Party. How on earth does a Green Party ditch nuclear over coal?..
I think the contemporariness comes from the fact that old people don't understand newer technology. I don't really think it has anything to do with him being German but rather the fact that older people are notorious for having trouble with tech.
@@witchazeI I don't necessarily believe Blizzard created this piece of his personality with contemporary German economics and attitude towards innovations in mind. Or maybe they did. It would be quite the jab. It just fits.
@@BaeYeou "How on earth does a Green Party ditch nuclear over coal?.." Here's the fun part. They didn't. The Greens had to play the hand they were dealt. The shutdown of the nuclear plants was put into action in 2011 by a conservative (CDU) government. The operators of those plants planned their whole maintenance around that schedule and the greens kept the NPP longer online than planned. Because of a little thing sometimes called "Invasion of Ukraine" Even though the NPPs produced less than 6% of our energy consumption. So there wasn't even an option or real reason to keep using the NPPs, as they are in need of big expensive overhauls, even before the Greens came into a governing coalition. Also it was planned to expand the renewables by more than we have now (thanks CDU for gutting our solar industry and the NIMBYs who block everything they can) And one of the biggest problems: Suedlink wasn't built. It's a planned and partial built power line to bring wind power electricity from the coastal north to the industrial south. And those NIMBYs in the south are blocking it.... btw: we still don't have a reliable place to store nuclear waste.
I love that he's so happy and friendly. You always hear jokes about Germans always sounding serious or angry, but every German I've ever met just lights up whatever room they're in.
@@helixsol7171It's a place Blizzard just made up I believe. I think it's meant to be located in Nigeria, but Blizzard clearly just wanted to go the Wakanda route and make up a fake futuristic African city. Strange that it's the only time they've ever done that. Every other character is from a real place.
As Russian I am also going to gym and there's a really muscular woman. Comparing her to Zarya, they are both very friendly, smiley and up for helping. Voices... Zarya's voice is kind of stereotypically low. But overall I think Zarya could be real in our reality if there was a girl who wanted to inspire everyone to fight hostile omnics (not usual omnics). Even bigger than sportsman, maybe a member of the government.
I would like to note that in the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Lúcio is FANTASTIC. He speaks very naturally, the voice fits his character and he is easily the most charismatic one. The adaptation there was top notch. But other than that, yeah… It’s nice to have representation but there’s nothing about him that isn’t stereotypical and is made to cater to the Brazilian fanbase. He has no traditional Brazilian outfits(capoeira kind of gets there but is kind of meh) but has a bunch of traditional outfits from other nationalities.I like the fact he is a musician and not just a soccer player or whatever, but they still slap all the soccer stuff on him regardless(which I wouldn’t mind if he had the other stuff). All in all he is very beloved in Brazil and a great character, but they did my boy dirty for sure
every other country on the planet: "Oh cool he tries to speak our language. It shows that he gives effort and apreciate our country and the people." french: "Please never speak french again."
The irish person who spoke up knows very little about ireland and irish culture. Clearly an american who has or claims to have "irish ancestry" and is enforcing incorrect stereotypes in this video. I mean bringing up lucky charms was so stupid. Also the irish language is taught in every school in the country and its actually more than just incorrect, its a little offesnsive to suggest otherwise. In terms of moira, i think shes good representation of ireland. Perfect accent, not over the top, and her Gaeilge pronunciation is flawless. Some of her english voicelines such as "class" "grand" and "you're a chancer" are also very commonly used phrases here that i was pleasantly surprised to hear. I also appreciate not having a large drunk guy as the irish rep and avoiding that stereotype completely. Insteas she's really well spoken and educated and thats great to see. Her banshee skin isnt fantastic rep from its design but its passable. But its a shame there arent more irish skins like celtic wear or even a GAA skin would be funny.
As a New Zealander and being Māori (the indigenous people of NZ which Roadhog has whakapapa or ancestry to), I would challenge the ideas of representation in Overwatch. I do want to say, having representation at all for Māori in videogames, let alone Māori who live in Australia is awesome. We are so starved of this representation that anything is honestly just enjoyable to see, sadly even just in random tattoo options in character customisation in some games. My main thing is just that it feels like Roadhog is not meant to represent us. He is inherently designed to be a part of that Madmax vibe, he is supposed to represent that rather than give cultural representation to the Kiwis or Māori. His connection to New Zealand is mainly through a few voicelines such as his "wopwops" line (middle of nowhere), his accent is so distorted from his mask and whatever that man is chugging in his breather that it doesnt sound Kiwi, Pasifika or Māori. In terms of Roadhog being Māori, he is. Being mixed race, or in Aussie does not affect his heritage. But Overwatch's representation of Māori and Pasifika is ultimately lacking. While I understand the reasons for recolours, the Islander skin is just a recolour of Toa, it is ultimately missing and failing to represent wider Pasifika and Polynesian cultural clothing, art, concepts. Toa itself doesnt feel very Māori. It feels like a half baked stereotype. I do like this skin, its a cool skin, but in the topic of representation; Here is my full breakdown: His Clothing His belt is pulling inspiration from Piupiu, but they kinda just arent. Instead of being reeds they are just full on ropes and missing the dyes and patterns present. The shapes and geometric patterns on the band itself isnt Māori, it looks polynesian? (I know Māori more than I know Pasifika, at the very least it isnt giving Māori for me). His neck thingy, not really close to what we have in Aotearoa and Te Wai Pounamu (Māori names for main islands in NZ), feels like its pulling more inspiration from other Pasifika cultures, so its cool, just not Māori. It could have the makings of a Pākē (raincoat) or vaguely a Kākahu (cloak) which I personally would have loved to see. His feet: The most accurate part of this NZ interview, hell yeah, not even just a Pasifika & Māori thing, very Kiwi thing too. His Hook Clearly pulling inspiration from Maui (think the Moana movie). Except within Pasifika culture, Maui's hook is straightup the jawbone of his Grandmother/Grandfather (depends on place). It feels like a mishmash of concepts from traditional tools and mythology, that just misses a chance for a badass Pasifika representation moment. His Hair uhhh, not sure about the pony tail, most Pasifika and Māori men with long hair manbun it. The feathers are accurate though, but not in their placement. They would be further back, and the feathers themselves arent from any bird we would actually use for this, missed opportunity for a Huia feather (even though they are extinct, still symbolically wouldve been sick) His Mask This is the most Māori thing in this whole fit. Just to set an understanding, we dont really have masks, just not really a thing, but I love the idea of pursuing Māori art through Roadhogs mask (so really cool concept to use the mask). This mask feels awesome because it draws on roadhogs preexisting design and matches it creatively with Māori art. To explain it, the mask is performing a Pūkana (a face distortion) seen often in Kapa Haka, but thats not really the main thing at play here. This design is clearly pulling from Whakairo (carvings). I am not a carver, I do not hold the traditions of my ancestors in this domain and I welcome any artists or others more knowledgeable to please add your knowledge to this. Traditional Māori carving largely serves the goal of giving body to our ancestors. While different Iwi (tribes) have different styles, this facial shape, with a bold prominent downturned open mouth and tongue is very common. Seeing it in Overwatch feels awesome, while I mainly disagree with the interviewee's comment about representing Māori spirituality, the reality is Māori culture is spiritual, anything Māori is going to be spiritual, and in this case, seeing it draw inspiration and art from our traditions and ancestors is actually my favourite thing about this skin. The negatives: the colours arent it. It has brown and green on it, not really colours seen in traditionally Māori art, we do white red black. The actual patterns arent trying to pull inspiration from Māori art, which means its missing the only thing which made this mask cool. His Tattoos I use the word tattoo here, because tā moko is not a direct translation. Moko is inherently spiritual, it depicts our ancestry, where you come from in a highly symbolic and metaphysical way (there is so much more to say on this topic but im not qualified or have the time). The tattoos here just arent moko. Not even on the spiritual level (reasons tied to the next reason), they arent even based off Māori moko. The tattoos themselves have no connections to Māori art or traditions. This is why I challenge the claims to spiritual representation in the video, because Overwatch just doesnt do this, our moko are one of the key things known about Māori. They clearly didnt get in contact with Māori artists for this skin, not only does that mean that the representation can never be authentic, and deprives Māori artists of the chance of work depicting their own culture (I understand doing this with an art team is hard, but still), but it means it cannot be moko. There is no conversation around Roadhogs whakapapa (genealogy, his ancestry), and how to bring that to form (reveal what is already there) through tattooing. His Skin tone Roadhog is white. Māori is an ethnicity, not a race. We do not even have a concept of proportion, or "how Māori are you?". One of the key pillars of our culture is whakapapa (ancestry), and if you have whakapapa to something, in this case Māori, then you are. Roadhog is Māori, regardless of his skin colour, regardless of where he lives. He does not need a skintone change to be representative of Māori. This change not only feels vaguely weird racially, but doesnt feel Māori. It serves no purpose in representing us, but it also is using an innately foreign concept. This is the opposite of representation, this is just a bad choice. Islander: I am Māori, not Samoan, not Tongan, not Fijian, not Tahitian (and many many more Pasifika peoples). I am not able to speak to the Islander skin with great understanding. What I can say, is that I am disappointed that this skin is a recolour. These other Pasifika cultures are not subsets of Māori culture, they are our cousins, each as detailed and incredible as our own. I feel like the skin could have also looked to improve accuracy in clothing, tattoos, the mask isnt even that applicable outside of Māori. It couldve been a whole lot better. In conclusion, its cool to see Māori in videogames. I love that Roadhog even has a skin attempting to represent us. But it does not feel like authentic representation. It missed the opportunity to bring in indigenous artists and create genuine understandings and representation of Māori thought, art and traditions in-game. Its a cool skin, its just lacking in this department. I have spoken to what I can, im not an expert in many fields (moko, carving), I am just a young Māori girl looking to see where I am represented in the game I love. I dream that in the future we see indigenous representation is video games more often, through indigenous artists, game designers and developers (plus more).
nice to see other Māori in the comments taking issue with roadhog, agree with so many of your points, well said. I will say on colour though that before the colonizers came Māori actually did use a lot of other colours in their artwork. That red/white/black/brown palette we see so often today was actually painted over a lot of older work to fit a narrative. I forget exactly why, but something like marketing or making Māori seem less advanced than they were I'd imagine. it's not something I hear mentioned a lot but something I learned from slime Māori artists/tutors.
I'm also sus on wearing a mask at all, I was always taught that wearing a mask was frowned upon. either because the head is tapu or something about like hiding your identity, but that could honestly be one of those ideas brought in with Christianity, I'm not sure.
As a fellow kiwi, I didn't even realise Roadhog was supposed to be from New Zealand until I read that on the wiki. Those two skins seemed really off to me, like a strange approximation of Māori aesthetics. The most accurate thing to me was his toast victory pose as his mug has kōwhaiwhai patterns on it.
I'm not from NZ nor Māori - not by a long shot. I'm from Ecuador, so what little I do know about your culture comes from representation like this in Overwatch, a few other games and media, whenever NZ participates in worldwide sporting events and the fact that I had a teacher back in Primary School who was from New Zealand who taught us a bit about Māori. So all in all I've been quite interested to learn, and frankly your post is a treasure trove of very interesting information which if anything has motivated me to look into learning about it even more. I really appreciate all the time and information that went into this, thank you! I hope you don't mind me asking related to the subject of Māori video-game representation, if you are aware of Mad Maggie in Apex Legends? Maggie is one of my favourite characters, if not probably my favourite character, across the games I've played. She caught my attention the moment that I saw her introductory animated trailer where she performs haka (for me it was an immediate fond throwback to my Kiwi school teacher! 😅). She has a few skin which, insofar as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), show patterns and colours appropriate to Māori clothing and art. I was particularly intrigued by your description of Māori moko and it's importance, so I wondered how Mad Maggie fared in the spiritual aspect of her representation since a few of her skins have tā moko. Aside from that she has several voice-lines that are either directly Māori or Kiwi slang, so I was wondering if on the stereotype/accent front if that is a good representation (I assume it is since Nicola Kāwana is her VA, and from all I've seen about her she seems to be very passionate about sharing about Māori culture as a whole). Still I always wondered specially from a Māori point of view like your own, if she lacks in the representation aspect in any way and how would she compare on the basis of Māori representation to Roadhog? It has to be said that dissimilar to OW where the characters in the game come from an specific real-life countries on Earth, Maggie is from Salvo - a fictional planet in the Outlands which seems to be culturally inspired Mad Max-esque space AU/NZ. As the Australian folks in this video mentioned in reference to Junkerqueen, it's odd that both Overwatch and Apex chose to go down the route of mixing Pasifika cultures with Mad Max, so I was wondering what is your take on this? Does it bother you that this trope has been repeating itself or does it make no difference to the authentic cultural representation of characters like Roadhog or Mad Maggie? I appreciate any insight you may have on these questions I have, and I'm sorry in advance if anything I've written isn't clear (and for the many questions lol). As you said, I sincerely hope that indigenous representation in games improves in the future by bringing in indigenous people into the table when working on representation (I'm hoping that someday my country's own multi-ethnicities are represented outside of Ecuador in some way or another).
the thing about the aussie rep in overwatch is that its basically only white aussie rep. as far as i know, they dont even reference aboriginal australian culture, in skins or the maps. and its not helped by their choice of lore being "nuclear wasteland." its a bit fucked lol
Finally someone mentions it. I never see indigenous rep talked about in reference to how Overwatch represents cultures and I thought this video was *finally* the chance for someone to talk about how there is 0 mention of indigenous cultures in Overwatch
@@Lacirev I heard elsewhere that Pharah is supposedly indigenous, although other comments said it was tacked on at the last minute after Blizzard received backlash for giving a non-indigenous character a thunderbird skin.
Replace Roadhog's Hogdrogen with Petrol and you have your representation tbh. Having a character who's only power is ringing up cenno and screaming every 10mins wouldn't be a good hero.
As a Canadian, I agree. Pharah is still the most Canadian character. The others feel like they just got "Canadian" slapped onto them after they were finished. Nothing about them feels like they are actually from Canada.
Funny enough Pharah literally had "Canadian" slapped onto her after she was finished. Blizzard scrambled to make her biracial when they were being criticized for giving a non-Native character very Native skins. Even today her Indigeneity feels like an afterthought which is a disappointment imo. :/
I disagree. Venture and Pharah give me no Canadian vibes, while Sojourn feels a least a little authentic. Despite having no Canadian skins, her voice lines and the accent are accurate imo.
As a Swiss I'd say they really dropped the ball when it comes to making Mercy "Swiss", she's a nice character, but there's really nothing Swiss about her. In appearance she looks more Swedish than Swiss, the voice is just German from Germany and nothing about her has anything culturally relevant to Switzerland apart from the flag. If we're talking about stereotypes or representation of the culture she gets a 2/10. As a character she's great, as a Swiss character though ? Nope
As a Swede, it’s pretty obvious to me that the reason Torbjörn doesn’t have any Swedish voice lines is because his voice actor is clearly *not* Swedish, to the point where it’s kind of jarring hearing him speak with Brigitte when you compare their accents. Also as a side note, while Torbjörn certainly is a Swedish name, it does sound a bit like someone was trying really hard to come up with a name that would sound as overtly Swedish as possible. Meanwhile, Brigitte simply isn’t really a Swedish name, so considering the lore of why she’s named that, I guess they did a good job on that front.
well to be fair on Brigitte not being a Swedish name, Rein was the one to name her. In german the name translates to "strength" and is a popular name in Germany for girls
@@DamsterX well Birgitta is the Swedish and Icelandic form of the Irish Gaelic female name Brighid. its a version of her name. Just lielk Stacey and stacy. both used just as much
In the french version of the game , Venture speaks québécois ffrench , I think it represents someone from Canada a bit better .If someone that speaks french plays the game in french , they will immediatly know that the character is from Canada .
Juno is also a Vietnamese. I'm so disappointed that he didn't included her in the video. I was looking forward to see Vietnamese finally getting recognition in video game community :(
@@Leon_TruongWell to be fair, she just came out and hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet. She only has a small handful of viet voice lines, and she doesn’t really have any skins we can judge the cultural accuracy of yet.
@@doublereel-real It's in her lore. Her dad is Vietnamese. Her dad's Vietnamese last name is printed on her outfit. She even has Vietnamese voicelines in-game. Isn't that obvious enough? lol
According to the Overwatch official cook book (page 69), Jollof rice "was part of Doomfist's routine before martial arts competitions in his youth, and his family's chefs knew to always have a plate ready for him."
Canadian and Mexican rep was so chaotic on live stream. I loved it! I wish i was there during Illari, Echo and Doom talk, becuause i found those two very interesting.
Honestly, Pharah’s First Nations ties are so terribly executed that it almost feels like a stereotype 😭 they fumbled that side of her heritage SO badly
@@bitmasked the fact that they gave her that when she wasn’t considered a native character FLOORED ME 😭 it is accurate design-wise, & probably inspired by Tlingit thunderbird regalia/representations, but WHY WAS IT ON AN EGYPTIAN CHARACTER!! And to give her an absent native father to get out of criticism for it.. like cool thanks 💀 that’s the exact rep we needed
@@alexisblue3809I heard someone say that that character trait was tacked on last minute because Blizzard got into hot water of giving a non-native character a thunderbird skin.
@@mariustan9275 I heard the same, & I’m honestly not shocked! Especially considering the fact that half of the white characters have some sort of cultural skin for an ethnicity they don’t belong to (**MERCY**)- Pharah was def on that train & the random First Nations father lore was 100% just damage control
@@alexisblue3809 Yeah Blizzard can either make pretty good representation of cultures and countries (Sigma, D.va, Moira) but then you have stereotypes and fumbles like this. Like, to a certain extent it's fine for characters to get skins for a culture they are not a part of since globalization tends to do that (see Japan selling tourists stuff like kimonos) but I think that should only be done to cultures that are actively interested in spreading that stuff around or were considered historically powerful then or now. I'm no expert on cultural appropriation but some shouldn't be just for the sake of politness unless they are from that group themselves. Seriously why can't we get a First Nations character? I'd personally like to see some Reaper-type character who was a First Nation of some kind, got experimented on (because that sort of thing kinda happened IRL) and then the experiment mutates them into something horrible. Thats just me though. Also you said that's the exact red WE needed and I don't mean to be offensive but does this mean you're a native/first nations yourself? I'm just interested in the culture and want to know more about it.
As part of the Hispanic culture, every time I hear Sombra speak in general (counting both English and Spanish voicelines), I get offended not because it sounds off or anything but I question myself "IS THAT HOW WE SOUND LIKE?!?!?!? God I hope I don't sound like that...". She probably put an "American voice with a spanish accent" as we know she can speak clear english. Nothing against the VA. You could tell she has too much fun with her character she has clips on YT of her doing voicelines with other VAs and more power to her as she voices one of the most hated characters in the game (probably second to Brigitte).
I don't think Brig is hated anymore. Generally people agree that she's in a good spot now gameplay-wise. I don't think people really think about her character other than those of us who main her. As for Sombra's accent, obviously she sounds a lot cooler than anyone IRL does, so that alone makes it less realistic if you want to get into the nitty gritty, but to my untrained ear she does sound like the Spanish speakers I know haha
As a Mexican I think she does a good job. I like that she actually speaks Spanish well and uses a lot of expressions and slang. She sounds like Latinos I’ve heard in real life but she doesn’t really sound Mexican to me. There lots of different Mexican accents tho so maybe she just sounds more like one I haven’t heard.
I love Mei but besides her skin/voice she doesn't have anything to do with Chinese culture ): From what I know from Overwatch 1. It doesn't influences her personalities, story, or power in any significant way. If you change her nationality it doesn't really effect her character. All the other heroes nationalities influences them. Her skin/voice are great representation but really wish they did the same with her lore ):
Not only Lucio barely has portuguese voicelines, but the few he has sounds like he's not Brazilian at all. It's like he can speak english way better than the language he actually grew up to But I do love his voice and his VA seems to be a pretty wholesome guy too
The best characters in my opinion are the ones that dont rely on stereotypes. have some for people of the country to notice, and show off a little of the culture like moira, doomfist, and hog.
As a peruvian, i think Illari looks really good resemblance wise. The fact she can Qechua is amazing. I find myself listening to her voicelines from time to time because it resonates. She rocks the colors too 🇵🇪❤
That guy bringing up Orisha's when talking about Doomfist is interesting because Doomfist and Orisa are kinda rivals in the lore, I wonder if that was intentional.
14:49 they're right about Tracer. I don't know any British person who thinks she's a good rep for British people. Sorry to the VA and I'm sure it wasn't her choice but the accent is so fake I legit thought it was an American VA pretending to be British until I found out she's actually British. I'd love to see some grunge and more cockney accent on Tracer. Maybe a cool Mythic idea
Pretty unfortunate they put all this effort into making the characters reflect their home countries and cultures in unique and interesting ways and then just gave half of them Disney Sameface Syndrome
The guy in the video said that Zarya isn’t stereotypical at all, mentioning the modern stereotype about Adidas tracksuits. But in reality, she’s very stereotypical in the sense that, outside of Russia, whenever people think about the country, they immediately associate it with the USSR. So Zarya is more of a character from the USSR than from Russia. And if we’re talking about the USSR, her personality, lines, and overall vibe really capture the atmosphere of the Soviet Union, except for her pink hair. But when it comes to Russia, she doesn’t really have a strong connection. Also, when she says her ultimate line, "Ogon' po gotovnosty", it sounds like it’s spoken with a very strong American accent. Actually, I would love to see something related to Russian folklore, like they do with the Japanese characters. Something like traditional outfits, pagan gods and totems, Baba Yaga, Leshy, and all that. Such a character would be much more vivid and interesting.
I think her English accent is too thick, like Rajesh from Big Bang Theory, I don’t think people in India speak like that, but the Hindi part is good, as for symmeta’s skins, she shows a lot of skin in a lot of her outfits, and showing that much skin is considered shameless in India but times are changing a little
as a brazilian, even thought i think lucio is a good rep despite living in the most known brazilian state, liking soccer and being a musician, the thing that most bums me off about him is that his VA is just a random american. i get that some other characters also dont have VAs from their nationality but they at least tried. for lucio they didnt even try to get the accent a bit accurate
I do hate that Rein's VA is American, the accent is not obnoxiously fake or whatever, but it means there aren't any native voice lines, something blizzard seemed to have paid more attention to since launch (especially including less known languages with Bap/Magua/Illari). Torb has the same issue.
It's been done to death on Reddit but, Lifeweaver is the effeminate, non-threatening Thai person that you see on TV. He's an awful stereotype of the model minority and his voice actor speaks Thai with the inflection you would have of someone raised abroad in a high society setting. It's prim, it's proper, and it's shallow. I am not a famous movie star or a rich child of british parents, I have never met anyone who sounds like him or acts like him. I have lived abroad and in-country. The Colonizer skin was a blatant slap in the face of Thailand's proud warrior culture and, despite never being invaded in modern history, has been made to heel for the entertainment of others.
Brazillian here and one of the things they could add for lucio for a better representation would be skins based on different regions from brazil, such as a "gaucho" or a "cangaceiro" from south and northeast regions respectively
This is going to be a long yap, so just skip over if you don't want to read a lot. However I would like to talk about Kiriko. As a Japanese person, I was and still am very much let down by Kiriko’s design in a lot of ways. She has many concepts and ideas to her character design which I really enjoy that I can tell blizzard paid attention too in terms of cultural accuracy. However at the same time it feels like there are other major setbacks to her design that genuinely just annoy me to death. Companies seem to have a hard time with Japanese representation imo, finding it difficult to get away from the idea of making a Japanese rep character that isn’t a “samurai honor bound/Ronin” esque character. But I like originally how stereotypical yet well researched Hanzo and Genji were as character rep. Genji and Hanzo felt like a stereotype done with good faith and genuine research into Japanese culture as a way to breath life and fun into such overdone tropes. However with Kiriko we already have our established classic “Samurai and Ninja” style trope characters so when I found out that Kiriko was also a ninja I was a little disappointed. But I do love that Kiriko is a shrine maiden, I think Shintoism is an extremely relevant part of our peoples culture and is tied into so many core ideas and roots of tons of aspects of Japanese folks lives yet is so often not as vividly represented as I would want it to be for something so relevant in Japanese culture. I wish Kiriko was just a shrine maiden and not a Shinobi and did not know Genji or Hanzo growing up, I was so annoyed seeing that instead of just being a full shrine maiden they lumped her into Genji and Hanzo’s lore yet her age clearly does not add up with the continuity, it just feels so forced. As a viz dev artist myself imo it felt like a lazy decision on the art teams side to write her as someone who “trained with the Shimadas” yet is almost half their age which to me felt like they did just so that they could allow her to be designed as someone with Shinobi stuff since it would just be easier to concept abilities for her and “that’s what Japan is guys! And it sells” instead of just going the extra step to research more and creating more Shinto based things for her. I can think of many other ways they could have visualized her kit without it needing to be partially ninja based, it just felt so half effort on their part when trying to depict Shintoism especially in couple with the aforementioned problem of her feeling forced into Genji and Hanzo's lore. She also feels like a design that was very much made with “sales” in mind more then cultural faith. To me she feels like she is this cutesy shrine anime looking girl because that is what sells. To me I think it would have been so much more interesting if they made her character an omnic instead, they would be a robot who took over the mantle for a former human shinto priest that took care of this Omnic but has since died. Now this “Omnic Kiriko” has a character struggle of trying to honor, understand, and carry on the life/culture of a Shinto Maiden or Priest in honor of this human that cared for them. This human could have given them reason to care and fight for humans and imo there could be so many fun interactions between many characters, especially Genji and Hanzo. Genji could be accepting of the identiy crisis they are going through like he once did and gladly could see this omnic as a Shinto Priest/Maiden and will gladly receive their blessings. While Hanzo being someone who is stuck in his ways could be someone who doesn’t fully see this omnic as a true priest since they “are not human” and currently lack the full understanding of etc. (I cannot remember if Hanzo dislikes omnics). But like I said there are still some cool concepts and aspects to her that are not just all total doom and gloom. Some of her skins shine light on some Japanese Street Fashion niches which I love because it is such small details to Japanese culture that you probably wouldn’t know as an outsider (Like her Sukajan outfit and Visual Kei Outfit). I like how her Ult is designed visually since I see many uses of a “Torii” in media typically just thrown wherever something is “holy/sacred”. While yes Torii may appear at sites of sacredness, there is so much more thought that goes into their meaning past just being placed there. In many shrines they act as a gateway for the spirits and divine to cross over, when you enter past a Torii typically you bow first and walk on the sides and not in the center because that is a path paved for the divine and spirits to walk down. I love this detail since her ult is literally a divine/spiritual pathway of Torii that you walk down to buff you and your allies. They could have been lazy and just made a single Torii be summoned and it could be an AOE circle shaped ult but instead they made it a pathway with paved stones too as a visual bonus because of the want for cultural accuracy while also serving as a unique way to diversify it’s use further from other stereotypical “buff AOE” ults and it is such a small but key detail to me that I love that imo separates the “good” cultural rep from the “Accurate and masterful” cultural rep. But still I wish they fit more things like clapping twice or using a Gohei etc. I also think the fox iconography is a very overused one by companies trying to rep Japan. All in all I guess im just so passionate about this since I myself am a viz dev artist and I love learning about different culture and it is sad seeing such a fall from grace, Overwatch 1 had such amazing rep that while at times as we saw in this video may not have been complete 10/10’s, they still gave pretty faithful depictions for many that is honestly some of the best at it’s time in media. It made me want to learn so much more about different cultures and research for myself to appreciate them further the game was able to present which is something not many other games can say they have done for such large audiences. OW1 made me such a stickler for art direction and had me realize we can hold ourselves to such higher standards for what cultural rep and art design could be. OW1 imo took many stereotypes but breathed life into many of them and flipped them on their heads. So, it has been saddening seeing such a fall from grace by blizzard. Many Overwatch 2 characters now are very hit or miss for me nad many other artists Ik that I have talked to, where as for OW1 I think imo that majority of designs were strong hits (yes ofc there are still exceptions). Ik I may not be a majority here so I could easily be wrong and just not Jive w/ OW2 designs, Im open to hearing discussions!
I'm brazilian and I LOVE LUCIO, but he is crearly just a stereotype from the Rio de Janeiro, the concept of his backstory is good but poorly done. He is a musician and doesn't have one single voice line or anything that remember brasilian music, also the fact that he is brasilian and a hockey fan at the same time is funny to me, BRO NOBODY PLAYS OR WATCH HOCKEY HERE 😭 I also love the english VA but the brazilian is just so much better for the character, the english one doesn't even speak portuguese and the voice lines is literally a non brasilian person trying to speak portuguese. I like the seleçao skin and the capoeira, of course is a stereotype that 100% brasilians play soccer but cmon the sport is really HUGE here, I just wish for a better represantation in terms of our culture in general, Brazil is not just the Rio de Janeiro.
As a Peruvian I wanna say that Illari gives me mixed feelings. Her face is good, she is too tall. Her basis is the power of the sun, which is a very basic take, but it works. She Is from Cuzco but also not, it feels a bit all over the place. Like someone thought "Macchu PIcchu" and said good enough. It is the most basic Peru read but somehow also didn't manage to get what Andean people are about. Her design has won me over time, because she does give Peruvian vibes. The gold is very Inca and applies too the culture religion of those times. There are 4 good shapes in her clothes that alude to Inca as well. On the other hands the 4 rare skins she has, have no real coloration that evoques Andean people and that is VERY easy to do. I will say that if you wanted an INCA WARRIOR FROM THE FUTURE, that is your girl. But Peruvian? Not so much. The invasion of Spain dredged a lot of Inca culture to the point it is not exactly something that is kept. Not for lack of trying, but it was literally destroyed out of us. People from Cuzco are from Cuzco, and the traditions remain but not a single Inca is left. There will forever be a little rift from what she would represent and what we are. Add on: Ill say the spanish is okay, not because it is spanish, but because the accent she is trying to get to. Andean people have an specific accent and she is trying to reach it but it doesn't come naturally, specially for the Qechua parts. All and all, mixed with it, but I will take it because there is nothing really offensive about it.
I would’ve loved to talk about the Italian representation in the cast of Overwatch heroes… IF THERE WERE ANY! COME ON BLIZZARD I WANNA SEE MY BRETHREN IN ACTION
I was thinking about this the other day, overwatch has maps that correspond to characters backstories, and there are 3 Italian maps (Rialto, Collosseo, Malevento) but no Italian heroes. I think it actually has the second most maps out of any country.
There was this one-off Italian character Antonio who was basically just a watered down mafioso stereotype. He only made two appearances ever: one in the Retribution comic and in Retribution's opening cutscene before getting shot in the face by Reaper.
If they finally make one I hope they take notes in personality of Clove from valorant, cus as someone from Edinburgh it was actually uncanny seeing someone be so bang on the money as Clove was.
they made an irish character so thats what yall scots have to live with cuz I know for a fact that a company that greedy dont give a fuck about no scots sadly :( when i get arab representation i get happy as a turk even though turks are not arabs and thats the closest thing we'll get
Alot of the classic overwatch characters dont have va's that are from the same place as the characters they voice glad they changed that moving forward
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Tracer doesn’t represent England bc she ain’t an orange chav like a lot of em here
phish do better with your pcs. 3000$ and i only get a slightly better cpu (depending how you see it, the i9-12900KF is ranked 29 for speed and the i5-13600KF is ranked 18th) only 16GB of ram (It doesnt even say 2 sticks, and newer games will possibly want more than that). Still only 1Tb of storage. (each one comes with 1Tb and games cost a lot of storage). Still a 750W power supply (not even a 750W Platinum). i just went to microcenters website and built your "$3000" for $1600 (not including case because you guys dont say what case you get) please talk to them and try to rework it out or something. sell pcs to your subscribers but dont over price the hell out of them.
Widowmaker’s an asshole? 10/10 French representation.
I'M THE GUY IN THE VID AND I WANNA SAY THAT I HATE YOU
She has the best comeback voice lines in the game, she straight up shits on everyone except Moira.
@@deadlyrobot5179in one cinematic she plays 6D chess against tracer and gets her kill
i missread that as "Widowmaker has an asshole? 10/10"
not just French, 10000/10 PARISIAN representation 💀 parisians hate everyone that isn't from paris, including other french people lol
In Reaper's defense, he's mixed, born in the states. Most of his culture uses words that can't be in Overwatch. The biggest thing they could do is give him an undying love for Dragon Ball.
Reaper randomly dropping Dragon Ball one liners after getting a kill would bring me back to the game low-key
The only word Reaper ever says in Spanish is mockingly calling Sombra "Amiga" when eliminating her after she TPs.
@ravenslore0777 Imagine when he ults he just shouts "ITS OVER 9000!!!"
@@trickstab7903 Might be peak...
"Pathetic blacks"
Asking OW players if their family would approve of a date with a character as if they're not already begging for them to find anyone
At this point they even accept a 30$ blow up sex doll, like just anything.
@@deadlyrobot5179 jesus, man 😕
@@deadlyrobot5179what the hell...
@@deadlyrobot5179LMAO
Your actually down bad @@deadlyrobot5179
Nigerian here, so the conception of doomfists gauntlet actually comes from the Hausan (one of the main tribes in Nigeria) martial art called Dambe. Its kinda like boxing, but with only one hand being wrapped with multiple layers of rope for punching (and fights are usually a lot more brutal 💀).
Dude that's badass
Okay, that's actually really cool.
Pls tell me I wasn’t the only one that was surprised when he said yoruba is a religion and not a tribe or culture
oh so your that deep in the history or experience.
Watched a couple Dambe videos here, and it was bloody as heck. Those punches were like spears!
Ofc tracer isn't realistic for a brit, she doesn't have a knife and doesn't complain about the weather
Don't forget teeth
And isn't either a copper or an anarchist.
“oi, its bloo’y pouring out here, innit bruv?”
And she doesn't think her self superior to non whites or hate foreigners.
@@PrincessPopRoxxit's bloody hell out 'ere, it's pouring most the time, bruv
Tracer is not a stereotype. She's a caricature of a Victorian-Industrial revolution chimney sweep from a Mary Poppins era movie.
It's crazy her VA is actually English and didn't push for something a bit more realistic.
Her va isn't that much invested in the representation or history.
Hilariously Marry Poppins was originally written by an Australian authour. Don't look the books up, they're awful.
tracer should have been voiced by the legend himself, danny G
Me waiting for the Martian representation...
Gotta wait for dat wifi to come back
same, im waiting for the genetically altered gorillas from the moon
You have the Russian for that specific joke mate😂
Waiting for the rodent and the sentient robot representation
She's Vietnamese lol
"My wife looks like Junker Queen....just kidding she looks more like Junkrat" LMAO BROOO🤣
😭 he loves junkrat aura in his wife
The Overwatch lore definitely doesn't do any favours for Australia since its supposed to be a barren wasteland.
Technically, I think it’s just the Outback that’s been turned into a barren wasteland. We see in comics and a Lucioball map in Sydney that there are other areas in Australia that are basically functioning as normal.
Junkertown is a realistic representation of western australia
Counterpoint. The average western Australian town
@@imyellowteeth4691 your so real for that
@@imyellowteeth4691 as a guy from Perth, yeah.
im an arab and when i found out what pharahs kit was i laughed my ass off like wdym her whole kit is flying and bombing people 😭😭😭
8:18 as a reaper enthusiast i have to mention that his mask isnt a human skull its an owl and im pretty sure it refers to mexican folklore about a woman who takes the form of a white owl to get revenge on people who wronged her (you know, like overwatch / blackwatch)
Owls also just symbolise death so maybe im thinking too deeply into it
his mask is a skull, just dont look like a real skull because blizzard didnt want to upset china where skulls are taboo
@@verguco6051it's an owl
@@yorukage5926 yeah, the character called reaper who is an assassin with supposedly mexican heritage so he tries to emulate day of the dead celebration dont use a skull mask
@@verguco6051no it definitely looks like a barn owl
@@verguco6051 What kind of skull do you have? I would go and see a doctor
As an overwatch lore geek I was crying because some folks brought up stuff like “I wish the characters did this” and they do in lore! For example Mercy used to have voice lines with Genji disapproving him getting her chocolate because it’s not Swiss chocolate
as someone who only got into ow last year, how can i get more into the lore especially from years ago ? i am interested but idrk where to start. the cinematics ?
@@nutellaluvrgood question
@@nutellaluvrI’m so sorry for the info dump in the random comment section but you asked for it
Yes start with cinematics!! You should be able to find full playlists of them in both release order and chronological order, I’d recommend chronological since it makes a bit more sense that way, but you can piece it together kinda well in release order. I will say you should start with the 3 part series of animated shorts called “Genesis”. They give the backstory of the world of overwatch! There’s also origin stories for many of the characters, which will give you their backstories! There’s also quite a few comics and short stories you can read! They’re all available for free on the overwatch website! Just look up overwatch comics or overwatch short stories! You can download them as pdfs or read them right on the website. There are also tons of videos on smaller lore details, as well as character backstories that aren’t as fleshed out in cinematics or comics! I hope this wasn’t too overwhelming and I wish you the best of luck on your overwatch lore journey!!
@@nutellaluvrread the comics
@@nutellaluvrYeah, the comics and stories are your best bet for lore deep-dives. Usually they're companion pieces for the cinematics, so maybe watch those first, and then move to the comics, and then the short stories.
As a Pacific Islander, I feel I can have input over how they Interpreted Mauga's character.
For the most part, Mauga's portrayal of a Samoan is pretty spot on. I could point out the fact that they got a legit Samoan tattoo artist to do his tattoos. I could also spit out the fact that some of the voice lines use actual Samoan words in the language which is pretty cool.
Personally wise, it was perfect. Samoan's and other Pacific Islanders, we have a way with our words that makes the tone very inviting, but when the chips are down, all hell breaks loose. Another thing about personality, others can see islanders as simple minded, however just like mauga, we're not dumb but we love the underestimation people give to us.
The only tiny gripe I had about mauga is the fact that sometimes in his voice lines, he uses ōlelo Hawaii instead of Samoan. While it may seem like similar languages, I can assure you they are different.
My final thoughts are that for a long time my culture wasn't being voiced enough in our media. Since Mauga is a part of a rare collection of Polynesian characters in the media, I feel that of all the characters involved, Mauga is easily the best interpretation of a Polynesian to date.
Us islanders hardly ever get characters that are like us in things so it's cool when they're done right. I think with Mauga he especially excels in character design because of the tattoos being spot on and his shape is so big and wide but not fat and I think that is a huge misconception and stereotype of Islanders body types.
So he's better than Maui?
@@TiMonsor Maui isn't fat tho, I mean he kinda is but I would say he's more big than fat, but to answer your question, they are just as good as each other when it comes to how they depict us
In the same way every Japanese character in Overwatch can climb walls, the two Maori characters (Roadhog apparently and Mauga) can make you want to uninstall the game
@@derangedfreackingtwistedps5048 While Mauga isn't part of the Maori and instead a Samoan, there are times when they absolutely want to make me punch my screen (Specifically Hoglander)
The Australian part "we could have gotten someone from 7/11 and we would have been fine with it" 😂😂😂😂 absolutely lost it, accuracy.
Props to the editor for bringing up the appropriate images for so many cultures. Would've taken a good amount of research.
Ok, I'm Irish, and I can tell you for a fact that the person they brought on to review moira Knows Absolutely NOTHING about Ireland. Literally everything he said is an irish stereotype and What Americans ( mostly new York and Boston) think Being Irish Is like, the majority of them are about 6-7 generations removed however at least
Omg same, was genuinely tweakin listening to it.
I'm not Irish at all, but isn't it a common joke that Americans say they are Irish (maybe to seem special?) and their parents, grandparents, parents of grandparents and grandparents of grandparents are not Irish.
@@mariustan9275 it's not really a joke a lot of white Americans have family who immigrated from the Ireland, Italy, and Germany. A lot of Irish immigrants came over to the US during the great potato famine but the Americans with that experience would be generationally out of touch with their Irish heritage by now.
My family actually is part of this scenario and I have family still living in Ireland but I know none of them I only know they exist because of ancestry websites and I know nothing about my Irish heritage besides the fact my ancestors came to the US during the potato famine and the fact my last name is Murphy.
It's not to be special. We are Irish but we have been assimilated completely as Americans so we are out of touch with the heritage now.
@@DharmaPunk111 Yeah that's fair. I learned a lot about the Irish Potato Famine (what the heck English) and I know a lot migrated outwards because there wasn't any food availible. But it does become weird to bring it up in a place like this that talks about culture because an Irish American that is generationally out of touch with Ireland itself is not a good person to judge Irish representation in media, which is what is happening here. Like there was a thread somewhere where people complained about how the person representing the Irish just used stereotypes. Gaelige IS taught, if not used all that much, and a lot of Irish exports are from science (vaccines, toxins, blood, integrated circuits, etc).
@@DharmaPunk111 Yeah, it's a lot more like taking pride in their heritage, but for some reason (part of me feels like it's because the person is American that they do this) they take it really literally and act like the person is an idiot.
This was a fantastic concept for a video, Phish. Really enjoyed this one. I'm Dutch, and I remember brainstorming with a friend of mine, before Sigma came out, what a Dutch hero would look like. We got stuck on things like windmills, a focus on water, maybe something to do with engineering, but a lot of what we had in mind would end up being very similar in gameplay with Mei.
And then Sigma came out, with 'De Kuiper' as his last name, and we were like 'oh, right, the *astronomy* stuff'. It was neat.
I saw a vid about aussie representation in games and the guy made a really good point that I'll always remember. Beyond every character being Steve Irwin or Mad Max, there is a real missed opportunity for Indigenous representation. There are so many different cultures to draw from and they are the original Australians, we did to them sort of what white Americans did to the American Indians, except very few people outside Australia know about them.
this!!
"Guess who won the footy last night?!.. The Mighty Dragons!, you got 10 bucks mate?"
accurate representation of an aboriginal
Yeah the most people know about indigenous Australia is digiridoos
I like how chat collective bursts into spamming “An dey say” as soon as Doomfist is on screen
lol i couldnt stop laughing lol
Whoever represented Ireland here did a poor job. Irish (Gaeilge) is a core subject and mandatory in all schools across the Republic. Beyond that, Ireland has a rich legacy of scientific and medical contributions, with many breakthroughs in various fields throughout history. We are, quite literally, the land of poets, scholars, and innovators. Having an American with Irish heritage speak about Ireland was definitely a choice.
Agreed. I was quite a bit offended by the person they got to speak here and I hope if this video gets a redo or sequel they get somebody who is actually Irish to speak for moira
@@dylanmaguire3595 She genuinely is one of the best Irish characters I've ever seen .
@@pettyp0cket469 Movies would say other wise
I wouldn't say she's a great Irish rep but she has a tonne of good things, but having this uneducated American represent us really annoyed me too 😭😭
I live in "ni" and it's taught in alot of schools here too of course, and irish speaking areas
For anyone wondering, the kanji on Genji's shoulder shown at 19:33 is "忍" and can be read as "Shinobi" or as the "Nin" part of "Ninja". 🤓
actually it’s only the shino part of shinobi, the bi is written in kana
@@novayazemlya6852it can read both of them
@@novayazemlya6852 Yeah. The kun reading is usually shinobu while the on reading is nin. the character can be read as "shinobi" without okurigana but only in very specific instances, like 忍刀 (shinobigatana)
You know…reaper could’ve watched skibidi toilet as a kid. He was born in 2018, which means as of right now in 2024 he would be six years old, which is prime slibidi toilet age
Terrifying thought
No wonder he's a psychopath
Explains why he is f'ed in the head and an edge lord.
As a Brasilian I have to say that "Lucio" could simple exist here for sure but He is THE MOST STERIOTIPICAL brasilian caracter ever that a person of outside of Brasil could had created. 😂 If you dont know really Brasil but you think about here you would probably imagine someone like Lucio
yeah, he's a stereotype, but also isn't a inaccurate one kkkkkk
English va
If ur brazilian can u tell me why almost every brazilian character in video games are represented as exotic dark skin ones but when i travelled Brazil most people there are white/tannish skin? Or is just brazil too diverse
@@CouchPotatoCrusader there are a lot of black people in South America who came from the Carribbean. I'm not Brazilian myself so I can't tell you specifically about Brazil. A far share of Colombians are black (about 10%). But since most stereotypes and super famous Colombians are fairer skinned all of the Colombian characters are fairer skinned. It probably just comes down to some of Brazil's famous people like Pele being quite dark and then people generalising then further pushing the stereotype.
@@CouchPotatoCrusader Brazil is one of the most diverse country's in the world because it's history with both being a colony and being a tourist attraction
Sigma being a tall genius and rather friendly, is just about as Dutch as you can get. He also looks like at least three of my teachers, from when I was doing my bachelors in mechanical engineering. His voice lines are stuffed with typical Dutch sayings (props to the va). But I do miss seeing even one skin that is over the top stereotypical. But I guess they'd quicly think of weed, which is really just Amsterdam. I give it 9 out 10 stroopwafels
Maybe make him wear a giant windmill, or is that just Amsterdam as well?
Nobody says "ik ben een uitslover" though. Some voicelines can be a little odd at times
@@Callingusa2000 I think thats just video game or media speech. Same way no one would say "take this" in a fight.
2 bonus facts about Widow
in the french text/dub, she's literally called "Fatale", and her VA in both original and dub is the same, which isnt the case for most characters of OW
I’m pretty sure Mei’s English VA also voices her in the Chinese/Mandarin dub too.
Same thing with Illari's voice actor. You can tell how fluent and thick her accent is in Latin American Spanish I argue she sounds better in Spanish than what she sounds in English
Offhand I think it's only Illari and Kiriko who are voiced with the same VA in English and their native language.
j'ai éssayé de jouer OW en francais il y a quelques jours, j'ai presque mort de rire quand j'ai vu qu'il dissait "Fatale" xd
“As a person with scoliosis, I feel very represented.” LMFAOA
Moira is much better Irish representation than the guy you picked to tell if she's good representation lol. We refer to our language as Gaeilge rather than Gaeilic (Gaelic would refer to the sport of gaelic football) and Lucky Charms are not a thing here. That guy definitely seemed more like an American with Irish ancestors rather than an actual Irish person. If he is Irish, it seems weird that he would play into American stereotypes of Irish people especially considering the topic of the video.
Also he says that we're not known for our scientific achievements and are all farmers which really made me cringe a lot. Just google our biggest exports and you'll see that most of our economy comes from the sciences.
i agree, im not irish, but that guy in my opinion did not really understand what he was being asked of. good representation vs bad representation. moira in my opinion is good representation considering how other irish people are being represented (green clothes, fake ass "Irish" accent (just to be clear i mean is what americans think irish accent is) or nothing exept irish under nationality on the wiki). shes not stereotypical, but its not forgotten that she is irish after all. her not being some potato farmer and wearing green clothes, while still having that little nod to her lineage like her red hair and the language. And in itself in my opinion that little nod is important. why? because I myself are lithuanian ( lithuania gets like 0 representation) and the most well know character given that nationality in mass media is Hannibal Lecter, Who was simply created as a lithuanian to make him exotic and european at the same time, while having nothing to say about lithuania at all. Its important to not to forget when making a character of certain nationality their nationality. as well not fall back on stereotypes.
@@KinZenyatta Yeah i completely agree. Another example would be Happy Chaos in Guilty Gear. He's supposed to be Irish but you wouldn't know unless you read his wiki. Having a character speak a little bit of their native language or at least having an accent is very appreciated. Moira feels like home to me because her voice and her appearance has that familiarity. I don't care what they do with the character as long as they feel like they're from the nation the claim to be from.
@@KinZenyatta I have been waiting for a Baltic hero for the longest time.
@@brainandforce same 💔 ill take baltic anything please!!!
In some regions we do call the language gaelic too but honestly she doesn't really feel Irish bar the stereotypical ginger hair & speaking some Irish there's not much of our culture incorporated
"we have the emo cousin, the sassy cousin, and the metal teeth cousin" sent me and I'm no longer able to see the characters the same now. They need to make it canon that reaper and venture watch anime together, that's all I'm saying.
The Japanese Mexicans and yee were definitely the funniest
For real
Japan was on 🔥
Yee is always funny
Hell yeah we are. Viva Mexico
Genuinely couldn't agree more i love how educational this is and more how funny this video is
as a Nigerian, i didnt realise Doomfist was Nigerian lol. But Orisa is definitely Nigerian. She is named after the Yoruba deities called 'Orisha', its pronounced 'Oh-ree-Sha'. Plus i do hear some Yoruba greetings in her voiceline.
Also her ultimate voice line is
Yoruban for Meet your fate.
Swedish person here! I like how Torbjörn has that one voiceline "For the last time, Im swedish!" Since we can get confused with other scandinavian countries since accents are similar, and especially with Norway. I like Brigitte's swedish voice lines. "Skål" is something we say before drinking our drinks during a toast/speech, like during midsummer dinners and such. I like the engineering stereotype they both have.
I would like swedish voice lines from Torbjörn & the midsummer skin idea is so good!! I would also love swedish folklore skins like Torbjörn being a troll or a nisse while Brigitte gets skins inspired by Mara or Huldra.
I always interpreted "I'm swedish!" as a play on him being inspired by fantasy dwarves.
Torbjörns actor is actually not swedish, he's american, so its no surprise that his accent is non existent and has no swedish voice lines and can't even pronounce his own name xD
I think honestly that they should pay the voice actor to get him to take some swedish lessons or have the voice actress of Brigitte teach him how to atleasy say "hej" "tack" "hejdå" "tjenare" and for god's sake "torbjörn" and not "torbyern / torbyorn"
i await the day that brigiette gets midsommar skin. shed eat it up.
@@stormRed I thought he said that since a lot of people seem to confuse Swedish with Swiss lol
Torbjörns dialekt är så jävla dålig
with reaper being from LA I'm sure hes's chicano mexican-american cause if I remember in one of the comics it mentions he grew up in echo park where its a heavy Chicano neighborhood . he does look a foo to but some don't be fluent in Spanish . also phara native skin is based on the coastal native tribes that extends from PNW to Canada and Alaska inspired by totems and formline :)
As Russian wanna say that it's really funny that Zarya has russian accent when she speaks english and a little american accent when she speaks russian. Also it's kinda nice that Blizzard modernized image of the stereotypical character from Russia. We have a lot great sportsmen and sportswomem in many categories, so I'm glad they emphasize on that. The track suits maybe are funny and memeble, but it won't go beyond that. So have to say, good work
TBH her russian lines bug me. It's obvious that its not a native speaker in almost all of them. The proverbs are nice tho. And considering that some heroes do not get lines in their language AT ALL, it certainly could be worse.
It's a shame that she doesn't have a traditional dress (кокошник, косы, все дела) or a slavic myths-themed skin. There was smth like Богатырь but it didn't look very authentic. The sports ones were great. I usually use the Alien skin tho.
I don't wanna Russia-splain Russian stereotypes to a Russian, but Zarya's iron-willed machine like sportswoman character calls back to the perception of Russian Athletes / Olympians during the cold war. With the way international sports acted as a narrative stand in for the conflict, the image of the brutaly disaplined Russian athlete/gymnast/ballet performer, etc, became a pretty ubiquitous Russian stereotype. If you have seen Rocky 4, Zarya is basically a spiritual successor for the state trained Ivan Drago.
That makes total sense, thank you for pointing it out. But we like Ivan Drago, he is an example of funny stereotypes about Russia. We call it "the cranberry" (клюква, don't try to connect dots with this word, there isn't). It's when russian stereotypes are put to absolute point just for fun in any media. Drago and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat are good examples.
Personally I like Zarya as representative of my country. She is stoic, confident and suspicious as most of us are, but she is really kind to people (for example her jokes with Reinhardt and Winston) and will give everything in order to protect them
@@Veirdjil oh, I wasn't really making a statement on right/wrong, just the basis for the stereotype and that it has some embedded messaging in its trope. Characters like Drago were usually not portrayed as "evil Russians", but people disaplined so thoroughly in service of the state, that they were robbed of some element of their personhood. It is a very cold war Idividualism vs collectivism political messaging that isn't really as relevant today. Obviously zarya isn't intended as political aligory, the tropes that she derives from just happen to have been created for that purpose. I'm just a cold war nerd who wanted to point out where the stereotype comes from, and if you enjoy that kind of representation/portrayal, I think that's great.... I'm stuck with junkrat and would happily trade.
as a russian, im kinda disappointed by zarya bc she's yet another "russian character from north asian part of russia but is actually just white". it wouldve been nice to see any native representation or not make her Siberian at the very least
I love how most of them explain what is accurate and inaccurate about each character and then that one japanese guy just shouts "stereotypes are good"
"moira! Irish! what do we think?" "*american accent*" hmmmmm
Irked the life out of me when he said Irish isn't really taught anymore.
@@pettyp0cket469literally i was like ?? did i dream ab doing mandatory irish throughout primary and secondary ??
@pettyp0cket469 He was also Talking About nothing but stereotypes, Such as her being ginger and Us all being Farmers
I'm venezuelan, but I swear I hate when americans think that just bc their "ancestry" is from a certain place then they have "blood from there" and by consequence they're somehow from there, here if you grew up with us and don't know a sht abt your parents native culture, then don't play with us, you're from here
I wish people would understand that Irish-American culture isn't the same as Irish culture. If they truly want to connect with where their ancestors came from, they should take the time to listen, learn, and explore the real culture, rather than repeating stereotypes and outdated ideas about what it means to be Irish.
Junkrat's dance emote is a call back to the "Melbourne Shuffle", a dance style that came to prominence nearly two decades ago in Australia. The voicelines of both Junkrat and JQ are good, but they're definitely putting on the mayo a bit to ocka them up. And any Aussie skins are either sports, beach or Mad Max related. Overall, both characters are just caricatures of what the world thinks of Aussies, but it's not far off.
The actress who plays Ana is literally PERFECT! like i've never seen a better arab representation in other games. We need more arabic voice lines for Ana blizzard! as for pharah idk i kinda hate her whole personality she feels more canadian to me
Pharah is half Canadian, with a Native American dad which also explains her having the Thunderbird skin
Her 3rabi is good but she does not speak Egyptian 3rabi. Its very proper Duolingo type 3rabi
@@Wallahinc No she speaks with the modern egyptian accent, you can hear it in lines such as "مش ممكن" and my favorite "وريهم قوتك"
yeah, i think part of my issue with pharah is she doesn't feel as authentic as ana. obviously not helped by ana being voiced by an actual egyptian woman, and pharah being voiced by an american doing a kinda confusing accent (one of the things overwatch got much better at post-launch was casting more accurate voices for their characters). it feels like blizzard tend to forget pharah is half-first nations canadian too.
@@silly6517 i heard pharah's vc is of an israeli descent, if that's true it just adds more insult to injury. Also you can tell there was a clear shift with pharah as a character when OW2 dropped, i guess they wanted to give her more personality but she still feels lifeless to me :(
What I like about Mercy, is that she's a healer of a big organisation, aligned with the Red Cross originating from Switzerland.
Lucio is Brazilian as much as any other character in the game, and thats not saying he doesnt look or behave like a Brazilian person, its just saying that ANY Overwatch character has what it needs to be Brazilian, you can go outside in Brazil and encounter the entire cast of Overwatch.
What about Hammond
Exactly, Brazil is super diverse, gringos think we're all black because of games, I'm not saying it is a bad thing, but it's weird
@@nib1448 There's plenty of rats here
@@batmabel
*Hamster squeaks*
"The mammal is offended."
@@nib1448 Put a capybara on a supersized hamster ball and you're done
That guy is not irish.. he’s (literally) a stereotype of an american who claims his dog is irish. We do not refer to the irish language as ‘Gaelic’ but ‘Gaeigle’. All the ginger jokes said with a clear american accent just made me shiver. You couldn’t have picked a worse representation of an irish person.
Thank you. That was my first thought, who the hell is this dude claiming he's Irish.
Agreed! Cringed so hard. Out of curiosity, what do you think of Moira as Irish representation?
I'm an American with Irish heritage. My ancestors came over during the great potato famine and I know nothing about my Irish heritage. I wish I did because my last name is Murphy ffs
I love that the Mexicans loved Venture and the Canadians hated them lol
I didn't hate them I love them so much as a Canadian
Yeah I definitely don't like Venture as Canadian representation. I can't speak for Mexicans but it feels like Blizzard just picked two random nationalities and didn't put any effort to making him feel like he's from those places. Sojourn is top tier tho imo.
@@tiannacowan6999 Venture feels randomly generated which is quite human but not that great for a game.
@@tiannacowan6999 what's your opinion on pharah, compared to venture? do you think she's better canadian representation than they are?
mexicans hated venture shut up, and the whole playerbase, there is no indication is half mexican at all
"she's flying character, she shoots explosives..." LMFAOO
as a Nepali, it kinda stinks that our representation is limited to the maps and 2 robot monks... Not everyone in Nepal is a monk and neither Zen nor Ram speak any Nepali which sucks, and the OG Nepal map is kinda just Mt. Everest. However, Shambali is honestly crazy accurate to the parts of Nepal I've been to and I think it's a step in the right direction!
i do think it’s kinda lame neither of them speak any nepali, it’s always great to get more languages in the game… would be cool if they had a new human chara from nepal to fix both issues at once but idk how that’d fit lore wise
they aren't really supposed to represent Nepalese people though. sure, they were monks in Nepal, but they aren't supposed to be Nepalese. they're robots who came to life. Zen and Rammatra also symbolically represent MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. so their lack of representation isn't really a lack, I think.
@@Mrs.Magix58 yea this makes sense too but i can see how it sucks from a representation standpoint in their view that they’re technically “represented” bc their country is in the game but neither chara is intended to be representation of them even tho it can make sense bc they’re omnica
I’m pretty sure Rammatra is supposed to be Indian. His VA has a lot of different nationalities from his families’s, but Indian is part of it. And “Ram” is a common name in India.
@@jiaverse I can understand that
Regarding reaper and Sombra. I kinda see reaper as a chicano as he doesn't speak Spanish. I knew he was mexican due to his last name name being reyes which is a Hispanic last name. I think reaper as a character doesnt represent Mexican culture that well. He does however represent it through his mariachi costume. Sombra speaking spanish what's every once in awhile is okay. I think sombra as a character would rather talk to others in spanish but she mostly talks to herself in Spanish, her day dia skin i think is a good representation. Im not gonna lie i had no idea venture was mexican
I like the mention of Maori culture in roadhogs section, as well as talking about stuff specifically like moko.
Ikr? I love that Salty did his research and found the right people while also actually checking the characters lore.
Vietnamese Canadian here. Wanted to give my thoughts on Juno.
WOOWW I was so excited when I realized she was Vietnamese. Vietnamese characters are rare and I had been hoping for a Vietnamese addition to the game. Her pronunciation is very good. Her design doesn't really have any Vietnamese elements besides I guess her name, Teo Minh, written on her chest. I'm hoping they add more voicelines in Vietnamese and an Áo Dài skin. "Chúc mừng năm mới!" and "Thằng này..." could be good voicelines. All her purchasable voicelines so far are in English.
I picked her on the Toronto map and she said, "Father said there is authentic Vietnamese food in big cities! What should I try first?" and ohh my gOOOODDDDDDDD. Never felt more seen in my life. A Vietnamese girl talking about Vietnamese restaurants in Toronto? Wtf? She's me fr 😭
I think her mom, Jiayi Teo, is Chinese and her dad, Khiem Van Minh, is Vietnamese. Which makes sense because there are a lot of half Chinese half Vietnamese people, including people I know. When I first saw her name on her jacket I was freaking out because I was so scared that she would be another Chinese character. No offense, but like we have Mei, Sage, Iso and more. Let me have this one character be Vietnamese 😭😭😭AND SHE IS! 🎉
Anyways, I’d give her like 4 phởs out of 10 for Vietnamese-ness currently. I want to do a cosplay of her bc I'm built like her and we both Vietnamese but her blue tinted transparent helmet that goes around her whole head is seeming impossible. I also didn’t know Venture was Canadian until now. I agree with what was said about Sojourn and Venture in the video.
And lastly, for the secret third (half) Canadian Overwatch character
Isn’t Pharah’s voice actor a white American doing a fake accent..?
OMG life changing!!! I thought she was just Chinese because of "Auntie Mei" but now I'm stoked that we got some Viet representation! She's not perfect (could be a little more tan, but Viet ppl have a wide range of skin tones so I don't mind). I also think the story of literally being from Mars gives a very sci-fi, palatable take on diaspora and Viet Kieu. A lot of us came from refugees, we were displaced, we are in unfamiliar territory but we still open our hearts to others. I really hope they add some more Viet culture into her skins in the future, some historical fashion would be super sick to see
"Me American, Me Have Big Gun" - Totally real Soldier 76 quote.
Mercy's analysis was spot-on. She is more German than Swiss, and especially a person like her would have some fluency in Swiss German and French. The Swiss dialect (note: there is no such thing as _the_ Swiss dialect, there are hundreds of them which could place you within a radius of maybe 10-20 km) sounds very German. In the German dub, it's a bit better, but it's still being performed by a German VA, so there is some fakeness in there.
Small fun fact about widowmaker
In french her name is literally "Fatale"
So yes, she is meant to be a "femme fatale"
As a full-blooded ‘Murican, I do think it’s funny that all of our characters are either cowboys/cowgirls or military, but I would like to see what Blizzard could do outside of those stereotypes
The only other options are southern hillbilly, California surfer, or big-city rude person (New Yorker, Boston, Chicago). That’s all we get.
@@justinmorrell3446Awwwwww, what about our Midwestern Princess Dad or our average Ohio resident??? Or Florida man, he’d give Junkrat a run for his money :(
fat, with a burger on one hand.
my favourite character from tekken 7.
@@tl1326 So ‘Murican Roadhog
Now that I think about it, we don’t have a ‘Murican tank yet…
yall forgot all the natives in the replies
(not asking for a stereotype of that though lol)
You got a Nigerian guy to talk about doom and not ORISA! Who basically the Superman of Nigeria in canon?
I'm German and I think Reinhard is a very stereotypical character. He could only be more stereotypical if he were from Munich (Bavaria) and not from Stuttgart (Suabia). This being said I love that they made him a bit goofy. It's a great counterpoint to the stereotypes and humanizes him. Something about Rein, that I think many people don't pick up on is that he's quite contemporary with the issues he has: Reinhard isn't just a "knight", he's a knight because he's kind of stuck in his ways - struggling to accept that the tech he's used to is a bit outdated and insisting that it's still the way to go (Ring a bell, Germany?) Germans are having a hard time letting go of the tech they excelled with in the past (like everything car-related for example) and hence sleep on innovations. Reinhard in a nutshell.
Every time I think of Germany, I'm firstly reminded of my time in high school learning German (loved my German teacher, he was very well-spoken and a great teacher), but outside that I'm then reminded of Germany's weirdly backwards Green Party.
How on earth does a Green Party ditch nuclear over coal?..
I think the contemporariness comes from the fact that old people don't understand newer technology. I don't really think it has anything to do with him being German but rather the fact that older people are notorious for having trouble with tech.
@@witchazeI I don't necessarily believe Blizzard created this piece of his personality with contemporary German economics and attitude towards innovations in mind. Or maybe they did. It would be quite the jab. It just fits.
@@BaeYeou "How on earth does a Green Party ditch nuclear over coal?.."
Here's the fun part. They didn't. The Greens had to play the hand they were dealt.
The shutdown of the nuclear plants was put into action in 2011 by a conservative (CDU) government.
The operators of those plants planned their whole maintenance around that schedule and the greens kept the NPP longer online than planned. Because of a little thing sometimes called "Invasion of Ukraine" Even though the NPPs produced less than 6% of our energy consumption. So there wasn't even an option or real reason to keep using the NPPs, as they are in need of big expensive overhauls, even before the Greens came into a governing coalition.
Also it was planned to expand the renewables by more than we have now (thanks CDU for gutting our solar industry and the NIMBYs who block everything they can)
And one of the biggest problems: Suedlink wasn't built. It's a planned and partial built power line to bring wind power electricity from the coastal north to the industrial south. And those NIMBYs in the south are blocking it....
btw: we still don't have a reliable place to store nuclear waste.
I love that he's so happy and friendly. You always hear jokes about Germans always sounding serious or angry, but every German I've ever met just lights up whatever room they're in.
Orisa's name comes from the name of the Yoruba deities called Orisha.
I'm actually surprised that they didn't talked abt her, I mean, Numbani is somehow in Nigeria, right?
@@dibujugador6024
Yeah
Kinda wild that one of the only African characters in the game is from a made up country. They could've just made her Nigerian instead of being lazy.
@@BennyBoy025
What do you mean? Isn't Numbani just a city?
@@helixsol7171It's a place Blizzard just made up I believe. I think it's meant to be located in Nigeria, but Blizzard clearly just wanted to go the Wakanda route and make up a fake futuristic African city. Strange that it's the only time they've ever done that. Every other character is from a real place.
As Russian I am also going to gym and there's a really muscular woman. Comparing her to Zarya, they are both very friendly, smiley and up for helping. Voices... Zarya's voice is kind of stereotypically low. But overall I think Zarya could be real in our reality if there was a girl who wanted to inspire everyone to fight hostile omnics (not usual omnics). Even bigger than sportsman, maybe a member of the government.
So how do you like Junos representation of your culture
Martian:👾👽👾👽👽💫💫🤖💫👾💫🌟✨✨
Translation: wonderfully thicc
*ejaculates interstellarly*
hearing the american answer the irish questions made me so overly annoyed 😭
I would like to note that in the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Lúcio is FANTASTIC. He speaks very naturally, the voice fits his character and he is easily the most charismatic one. The adaptation there was top notch. But other than that, yeah… It’s nice to have representation but there’s nothing about him that isn’t stereotypical and is made to cater to the Brazilian fanbase. He has no traditional Brazilian outfits(capoeira kind of gets there but is kind of meh) but has a bunch of traditional outfits from other nationalities.I like the fact he is a musician and not just a soccer player or whatever, but they still slap all the soccer stuff on him regardless(which I wouldn’t mind if he had the other stuff). All in all he is very beloved in Brazil and a great character, but they did my boy dirty for sure
At 20:43 when he said “you play the American” I instantly thought of Jojos pt3. When Joseph said, “ILL NEVER FORGIVE THE JAPENESE”
Other countries: Playing traditional music in the background.
Egypt: Mario desert *bahh bahh*
ahahaha
every other country on the planet: "Oh cool he tries to speak our language. It shows that he gives effort and apreciate our country and the people."
french: "Please never speak french again."
Actually really funny that Orisa speaks Yoruba but Doomfist doesn't
The irish person who spoke up knows very little about ireland and irish culture. Clearly an american who has or claims to have "irish ancestry" and is enforcing incorrect stereotypes in this video. I mean bringing up lucky charms was so stupid. Also the irish language is taught in every school in the country and its actually more than just incorrect, its a little offesnsive to suggest otherwise.
In terms of moira, i think shes good representation of ireland. Perfect accent, not over the top, and her Gaeilge pronunciation is flawless. Some of her english voicelines such as "class" "grand" and "you're a chancer" are also very commonly used phrases here that i was pleasantly surprised to hear. I also appreciate not having a large drunk guy as the irish rep and avoiding that stereotype completely. Insteas she's really well spoken and educated and thats great to see. Her banshee skin isnt fantastic rep from its design but its passable. But its a shame there arent more irish skins like celtic wear or even a GAA skin would be funny.
I also think it's a missed opportunity that she was not holding a cup or glass of Guinness in her toast victory pose.
As a New Zealander and being Māori (the indigenous people of NZ which Roadhog has whakapapa or ancestry to), I would challenge the ideas of representation in Overwatch. I do want to say, having representation at all for Māori in videogames, let alone Māori who live in Australia is awesome. We are so starved of this representation that anything is honestly just enjoyable to see, sadly even just in random tattoo options in character customisation in some games. My main thing is just that it feels like Roadhog is not meant to represent us. He is inherently designed to be a part of that Madmax vibe, he is supposed to represent that rather than give cultural representation to the Kiwis or Māori. His connection to New Zealand is mainly through a few voicelines such as his "wopwops" line (middle of nowhere), his accent is so distorted from his mask and whatever that man is chugging in his breather that it doesnt sound Kiwi, Pasifika or Māori. In terms of Roadhog being Māori, he is. Being mixed race, or in Aussie does not affect his heritage. But Overwatch's representation of Māori and Pasifika is ultimately lacking. While I understand the reasons for recolours, the Islander skin is just a recolour of Toa, it is ultimately missing and failing to represent wider Pasifika and Polynesian cultural clothing, art, concepts. Toa itself doesnt feel very Māori. It feels like a half baked stereotype. I do like this skin, its a cool skin, but in the topic of representation;
Here is my full breakdown:
His Clothing
His belt is pulling inspiration from Piupiu, but they kinda just arent. Instead of being reeds they are just full on ropes and missing the dyes and patterns present. The shapes and geometric patterns on the band itself isnt Māori, it looks polynesian? (I know Māori more than I know Pasifika, at the very least it isnt giving Māori for me). His neck thingy, not really close to what we have in Aotearoa and Te Wai Pounamu (Māori names for main islands in NZ), feels like its pulling more inspiration from other Pasifika cultures, so its cool, just not Māori. It could have the makings of a Pākē (raincoat) or vaguely a Kākahu (cloak) which I personally would have loved to see.
His feet:
The most accurate part of this NZ interview, hell yeah, not even just a Pasifika & Māori thing, very Kiwi thing too.
His Hook
Clearly pulling inspiration from Maui (think the Moana movie). Except within Pasifika culture, Maui's hook is straightup the jawbone of his Grandmother/Grandfather (depends on place). It feels like a mishmash of concepts from traditional tools and mythology, that just misses a chance for a badass Pasifika representation moment.
His Hair
uhhh, not sure about the pony tail, most Pasifika and Māori men with long hair manbun it. The feathers are accurate though, but not in their placement. They would be further back, and the feathers themselves arent from any bird we would actually use for this, missed opportunity for a Huia feather (even though they are extinct, still symbolically wouldve been sick)
His Mask
This is the most Māori thing in this whole fit. Just to set an understanding, we dont really have masks, just not really a thing, but I love the idea of pursuing Māori art through Roadhogs mask (so really cool concept to use the mask). This mask feels awesome because it draws on roadhogs preexisting design and matches it creatively with Māori art. To explain it, the mask is performing a Pūkana (a face distortion) seen often in Kapa Haka, but thats not really the main thing at play here. This design is clearly pulling from Whakairo (carvings). I am not a carver, I do not hold the traditions of my ancestors in this domain and I welcome any artists or others more knowledgeable to please add your knowledge to this. Traditional Māori carving largely serves the goal of giving body to our ancestors. While different Iwi (tribes) have different styles, this facial shape, with a bold prominent downturned open mouth and tongue is very common. Seeing it in Overwatch feels awesome, while I mainly disagree with the interviewee's comment about representing Māori spirituality, the reality is Māori culture is spiritual, anything Māori is going to be spiritual, and in this case, seeing it draw inspiration and art from our traditions and ancestors is actually my favourite thing about this skin. The negatives: the colours arent it. It has brown and green on it, not really colours seen in traditionally Māori art, we do white red black. The actual patterns arent trying to pull inspiration from Māori art, which means its missing the only thing which made this mask cool.
His Tattoos
I use the word tattoo here, because tā moko is not a direct translation. Moko is inherently spiritual, it depicts our ancestry, where you come from in a highly symbolic and metaphysical way (there is so much more to say on this topic but im not qualified or have the time). The tattoos here just arent moko. Not even on the spiritual level (reasons tied to the next reason), they arent even based off Māori moko. The tattoos themselves have no connections to Māori art or traditions. This is why I challenge the claims to spiritual representation in the video, because Overwatch just doesnt do this, our moko are one of the key things known about Māori. They clearly didnt get in contact with Māori artists for this skin, not only does that mean that the representation can never be authentic, and deprives Māori artists of the chance of work depicting their own culture (I understand doing this with an art team is hard, but still), but it means it cannot be moko. There is no conversation around Roadhogs whakapapa (genealogy, his ancestry), and how to bring that to form (reveal what is already there) through tattooing.
His Skin tone
Roadhog is white. Māori is an ethnicity, not a race. We do not even have a concept of proportion, or "how Māori are you?". One of the key pillars of our culture is whakapapa (ancestry), and if you have whakapapa to something, in this case Māori, then you are. Roadhog is Māori, regardless of his skin colour, regardless of where he lives. He does not need a skintone change to be representative of Māori. This change not only feels vaguely weird racially, but doesnt feel Māori. It serves no purpose in representing us, but it also is using an innately foreign concept. This is the opposite of representation, this is just a bad choice.
Islander:
I am Māori, not Samoan, not Tongan, not Fijian, not Tahitian (and many many more Pasifika peoples). I am not able to speak to the Islander skin with great understanding. What I can say, is that I am disappointed that this skin is a recolour. These other Pasifika cultures are not subsets of Māori culture, they are our cousins, each as detailed and incredible as our own. I feel like the skin could have also looked to improve accuracy in clothing, tattoos, the mask isnt even that applicable outside of Māori. It couldve been a whole lot better.
In conclusion, its cool to see Māori in videogames. I love that Roadhog even has a skin attempting to represent us. But it does not feel like authentic representation. It missed the opportunity to bring in indigenous artists and create genuine understandings and representation of Māori thought, art and traditions in-game. Its a cool skin, its just lacking in this department. I have spoken to what I can, im not an expert in many fields (moko, carving), I am just a young Māori girl looking to see where I am represented in the game I love. I dream that in the future we see indigenous representation is video games more often, through indigenous artists, game designers and developers (plus more).
nice to see other Māori in the comments taking issue with roadhog, agree with so many of your points, well said. I will say on colour though that before the colonizers came Māori actually did use a lot of other colours in their artwork. That red/white/black/brown palette we see so often today was actually painted over a lot of older work to fit a narrative. I forget exactly why, but something like marketing or making Māori seem less advanced than they were I'd imagine. it's not something I hear mentioned a lot but something I learned from slime Māori artists/tutors.
I'm also sus on wearing a mask at all, I was always taught that wearing a mask was frowned upon. either because the head is tapu or something about like hiding your identity, but that could honestly be one of those ideas brought in with Christianity, I'm not sure.
As a fellow kiwi, I didn't even realise Roadhog was supposed to be from New Zealand until I read that on the wiki. Those two skins seemed really off to me, like a strange approximation of Māori aesthetics. The most accurate thing to me was his toast victory pose as his mug has kōwhaiwhai patterns on it.
fellow māori here and i agree with everything you've said, you worded it all perfectly.
I'm not from NZ nor Māori - not by a long shot. I'm from Ecuador, so what little I do know about your culture comes from representation like this in Overwatch, a few other games and media, whenever NZ participates in worldwide sporting events and the fact that I had a teacher back in Primary School who was from New Zealand who taught us a bit about Māori. So all in all I've been quite interested to learn, and frankly your post is a treasure trove of very interesting information which if anything has motivated me to look into learning about it even more. I really appreciate all the time and information that went into this, thank you!
I hope you don't mind me asking related to the subject of Māori video-game representation, if you are aware of Mad Maggie in Apex Legends? Maggie is one of my favourite characters, if not probably my favourite character, across the games I've played. She caught my attention the moment that I saw her introductory animated trailer where she performs haka (for me it was an immediate fond throwback to my Kiwi school teacher! 😅). She has a few skin which, insofar as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), show patterns and colours appropriate to Māori clothing and art. I was particularly intrigued by your description of Māori moko and it's importance, so I wondered how Mad Maggie fared in the spiritual aspect of her representation since a few of her skins have tā moko. Aside from that she has several voice-lines that are either directly Māori or Kiwi slang, so I was wondering if on the stereotype/accent front if that is a good representation (I assume it is since Nicola Kāwana is her VA, and from all I've seen about her she seems to be very passionate about sharing about Māori culture as a whole).
Still I always wondered specially from a Māori point of view like your own, if she lacks in the representation aspect in any way and how would she compare on the basis of Māori representation to Roadhog? It has to be said that dissimilar to OW where the characters in the game come from an specific real-life countries on Earth, Maggie is from Salvo - a fictional planet in the Outlands which seems to be culturally inspired Mad Max-esque space AU/NZ. As the Australian folks in this video mentioned in reference to Junkerqueen, it's odd that both Overwatch and Apex chose to go down the route of mixing Pasifika cultures with Mad Max, so I was wondering what is your take on this? Does it bother you that this trope has been repeating itself or does it make no difference to the authentic cultural representation of characters like Roadhog or Mad Maggie?
I appreciate any insight you may have on these questions I have, and I'm sorry in advance if anything I've written isn't clear (and for the many questions lol). As you said, I sincerely hope that indigenous representation in games improves in the future by bringing in indigenous people into the table when working on representation (I'm hoping that someday my country's own multi-ethnicities are represented outside of Ecuador in some way or another).
It’s so stereotypical, I love it
It’s so stereotypical, I hate it
It’s not stereotypical enough
Sounds like a pretty good balance overall
the thing about the aussie rep in overwatch is that its basically only white aussie rep. as far as i know, they dont even reference aboriginal australian culture, in skins or the maps. and its not helped by their choice of lore being "nuclear wasteland." its a bit fucked lol
Finally someone mentions it. I never see indigenous rep talked about in reference to how Overwatch represents cultures and I thought this video was *finally* the chance for someone to talk about how there is 0 mention of indigenous cultures in Overwatch
Yep i was just gonna comment this, also my main gripe with the mad max movies is the complete disregard for Indigenous people
@@Lacirev I heard elsewhere that Pharah is supposedly indigenous, although other comments said it was tacked on at the last minute after Blizzard received backlash for giving a non-indigenous character a thunderbird skin.
Replace Roadhog's Hogdrogen with Petrol and you have your representation tbh.
Having a character who's only power is ringing up cenno and screaming every 10mins wouldn't be a good hero.
I genuinely thought Junker Queen was supposed to be Aboriginal at first but she isn't, missed opportunity.
47:56 I would pay money if they gave her a Rhea Ripley skin and an ultimate voice line that is "This Is My Brutality!"
As a Canadian, I agree. Pharah is still the most Canadian character. The others feel like they just got "Canadian" slapped onto them after they were finished. Nothing about them feels like they are actually from Canada.
Funny enough Pharah literally had "Canadian" slapped onto her after she was finished. Blizzard scrambled to make her biracial when they were being criticized for giving a non-Native character very Native skins. Even today her Indigeneity feels like an afterthought which is a disappointment imo. :/
I disagree. Venture and Pharah give me no Canadian vibes, while Sojourn feels a least a little authentic. Despite having no Canadian skins, her voice lines and the accent are accurate imo.
lucio is canadian af
@@tiannacowan6999they also gave sojourn a Ketchup chips spray LOL
In the french version of the game , Venture speaks québécois french , I think they did better representing Canada in the french version.
As a Swiss I'd say they really dropped the ball when it comes to making Mercy "Swiss", she's a nice character, but there's really nothing Swiss about her. In appearance she looks more Swedish than Swiss, the voice is just German from Germany and nothing about her has anything culturally relevant to Switzerland apart from the flag. If we're talking about stereotypes or representation of the culture she gets a 2/10. As a character she's great, as a Swiss character though ? Nope
As a Swede, it’s pretty obvious to me that the reason Torbjörn doesn’t have any Swedish voice lines is because his voice actor is clearly *not* Swedish, to the point where it’s kind of jarring hearing him speak with Brigitte when you compare their accents.
Also as a side note, while Torbjörn certainly is a Swedish name, it does sound a bit like someone was trying really hard to come up with a name that would sound as overtly Swedish as possible. Meanwhile, Brigitte simply isn’t really a Swedish name, so considering the lore of why she’s named that, I guess they did a good job on that front.
if i hear that american VA speak one more word with a made up swedish i will cause harm
well to be fair on Brigitte not being a Swedish name, Rein was the one to name her. In german the name translates to "strength" and is a popular name in Germany for girls
@DamsterX Yeah, that’s what I meant with “the lore of why she’s named that”. Reinhardt named her, so it makes sense that her name isn’t Swedish.
@@DamsterX well Birgitta is the Swedish and Icelandic form of the Irish Gaelic female name Brighid. its a version of her name. Just lielk Stacey and stacy. both used just as much
Honestly any effort is better than no effort, he just can't study a few sweedish lines you sweedish has.
In the french version of the game , Venture speaks québécois ffrench , I think it represents someone from Canada a bit better .If someone that speaks french plays the game in french , they will immediatly know that the character is from Canada .
as a martian, the juno rep makes me feel included and happy!
Juno is also a Vietnamese. I'm so disappointed that he didn't included her in the video. I was looking forward to see Vietnamese finally getting recognition in video game community :(
@@Leon_TruongWell to be fair, she just came out and hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet. She only has a small handful of viet voice lines, and she doesn’t really have any skins we can judge the cultural accuracy of yet.
@@Leon_Truong ok admittedly I know nothing about vietnam or about Juno, but how is someone from mars vietnamese?
@@doublereel-real It's in her lore. Her dad is Vietnamese. Her dad's Vietnamese last name is printed on her outfit. She even has Vietnamese voicelines in-game. Isn't that obvious enough? lol
According to the Overwatch official cook book (page 69), Jollof rice "was part of Doomfist's routine before martial arts competitions in his youth, and his family's chefs knew to always have a plate ready for him."
Canadian and Mexican rep was so chaotic on live stream. I loved it! I wish i was there during Illari, Echo and Doom talk, becuause i found those two very interesting.
Honestly, Pharah’s First Nations ties are so terribly executed that it almost feels like a stereotype 😭 they fumbled that side of her heritage SO badly
What, you mean the skin they lifted from a totem pole in Stanley Park wasn't enough? /s
@@bitmasked the fact that they gave her that when she wasn’t considered a native character FLOORED ME 😭 it is accurate design-wise, & probably inspired by Tlingit thunderbird regalia/representations, but WHY WAS IT ON AN EGYPTIAN CHARACTER!! And to give her an absent native father to get out of criticism for it.. like cool thanks 💀 that’s the exact rep we needed
@@alexisblue3809I heard someone say that that character trait was tacked on last minute because Blizzard got into hot water of giving a non-native character a thunderbird skin.
@@mariustan9275 I heard the same, & I’m honestly not shocked! Especially considering the fact that half of the white characters have some sort of cultural skin for an ethnicity they don’t belong to (**MERCY**)- Pharah was def on that train & the random First Nations father lore was 100% just damage control
@@alexisblue3809 Yeah Blizzard can either make pretty good representation of cultures and countries (Sigma, D.va, Moira) but then you have stereotypes and fumbles like this. Like, to a certain extent it's fine for characters to get skins for a culture they are not a part of since globalization tends to do that (see Japan selling tourists stuff like kimonos) but I think that should only be done to cultures that are actively interested in spreading that stuff around or were considered historically powerful then or now. I'm no expert on cultural appropriation but some shouldn't be just for the sake of politness unless they are from that group themselves.
Seriously why can't we get a First Nations character? I'd personally like to see some Reaper-type character who was a First Nation of some kind, got experimented on (because that sort of thing kinda happened IRL) and then the experiment mutates them into something horrible. Thats just me though.
Also you said that's the exact red WE needed and I don't mean to be offensive but does this mean you're a native/first nations yourself? I'm just interested in the culture and want to know more about it.
As part of the Hispanic culture, every time I hear Sombra speak in general (counting both English and Spanish voicelines), I get offended not because it sounds off or anything but I question myself "IS THAT HOW WE SOUND LIKE?!?!?!? God I hope I don't sound like that...". She probably put an "American voice with a spanish accent" as we know she can speak clear english.
Nothing against the VA. You could tell she has too much fun with her character she has clips on YT of her doing voicelines with other VAs and more power to her as she voices one of the most hated characters in the game (probably second to Brigitte).
I don't think Brig is hated anymore. Generally people agree that she's in a good spot now gameplay-wise.
I don't think people really think about her character other than those of us who main her.
As for Sombra's accent, obviously she sounds a lot cooler than anyone IRL does, so that alone makes it less realistic if you want to get into the nitty gritty, but to my untrained ear she does sound like the Spanish speakers I know haha
I read this comment in Sombras voice
i heard sombra's va is actually colombian, so that might have somethting to do with it
As a Mexican I think she does a good job. I like that she actually speaks Spanish well and uses a lot of expressions and slang. She sounds like Latinos I’ve heard in real life but she doesn’t really sound Mexican to me. There lots of different Mexican accents tho so maybe she just sounds more like one I haven’t heard.
I love Mei but besides her skin/voice she doesn't have anything to do with Chinese culture ): From what I know from Overwatch 1. It doesn't influences her personalities, story, or power in any significant way. If you change her nationality it doesn't really effect her character. All the other heroes nationalities influences them. Her skin/voice are great representation but really wish they did the same with her lore ):
Im surprised you didn't ask about orisa immediately after doomfist, especially after he brought up the orishas lol
Not only Lucio barely has portuguese voicelines, but the few he has sounds like he's not Brazilian at all. It's like he can speak english way better than the language he actually grew up to
But I do love his voice and his VA seems to be a pretty wholesome guy too
The best characters in my opinion are the ones that dont rely on stereotypes. have some for people of the country to notice, and show off a little of the culture like moira, doomfist, and hog.
As a peruvian, i think Illari looks really good resemblance wise. The fact she can Qechua is amazing. I find myself listening to her voicelines from time to time because it resonates. She rocks the colors too 🇵🇪❤
When i was in japan i vividly remember genjis doing dash resets on the backline. Very accurate
42:48 there's a million Mercy skins and I'm surprised this hasn't been done yet. It'd be an amazing Mercy skin, what are they waiting for??
Especially a Vatican Swiss guard skin
That guy bringing up Orisha's when talking about Doomfist is interesting because Doomfist and Orisa are kinda rivals in the lore, I wonder if that was intentional.
14:49 they're right about Tracer. I don't know any British person who thinks she's a good rep for British people. Sorry to the VA and I'm sure it wasn't her choice but the accent is so fake I legit thought it was an American VA pretending to be British until I found out she's actually British. I'd love to see some grunge and more cockney accent on Tracer. Maybe a cool Mythic idea
Pretty unfortunate they put all this effort into making the characters reflect their home countries and cultures in unique and interesting ways and then just gave half of them Disney Sameface Syndrome
The guy in the video said that Zarya isn’t stereotypical at all, mentioning the modern stereotype about Adidas tracksuits. But in reality, she’s very stereotypical in the sense that, outside of Russia, whenever people think about the country, they immediately associate it with the USSR. So Zarya is more of a character from the USSR than from Russia.
And if we’re talking about the USSR, her personality, lines, and overall vibe really capture the atmosphere of the Soviet Union, except for her pink hair. But when it comes to Russia, she doesn’t really have a strong connection. Also, when she says her ultimate line, "Ogon' po gotovnosty", it sounds like it’s spoken with a very strong American accent.
Actually, I would love to see something related to Russian folklore, like they do with the Japanese characters. Something like traditional outfits, pagan gods and totems, Baba Yaga, Leshy, and all that. Such a character would be much more vivid and interesting.
Symmetra does actually have some Hindi voice lines in game including when an enemy symmetra uses their ult. The pronunciation is quite accurate
I think her English accent is too thick, like Rajesh from Big Bang Theory, I don’t think people in India speak like that, but the Hindi part is good, as for symmeta’s skins, she shows a lot of skin in a lot of her outfits, and showing that much skin is considered shameless in India but times are changing a little
as a brazilian, even thought i think lucio is a good rep despite living in the most known brazilian state, liking soccer and being a musician, the thing that most bums me off about him is that his VA is just a random american. i get that some other characters also dont have VAs from their nationality but they at least tried. for lucio they didnt even try to get the accent a bit accurate
and as the other brazilians said in the video, he barely has any portuguese voicelines
I do hate that Rein's VA is American, the accent is not obnoxiously fake or whatever, but it means there aren't any native voice lines, something blizzard seemed to have paid more attention to since launch (especially including less known languages with Bap/Magua/Illari). Torb has the same issue.
It's been done to death on Reddit but, Lifeweaver is the effeminate, non-threatening Thai person that you see on TV. He's an awful stereotype of the model minority and his voice actor speaks Thai with the inflection you would have of someone raised abroad in a high society setting. It's prim, it's proper, and it's shallow.
I am not a famous movie star or a rich child of british parents, I have never met anyone who sounds like him or acts like him. I have lived abroad and in-country. The Colonizer skin was a blatant slap in the face of Thailand's proud warrior culture and, despite never being invaded in modern history, has been made to heel for the entertainment of others.
Brazillian here and one of the things they could add for lucio for a better representation would be skins based on different regions from brazil, such as a "gaucho" or a "cangaceiro" from south and northeast regions respectively
Eles pensam que só existe o Rio no Brasil, eu amo o Lúcio mas realmente é bem esteriotipado
@@marcelodomingues5883 E mesmo falando do rio ainda ta errado. N existe só favela. E tbm no brasil n existe só negro.
This is going to be a long yap, so just skip over if you don't want to read a lot. However I would like to talk about Kiriko.
As a Japanese person, I was and still am very much let down by Kiriko’s design in a lot of ways. She has many concepts and ideas to her character design which I really enjoy that I can tell blizzard paid attention too in terms of cultural accuracy. However at the same time it feels like there are other major setbacks to her design that genuinely just annoy me to death. Companies seem to have a hard time with Japanese representation imo, finding it difficult to get away from the idea of making a Japanese rep character that isn’t a “samurai honor bound/Ronin” esque character.
But I like originally how stereotypical yet well researched Hanzo and Genji were as character rep. Genji and Hanzo felt like a stereotype done with good faith and genuine research into Japanese culture as a way to breath life and fun into such overdone tropes. However with Kiriko we already have our established classic “Samurai and Ninja” style trope characters so when I found out that Kiriko was also a ninja I was a little disappointed.
But I do love that Kiriko is a shrine maiden, I think Shintoism is an extremely relevant part of our peoples culture and is tied into so many core ideas and roots of tons of aspects of Japanese folks lives yet is so often not as vividly represented as I would want it to be for something so relevant in Japanese culture. I wish Kiriko was just a shrine maiden and not a Shinobi and did not know Genji or Hanzo growing up, I was so annoyed seeing that instead of just being a full shrine maiden they lumped her into Genji and Hanzo’s lore yet her age clearly does not add up with the continuity, it just feels so forced.
As a viz dev artist myself imo it felt like a lazy decision on the art teams side to write her as someone who “trained with the Shimadas” yet is almost half their age which to me felt like they did just so that they could allow her to be designed as someone with Shinobi stuff since it would just be easier to concept abilities for her and “that’s what Japan is guys! And it sells” instead of just going the extra step to research more and creating more Shinto based things for her. I can think of many other ways they could have visualized her kit without it needing to be partially ninja based, it just felt so half effort on their part when trying to depict Shintoism especially in couple with the aforementioned problem of her feeling forced into Genji and Hanzo's lore. She also feels like a design that was very much made with “sales” in mind more then cultural faith.
To me she feels like she is this cutesy shrine anime looking girl because that is what sells. To me I think it would have been so much more interesting if they made her character an omnic instead, they would be a robot who took over the mantle for a former human shinto priest that took care of this Omnic but has since died. Now this “Omnic Kiriko” has a character struggle of trying to honor, understand, and carry on the life/culture of a Shinto Maiden or Priest in honor of this human that cared for them. This human could have given them reason to care and fight for humans and imo there could be so many fun interactions between many characters, especially Genji and Hanzo. Genji could be accepting of the identiy crisis they are going through like he once did and gladly could see this omnic as a Shinto Priest/Maiden and will gladly receive their blessings. While Hanzo being someone who is stuck in his ways could be someone who doesn’t fully see this omnic as a true priest since they “are not human” and currently lack the full understanding of etc. (I cannot remember if Hanzo dislikes omnics).
But like I said there are still some cool concepts and aspects to her that are not just all total doom and gloom. Some of her skins shine light on some Japanese Street Fashion niches which I love because it is such small details to Japanese culture that you probably wouldn’t know as an outsider (Like her Sukajan outfit and Visual Kei Outfit).
I like how her Ult is designed visually since I see many uses of a “Torii” in media typically just thrown wherever something is “holy/sacred”. While yes Torii may appear at sites of sacredness, there is so much more thought that goes into their meaning past just being placed there. In many shrines they act as a gateway for the spirits and divine to cross over, when you enter past a Torii typically you bow first and walk on the sides and not in the center because that is a path paved for the divine and spirits to walk down. I love this detail since her ult is literally a divine/spiritual pathway of Torii that you walk down to buff you and your allies. They could have been lazy and just made a single Torii be summoned and it could be an AOE circle shaped ult but instead they made it a pathway with paved stones too as a visual bonus because of the want for cultural accuracy while also serving as a unique way to diversify it’s use further from other stereotypical “buff AOE” ults and it is such a small but key detail to me that I love that imo separates the “good” cultural rep from the “Accurate and masterful” cultural rep. But still I wish they fit more things like clapping twice or using a Gohei etc. I also think the fox iconography is a very overused one by companies trying to rep Japan.
All in all I guess im just so passionate about this since I myself am a viz dev artist and I love learning about different culture and it is sad seeing such a fall from grace, Overwatch 1 had such amazing rep that while at times as we saw in this video may not have been complete 10/10’s, they still gave pretty faithful depictions for many that is honestly some of the best at it’s time in media. It made me want to learn so much more about different cultures and research for myself to appreciate them further the game was able to present which is something not many other games can say they have done for such large audiences. OW1 made me such a stickler for art direction and had me realize we can hold ourselves to such higher standards for what cultural rep and art design could be. OW1 imo took many stereotypes but breathed life into many of them and flipped them on their heads. So, it has been saddening seeing such a fall from grace by blizzard. Many Overwatch 2 characters now are very hit or miss for me nad many other artists Ik that I have talked to, where as for OW1 I think imo that majority of designs were strong hits (yes ofc there are still exceptions). Ik I may not be a majority here so I could easily be wrong and just not Jive w/ OW2 designs, Im open to hearing discussions!
I'm brazilian and I LOVE LUCIO, but he is crearly just a stereotype from the Rio de Janeiro, the concept of his backstory is good but poorly done. He is a musician and doesn't have one single voice line or anything that remember brasilian music, also the fact that he is brasilian and a hockey fan at the same time is funny to me, BRO NOBODY PLAYS OR WATCH HOCKEY HERE 😭
I also love the english VA but the brazilian is just so much better for the character, the english one doesn't even speak portuguese and the voice lines is literally a non brasilian person trying to speak portuguese.
I like the seleçao skin and the capoeira, of course is a stereotype that 100% brasilians play soccer but cmon the sport is really HUGE here, I just wish for a better represantation in terms of our culture in general, Brazil is not just the Rio de Janeiro.
Don't take my word for it, but I read a comment or a reply stating that he was supposed to be a hockey-based hero instead of a DJ-based hero.
As a Peruvian I wanna say that Illari gives me mixed feelings. Her face is good, she is too tall. Her basis is the power of the sun, which is a very basic take, but it works. She Is from Cuzco but also not, it feels a bit all over the place. Like someone thought "Macchu PIcchu" and said good enough. It is the most basic Peru read but somehow also didn't manage to get what Andean people are about. Her design has won me over time, because she does give Peruvian vibes. The gold is very Inca and applies too the culture religion of those times. There are 4 good shapes in her clothes that alude to Inca as well. On the other hands the 4 rare skins she has, have no real coloration that evoques Andean people and that is VERY easy to do. I will say that if you wanted an INCA WARRIOR FROM THE FUTURE, that is your girl. But Peruvian? Not so much.
The invasion of Spain dredged a lot of Inca culture to the point it is not exactly something that is kept. Not for lack of trying, but it was literally destroyed out of us. People from Cuzco are from Cuzco, and the traditions remain but not a single Inca is left. There will forever be a little rift from what she would represent and what we are.
Add on: Ill say the spanish is okay, not because it is spanish, but because the accent she is trying to get to. Andean people have an specific accent and she is trying to reach it but it doesn't come naturally, specially for the Qechua parts.
All and all, mixed with it, but I will take it because there is nothing really offensive about it.
I would’ve loved to talk about the Italian representation in the cast of Overwatch heroes… IF THERE WERE ANY! COME ON BLIZZARD I WANNA SEE MY BRETHREN IN ACTION
Maximilien is from Monaco
@@NoitNoit-ef2yq my mistake. I was under the impression he was Italian. I shall update my comment accordingly
I was thinking about this the other day, overwatch has maps that correspond to characters backstories, and there are 3 Italian maps (Rialto, Collosseo, Malevento) but no Italian heroes. I think it actually has the second most maps out of any country.
There was this one-off Italian character Antonio who was basically just a watered down mafioso stereotype. He only made two appearances ever: one in the Retribution comic and in Retribution's opening cutscene before getting shot in the face by Reaper.
I wanna omnic gladiator character sooo bad, like ones that can be seen on Colosseo
If Blizzard add any Scottish characters I got you Salty 🏴
SCOTLAND FOREVAAAARRR.
If they finally make one I hope they take notes in personality of Clove from valorant, cus as someone from Edinburgh it was actually uncanny seeing someone be so bang on the money as Clove was.
hoping for McCloud
Well they made the Australian a demo expert…maybe a Scottish sniper with a big ass gun
they made an irish character so thats what yall scots have to live with cuz I know for a fact that a company that greedy dont give a fuck about no scots sadly :( when i get arab representation i get happy as a turk even though turks are not arabs and thats the closest thing we'll get
does overwatch sterotype nationalities?
mccree the cowboy: _exists_
But Texas and Montana are both full of cowboys, so he’s a good representation of ‘Murica
Yea fr 2/4 American characters are cowboys/cowgirls and one is “generic military soldier” lmao it’s amazing I love it.
21:06 bro got exposed 💀
I like how they cast a non-binary va for the role of Venture, but they couldn't find a Russian va for the role of Zarya...
Alot of the classic overwatch characters dont have va's that are from the same place as the characters they voice glad they changed that moving forward