Zenyatta in-lore is confirmed to use "something unknown" to float, since he's confirmed to not use any kind of thruster or field to float. Since it was confirmed he doesn't use any form of technology for it, it has never been explained or elaborated on at all. Everyone is looking for him specifically to learn what he has. He also isn't even a member OF the overwatch unit, just knows hanging around with them is where he's supposed to be due to "The iris" so nobody can kill him and dig through his mind to find the secrets.
@@beanjuiice5569 and sometimes it's also just magic, we confronted the shadow lords for their secrets and that's the only plausible explanation for clingfilm. I think the Skulduggery Pleasant series had a fun joke about fridge magnets actually being a magic item that made its way into the non-magic world so they had to do a whole load of shenanigans to make people believe it was because they were magnetic and not magic
Yeah the whole Iris thing is definitely magic to some degree. Like you’re telling me this robot can levitate without repulsors and has telekinesis? Yeah that’s magic.
but zenyatta doesnt hang around overwatch?? doesnt he hang around his temple for the most part??? like he wasnt a part of any of the pve missions, and when he IS shown, hes once again by himself in the monastery. when does he hang around overwatch in the lore? this is a genuine question, im not trying to attack.
It's always so funny to me when a setting with its own power system just also have magic, which is classified as an entirely different thing. Like Star Wars having magic and witches with powers totally separate from the Force is just so funny.
Genuinely one of my favourite weird things in fiction when they’re like “Oh, yeah, we have our own mysterious power in this fictional universe, but don’t get it twisted, it’s not magic. How do we know? Because there’s also people doing actual magic and it’s different.” It’s so stupid, I love it so much.
The level of technology in overwatch is so stupidly high that blizzard can just say "oh yeah kiriko is actualy covered in nanobots and they desintegrate her here and recreate her near only near teammates because she sparkled them with her nanobots too"
its makes more sense that she teleports through the spirt world using it as a wormhole than nanobots doing all of that, the whole plot is about the omni struggle of them basically being alive and having a soul spirits fits in better
@@Chameleonred5 Yeah if that was the actual lore reason I'd be fucking terrified and go on the Star Trek conundrum again. That stuff plagued my nightmares for so long
This reminded me of a scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron when the scientist was trying to explain Quick Sliver's and Scarlet Witch's powers. I found myself a bit put off because in the back of my mind I was like "the writers seem really embarrassed about anything supernatural or magical". A lot of media in the mid 2010's seemed to be that way. It was like the "nerd culture" of the time was obsessed with being "rational and logical" in order to be smart and taken seriously.
I mean, I enjoy that. Feels dumbed down and lazy to just say magic. I love when it has scientific explanations even if it isn't real. It's much more interesting to relate to stuff like electromagnetism or something than to just say "magic!" I'm a science nerd. Also, the beauty of overwatch is how science-y it is. Genetically altered monkey, time slipping, artificial decay, much more interesting than to say "this person just has magical abilities."
@@austinmcmahan6267 The origins of sandman and a werewolf are both equally supernatural, and the only reason people treat them differently is because people nowadays use technology they don't understand in a daily basis. "Magic" often has the same level of gestured explanation as the sciencey stuff. The only real difference is sciency stuff implies that someone who isn't you actually knows what's going on, which is a more familiar feeling than "oh yeah no one knows why that happens". Becoming a living supernatural phoenomenon due to falling into a particle accelerator or radiation or unexplained "experiments" is no more thoughtful than if it was due to being born in december 25th on a full moon to a family of 6 younger sisters or some family lineage bullshit or some elder forgotten god.
@@austinmcmahan6267 The fact you think any of those examples are 'scientific' in any meaningful way, but magic is ICKKYY, is absolutely hilarious, and just goes to show you don't actually care about MuH ScaCienCe in any way, just the appearance of it.
That throwaway about moiras healing being piss at 7:15,its a long running meme but hearing it brought up in a lore video makes me realize it would absolutely be in character for her to heal with piss and just expect her unknowing team mates to be fine with it
I would've honestly bought "nanomachines, son" as an explanation, but the "spirits" could easily be a set of benevolent but still alien artificial intelligences, each favoring a particular family for arcane reasons. They might live on the net, or on satellites, and project themselves through things like swords, bows, omnics, etc.
Spirits most of the time, at least in my eyes, are about trancendental beings of pure amaterial substance being granted reality through patterns, rituals or some embodying structure. It makes TOTAL sense for a world with insane technology such as hard light, time travel, omnics etc to suddently and without people realizing to have invited stuff like warhammer machine spirits to have more of a tangible presence in the world where before they'd at most make a leaf fall off a tree or a chill to go up your spine.
i really wished they made the spirits like ancient nanomachines that somehow got sent back in time (like tracer) and became one with the earth, developing over time, to become the magical beings in this world.
The interaction with zenyatta and Sigma SIg: "Oh the Iris! We've met!" And then Zen responds: Z: "How...fortunate for you." Sigma has had some interaction with this higher power the omics access...it is possible to work more with this one. I'd love to see it. This interaction is pretty neat to me.
I wonder if Zen doesn’t fully believe Sigma - and it’s possible that Sigma *may* just have hallucinated it. Man’s brain did get ripped apart by a black hole, to be fair lmao
@@TheViveros I like to think that Sigma is actually just old-man joking at least 30-40% of the time, but nobody gets it because of the other 60-70% he's genuinely off his rocker. Like claiming he's met the Iris to Zen is just a poor-taste joke to try to break the ice, or when Moira comment's on how he's been quieter then usual and he utters some complete non-sequitur about frogs or particle colliders just to tease her back. But then again, I'm not sure if any blizzard writer has thought about it as much as I have...
I see Genji's deflect as a lite version of Zen's Transcendence. Like Zen suddenly have multiple arms while protecting his surrounding while Genji needs to manually move his "arms" to protect himself. I'd like to think that Zen taught Genji how to transcend but he cannot just grasp it yet. He can only do the "multiple arms" part.
I thought the multiple arms was just a visual representative of Genji moving his arms really quickly to deflect everything. I don't think he's actually sprouting more arms to do it.
This is hardly the case. Rather Zen just enters a state that literally allows him to nuh uh ignore damage because for a brief while he's above what's bodily. "I can have a sword ran through my body and not blink an eye", stuff like that. But mechanics wise this is just healing so powerful it surpasses basically all damage income, so we can also see this as a kind of invigorating presence that boosts the allies' morale up to the point they forget about injuries, similar to Brigitte's Rally. Or Zen literally just heals himself and the party because this is the simplest answer.
We literally see Genji deflect in the Dragons cinematic, it has nothing to do with transcendence. He's a cyborg, so he moves fast. There's nothing more to his speed than that.
My favorite thing is that Overwatch 2 also added a Zenyatta and Mercy interaction where they pretty much go "well, maybe what some call magic is just advanced science!" Mercy: I refuse to believe that your healing is magical!" Zenyatta: What seems like magic is sometimes science we don't yet understand. Only to release Kiriko and go "oh hey, ACTUAL magic!!"
To add to why Magic could push the omnic plot is that you could make it that magic as a whole, or at least most of it requires the user to have a soul. The fact that Omnic basically would have their own branch in this magical tree is solid proof of their existence as equal lifeforms who have an actual life despite them not having access to human type Magic they still have it so the existence of the iris Magic more or less forces the wider public to see that omnic are like them despite not being organic. You could do so much if you just opened the Pandora box of fictional magic that would improve the story if done right. You could even have some people who view Sym and Lifeweaver and hard light users as heretics with their hardlight tech and see it is advancing too far too quickly. I mean, Symmetra is using only light to transport people from point A to B in seconds, and Lifeweaver is making a tree or something. I still don't fully get him, to be honest, but still you could do a lot with people having an aversion to cybernetics to alter the body or hardlight as a whole. And you can have people like Sym, for example, see Magic as something too unpredictable and too unstable to really put faith in, hence her opting to use cold tech that is similar to magic
Lifeweaver has the technology to create literal lifeforms from light. Technically he has the key to create biological beings made of flesh just from pure light, what is crazy.
It’s superpowers, not magic. They touched on this in the kiriko mythic season, they have a nexus that they can tap into much like omnics can, it’s hard light manipulation. Hanzo’s and genji’s dragons aren’t mythical creatures they are just hard light constructs. Kiriko’s teleport abilities are a result of tapping into that said nexus, hers is more centered around time dilation, hence why her ultimate allows allies to move and shoot faster, her suzu freezes and even can reverse certain effects placed on the body due to time manipulation, her healing ofuda are just healing constructs created through biolight This is not magic it’s just superpowers.
@@rafaelwells7247Yeah, so much more realistic! Yeah, dude. If they're just hard-light constructs, then more than just Shimadas could wield the dragons.
A fun character concept I've brainstormed is a foil to Moira, which also helps to expand the vague "magic" thing going on in Overwatch. The character is a support hero from Ireland, like Moira, but she channels her abilities through her connection to a forest spirit. The basic idea is that her family comes from a long line of druids who have kept this forest spirit safe and secret from the rest of the world. At the very least, Blizzard just needs to add another "magic/spirit" hero from a culture other than Japan.
@@ink3487 Moira falls into the "mad scientist" archetype, as opposed to the "humble healer" of Mercy. In terms of personality they're foils, but in terms of abilities a druidic character would be a very good foil
I thought of a character that I could put in many of my projects but I also thought would make a good OW character with a unique passive. It's a man turned into a will'O'wisp by a priestess and spiritually tied to a gaint voodoo doll like body that looks to be made of a strong potatoe sack like fabric full of sand. He figured out the will'o'wisp can leave the artificial body but not far because it is tied to it, the wisp can only go about two arms length from the body ( the wisp also can look away from himself. Aswell as phase through walls and around corners if close enough) and he need to learn to control his ragdoll like body. There is more to it but not important. His fighting style is by using centripetal force to hit his enemys with heavy punching bag like arms and legs. Something like Capoeira.
TLDR: I think if they ever do that, they should make it psychic powers/ESP instead of straight up magic. I know it's essentially the same thing, given a different coat of paint, but I do think the way it's presented is important to keep the story's established tone and genre. Overwatch puts a lot of emphasis on science and human ingenuity, so something that can still be explained and used through tech would feel more appropriate. - - - - Personally, I feel like calling it magic wouldn't really work, mainly because magic as a term is firmly grounded in fantasy as a genre. However, there IS a term for "magic" in science-fiction, and that is psychic powers/ESP. To me, it feels a lot more sci-fi while keeping the same purpose. You could even worldbuild the idea that people just called it magic for the longest time, because they didn't really understand it. And maybe there was tech developed to make use of that power, kinda like a magic focus. Maybe the reason Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko's powers manifest as japanese spirits is because it's tied to how they view their abilities because of their families history/legends (if just subconsciously). Maybe strong enough psychic powers just manifest as sort of psychic constructs that other people can see. You could even tie it back to how omnic can achieve seemingly-supernatural abilities through spirituality, as you mentioned. Maybe having some kinda spiritual experience is a way to unlock one's psychic powers, for any number of reasons.
the only consistency between omnic magic and shimada (and kiriko) magic is that they are getting magic from a higher power omincs from the iris and the Japanese characters from spirits this also solves at least some of the problem of how you narratively explain the limits: you can only do the amount of magic granted to you. If you are not given the magic to do something, you can't do it.
This reminds me of a voice line interaction between Zenyatta and Sigma where Sigma causally mentioning that he met the Iris, so human can interact with this power. Does this mean that Sigma is a little bit magical?
@@ДюсековИльясactually why does he fly? I don’t remember his story did he get gravity powers or did he meet the iris and it wasnt just a joke and zerlies for the same reason zen does
@@tastedivinefury2198Sigma’s backstory is basically that he tried harnessing a black hole, but it went wrong. Black holes affect gravity, and iirc gravity was talked about or mentioned in the origin story, so yeah there’s something there. I only really know stuff from the origin story, so there might be additional info I don’t know.
@@SauceyRedHNI heard that the melody he hears is the same melody the omnics hear from the iris or smth? No clue if it's true bc I can't find any info on it but that's interesting
There’s no reasonable explanation for how the dragons and spirit Fox work barring ridiculously high-end technology. They should just bite the bullet and say it’s magic.
@@sthepcorms6747 I’m lost on how a fox that lets you grant immortality, heal with paper charms, regulate bodily functions and teleport out of thin air is not magical
@@Mazapan404 there is a reason why is 2 differences, first cultural differences the fox and dragon spirits are a real life thing they are things that people believe in, calling it magic would be disrespectful. second off all its divine power not magic, they call upon spirits instead it coming from them, they're mana or any onther, were spiritual power come from gods or lesser gods.
As much as I'd be down with blizzard embracing magic, as it allows for more design iteration, I could see them go the Zenyatta route, where the spirit magic is actually a form of science that no one, including the users of it understand yet. Though I don't know if there's a huge distinction between that and straight up magic.
All magic is "a form of science" in some regard. Science is the process of understanding our universe. If magic exists then the science of magic will be trying to explain and understand magic. Science isn't some diametrically opposed force to magic, it's a mindset of curiosity, experimentation, and documentation. Wizards are quite literally magic scientists.
yeah, back when it was rumored that he was the result of a failed Mercy Rez. And thus ended in the "middle" turning him undead. They scrapped that and made him Moira's pet project.
@@RikkeDK1996 Back when Moira wasn't in the game yet and the implication was that he was a failed first attempt at a Rez, I considered the fact that Mercy canonically uses healing nanomachines. The universe called them "biotics" and they're the same thing that Soldier: 76 uses to heal. My theory was that Reaper was the result of Gabriel Reyes' corpse being consumed and incompletely reconstructed via Mercy's nanomachinery, and due to the malfunction the nanobots (which would have to scan your brain to restore memory) Absorbed his consciousness and then instead of implanting it _into_ the reconstructed body, they overwrote their programming. Essentially, under the failed Mercy Rez interpretation, Reaper was not a poorly-healed Gabriel Reyes but instead a cloud of barely-structured nanomachines that _think_ they're Gabriel Reyes, and are constantly in a state of trying and failing to reconstruct him fully. The "souls" he thinks he's consuming from the drops he had as his passive ability at the time weren't actually souls: they're the remaining biotic nanomachines left over from that person's past healing sessions, or he's subsuming their corpses to fuel his constantly-failing regeneration.
I think... Reaper is interesting as he's still that. He's still this reformatting and decaying person. A buncha atoms in a trench coat. Him getting health on hit (or was it a kill), could be him just completely latching himself onto someone and stripping their lifeforce, much like Moira does to function. Actually... literally just use Moira as the core concept for what Reaper represents. The only reason why Moira regens her healing meter and self-heals in this difference is because she also experiments on herself. It's likely she's hooked up to her tech to sustain herself. I just find the creepy bio-radiation thing to be fun.
So as a japanese guy, here is my opinion Overwatchs portrayal of japan is very backward, Hanamura was a very pretty map but it enforced very stereotypical tropes of japanese culture, look at Lijiang Tower, its more about showing a realistic and positive look on chinese culture while still feeling very chinese in style its not some super over the top chinese temple or castle with giant dragon statues everywhere to make sure you know its china. every japanese hero needing magic somewhat fills a poor stereotype that these heroes because theyre japanese must have magic to be unique, imo hanzo and genji would be perfectly fine with out the dragons (lore wise) and honestly without magic their relationship more complex since its their blood that connects them not the stupid dragons. its almost like the dragons only were made for symbolism and for the cool scene in the animated short , Blizzard had no ideas for kiriko and said F it, fox magic
spirits and magic aren't the same thing tho, in Mexico we have spirits and magic and they are separate things same goes for Japan you should know that if you're from Japan
@@Kishiiknight They are effectively the same thing. Unexplained and unexplainable phenomena that do not even pretend to operate by real-life rules of physics.
don't forget the part where the 3 japanese characters are a kunoichi, ninja and kyudo (basically the only 'ancient tradition' characters in the game), 2 of the 3 can double jump and they can all climb walls... blizzard went so hard on the anti-racist that they ended up circling back to racism again
There are SO many wonderfully unique myths and legends among all the worlds cultures related to magic, they really should do something with them. -an estranged kid/sibling/other family member of Torb that has taken his craft in the direction of Norse Runic magic -somebody with a contract with a Djinn that helps fight alongside them in maybe a turret ability or Bob-like ult. Especially since japanese mythical creatures seem real why not others? -illari seems VERY fantasy as well they can do something with a helios or godly celestial body Idk im mostly a Norse and greeco roman nerd but im sure every civilization in history has had similar things you can pull from
- A Jewish Moses inspired hero whose abilities are based on the 10 plagues and other stuff Moses did. - A Medusa looking hero (or Talon mercenary) who can turn people to stone - Some dude based on HP Lovecraft stuff and can summon horrors from other worlds as his power (like Sigma kinda but not science based)
@@mariustan9275 with magic, you could straight-up have a vampire as a hero Or maybe a druidic character harnessing the wrath of nature An assassin drawing on the power of Cernobog (a god of darkness) Hell, you can have a character who draws inspiration from hags and the Baba Yaga
Imagine trying to choose a religion in the overwatch universe. "I could go with these ones but Genji from the overwatch cartoon that i watched as a child is a real guy and uses a real Shinto spirit as a weapon. So probably that one or the monks that live in the mountains and sometimes just transcend into a higher plane of existence"
I always wondered about this too. They could always lean heavily into "magic is just science we don't yet understand" and attribute magical abilities to some type of energy yet to be studied (kind of like what they did with hard light but framing it as a newer science)
might just be me, but the "this technology is too advanced for any of us to understand, even their wielders" doesn't make a whole lot of sense in most stories, as it's usually something you would see in post-apocalyptic settings like warhammer 40k, where humanity had a golden age, then they collapsed, and now they're re-discovering all the technology that was made during said golden age. i don't know if this works in overwatch, mostly because the world doesn't read that way to me. if instead we make overwatch a setting with very low magic, then this problem is mostly solved, as magic is, by default, hard to understand in a world where everyone has embraced technology.
I really appreciate you bringing up the aspect of mysticism and how Western media is so quick to tokenize and make Eastern cultures, indigenous cultures, and cultures that are foreign to them in general so different. It creates harmful stereotypes and makes room for cultural misinformation and fetishization which is incredibly harmful.
I get what you mean but in overwatch every country has their think like America had the super soldier program, South Korea had their Mecha program, Germany has the Crusader program, and Japan has their spirit magic that's just how the world is and to be honest I really like that each country has their program that makes then Unique😊
I’m just happy that people agree with me that having ONLY Japanese characters be able to do magic feels… kind of orientalist. It’s like Japan is propped up as some magical fantasy land by westerners, rather than as a real place with its own rich culture just like every other country around the world. Anyways, here’s my pitch for establishing magic in Overwatch: Spirits in this universe are supernatural beings who possess people and give them special powers, and take on different forms based on their culture. I think this could be flexible enough for it to work with what we already have, and be able to represent other cultures. Also, it would make creating limits a bit easier since a spirit’s powers and limits can be tied to mythological creatures which will make them more familliar to us and easier to understand (also explaining why the Japanese character’s spirits look like cultural elements from Japan). But that’s just one idea, they could also use telepathic powers as an explanation or even say that certain mythological creatures just straight up exist and we’ll get to play as a mermaid or something at some point.
I prefer to use the suggestion I once saw in a tumblr post: Overwatch is a future setting where Shintoism is canon to its reality. It depicts a future where Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko all have spirit powers because they're participating in a religion that also happens to match their reality.
I feel like Illari lowkey has a similar “sort of magic sort of spiritual” style of abilities as the japanese characters. Her powers are rooted in the spirituality of her culture instead of science as well.
I think Arcanum is a great example of magic and tech. Tech works by following rules, magic works by breaking rules. And that's also why they mess with eachother
Spiritual robots is the hardest fucking concept in Overwatch and it’s a genuine shame how underused and wasted is. Our antagonist is a religious leader, but instead of a genuine conflict of interest and an insurrection based on racial identity and faith, we get just brainwashing machines. And the idea of seeing Genji “regain his soul” as he embraces his nature as a machine is too good to trash it by explaining the Shimada techniques as just tech
I'm saving this video to my Writing Advice playlist. I've been working on a fantasy series for a few years, and my magic system is based on the one in Dungeons & Dragons, but I've cut out a lot of spells and changed the way others work for the sake of what I think is better storytelling. What you say about magical vs. non-magical people and having to be reductive in settings with magic is good advice for anyone looking to create their own fantasy (or sci-fi) world.
One old theory I really like is that the "spirits" are extremely old, extremely advanced technology that got passed down through the generations. Under this theory, the dragons (Kiriko didn't exist at the time but still fits the theory) are large advanced hardlight projections, similar to symmetra's constructs but turned up to 11. Nobody remembers how to make them, but they could theoretically be replicated and are based in technology. The myth and mystique surrounding the Shimadas is cultivated to discourage others from attempting to steal the technology of the dragons. The same goes for why they all train so rigorously from birth. Sadly, this theory got lost to time and the devs went for the "just don't question it" method.
@@ahdog8 Agreed. We're working with presumably usual human history, as the crisis did not happen long ago or last long enough for such technology to be lost. So who'd have the means to make this sci fi tech? Aliens?
Overwatch, the one timeline where Graham Hancock was correct. Now there is a take I wasn't expecting, but one that could certainly work. Hell, we know the Iris is a thing, who is to say that it wasn't discovered before and Omnics are the first ones to have harnessed its power. Fuck it, let's go all the way. Atlantis was a thing and it really did sink under the ocean. It was hyper advanced and parts of its tech spread across the world. The myths and heroes of old actually has some level of truth to them as they where the few that got access to Atlantean tech, but at the time it was seen as magic. As Zenyata quoted; Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As a side note, Clarke's three laws are in general quite insightful.
His point is not that she's scientifically accurate, it's that she is able to be explained by Overwatch's scientific rules while Hanzo, Genji, and now Kiriko never could
@@_V.Va_ you could see magic as manipulation of elements, mana and stuff, which could technically be called some form of chemistry and physics and stuff It just depends on what degree the understanding of "how magic works" is in the world/universe
People are joking that Japan works the same way as it does in Guilty Gear, but I think we should reach and say Overwatch and Guilty Gear are in the same universe
I appreciate the attempt here but all tech in the guilty gear universe is explicitly using magic, they have stopped using electricity altogether since 1999
Overwatch isn’t just sci-fi, it’s optimistic futurism. Having spiritualism in there makes sense, especially having that spiritualism have meaningful positive impact. Overwatch is utopia-adjacent.
ram is basically a mage with a staff, but keeping it tech and not magic fits the ow universe more because it's supposed to be our earth there are comments from like 6+ years ago of devs saying the dragons are tech not magic at blizzcon this misconception comes from people wanting everything to be explained, when the angle should be future tech is so advanced it looks like magic i think keeping it tech based is rare for a super hero universes and it's kind of what sets it apart from dc/marvel or even valorant
At least Valorant explains it by saying how Radianite basically causes mutations that gives people powers. Kind of like genetic mutations in X-Men. These powers are scaled differently, ranging from agents like Jett creating non-lethal blasts of wind to agents like Iso who can literally trap you in an alternate dimension. Then we have agents who blur that line like Cypher, Breach, Chamber, and Harbor who are all just regular people, but have access to advanced tech that make them stronger than some Radianites. Overwatch doesn't really have that ambiguity. The Japanese heroes stick out like sore thumbs compared to everyone else. The OW devs dug themselves into a hole.
@@inplane9970there's not really a hole - the whole point here is that it doesn't need explaining. It's sufficiently advanced tech, you getting bent out of shape over it is your own problem.
@@elnekosauce Nobody is getting bent out of shape over OW. It's just thematically mediocre and squanders any lore potential the series had. Which is fitting considering people just mindlessly play the game now ever since Blizz stopped giving a hoot, rather than seeing how cool the whole OW universe really is. Games cannot survive just on gameplay alone. It's the thematics, the lore, and the aesthetics that creates a healthy emotional connection to a series. You grow to genuinely love the characters and the worldbuilding because it's interesting.
@@inplane9970omg someone who knows the Val and ow lore? Idk why but when I get into a game/show I learn every single bit of lore, inside and out, I know everything LMFAO
But the Japanese heroes stick out like a sore thumb when all the others are all more or less tech themed and make sense. Tracer has a sort of time machine chest plate. Sigma got in a lab accident and was experimenting with gravity and can manipulate gravity. Pharah has a rocket launcher and jetpack. But Hanzo, Genji and Kriko? Summon spirits and maybe gods onto the battlefield and really stick out. Since severely changing them would be unpopular as heck maybe just have more clearly magic heroes. To be honest it really stretches my suspension of disbelief to try to justify summoning energy dragons with tech when they come out of nowhere and Hanzo said only Shimada clan members can control the dragons, like it's a blood brother power. Just say it's magic. Or spiritual. Or just calling on the divine.@jayreese8522
I always thought it would be relatively easy to explain the Shimada bros' dragons away, like Hanzo's could be similar to hard light, a kind of nano-cybernetic advancement contained in his tattoo, which produces like, a damaging hologram. And Genji's dragon almost seems more for show than anything, but it could be allowing him to cut through the air with more velocity, or it's indicative of an internal process that powers him up in other ways. And then there's Kiriko, leading me to believe they did not think about it as hard as I have.
Genjis dragon cant be be just for show if it completely countered and attacked Hanzo back at him in the "Dragons" short and also gives him power when using the blade. Also Kiriko is clearly magic
I never forgot Reaper’s original passive collecting the “souls” of whoever he kills to recover health. To me, this always implied that there was a supernatural element to the game’s lore despite being sci-fi. I remember a developer update back in 2017 when Kaplan mentioned that he had been asked about this pssove’s relevance to reaper’s lore. He said that there were times when he had to put aside lore relevance in certain circumstances to meet and execute their vision for the gameplay of some heroes.
I'm glad somebody thinks about these things and makes interesting vids like these. My logic basically goes "Overwatch stars superheroes, magic exists in superhero fiction, and mages are cool." I stopped caring about OW's lore and story long, long ago, but just from a gameplay perspective, yeah, I'd play as a wizard. I'd use magic to tank for my team, absolutely. Let's do this.
I think dismissing Illaris abilities as technological just because “she’s harnessing the sun” is pretty poor in the magic vs science debate as well. She’s not using any tech to do it right? Just something she unlocked inside herself. Sounds pretty magical to me.
She is using tech. The abilities within herself exist in theory and they're trained prior to their augmentations, but those powers aren't unlocked until the solar threading ceremony where the Inti warriors are augmented. That's why nobody knew how powerful she was until then, and why it managed to wipe everyone out.
5:16 for a bonus to the “it’s scifi tech, it doesn’t have to be realistic” thing, it doesn’t have to be realistic like you said but it has to be realistic in universe, like the given examples all the teleportation is science based (self digitization, hard light travel, disassemble and reassemble, being a non temporally locked human, etc) and have more or less believable reasoning as to why they can teleport 14:00 if they do classify the Japanese trio as magic they do have at least one thing on it as a downside: genji has an entire set of vents on his cybernetics with the sole purpose of venting away as much heat as possible from his body after he uses his dragons so it’s safe to say whether it’s magic or not it puts his body under a lot of stress and makes it heat up drastically, another is the three seem like they need some body part to channel the power through, kiriko seems to use her eyes as those are what glows when she uses her “summon” ability and hanzo uses his tattoo on his arm so it’s likely safe to assume genji does something similar as well under his cybernetics
Kiriko alone has introduced so many lore related issues that I have a hard time enjoying the character. I feel like she really needed to be fleshed out and separate from the Shimada bros
Its always been my personal head cannon that magic is real just incredibly rare and so hard to do and learn that its often less efficient than just using tech. My supporting evidence is that the only characters capable of it are humans trained from childhood by people with generations of knowledge and supercomputers so strong that they can think and feel.
One detail that seems to be overlooked in this video is that not all Japanese characters in the Overwatch universe are magical or have access to spirits. It's specifically Hanzo, Genji, and Kiriko who are part of clans associated with spirits. Their clan's prominence likely comes from the power they obtained by worshiping these spirits, making them somewhat superhuman. Genji and Hanzo don't have healing abilities; instead, they harness the destructive force of the dragons they revere. Kiriko, on the other hand, can heal because her grandmother taught her to channel the supportive energy of the fox spirit. The powers Kiriko derives from the fox spirit-teleportation, healing, cleansing, invincibility-are all supportive in nature, with teleportation providing an escape mechanism. Kiriko's combat skills, however, come from her mother, not the fox spirit.
yes I see the Iris the same way its an spiritual entity that heals the body, one achieves a connection to it by deep meditation I also wouldn't lump spirits and magic together as they are not the same, Gods don't use magic they have power or command elements and reality, same with these guardian spirits
I absolutely love the way you describe the difference between scfi and magic. Scfi settings is asking what can technology do and magic settings is asking what magic can't do. To many times I see magic settings not getting that idea right or not answering the question at all. Anyways pretty cool video.
Ironically Battleborn hit this balance with characters like Orendi and Thorn existing alongside characters like Caldarius and Marquis. You've even got characters that blur the line like Alani who has a deep reverence for water but is using nanotech to manipulate water rather than magic. They even had this in borderlands. alternatively, they could take a page out of white wolfs books. Awesome, but Impractical: Magic itself if you're not really careful. Any spells a mage casts that look or feel like real magic makes reality really unhappy, and likely to complain about it in the form of curses, monsters, and ultimately ejection from reality altogether. Mages instead are forced to keep their magic Boring, but Practical; sticking with effects that potential onlookers would either quickly rationalize away or not even notice in the first place.
While reality apparently has certain basic fundamentals, for the most part, the laws of reality exist because mankind ''believes'' it exists by certain laws. Each average human, or "Sleeper," perceives the world in certain terms, and their perception contributes to the Consensus of reality. The Consensus reinforces how reality works, which in turn reinforces the Sleepers' beliefs, and so the cycle continues. Mages are the exception, humans who've Awakened to their innate power: they've realized the truth of the world, and they have the ability to reshape it to their will. A few things stand between mages and the magical playground of reality, of course. First, there are the competing paradigms: Every mage understands magic in different terms, be it "hyper-advanced science," "the divine emanations of the Almighty," or "the Old Ways", so trying to get any two mages to agree on anything is tricky. But they kind of have to, because of the second reason: The Technocracy. Long ago, when the mages actually did have their magical playground, there were a few too many who became Sorcerous Overlord and who made life even harder for the hapless majority of Muggles. In response, a group of other mages/scholars/knights/builders/etc decided to team up as the Order of Reason and fight the sorcerers (and vampires, and were-things and the Fair Folk, and so on) with Science/Art/Religion/Not Magic to make the world better for the average Joe and Jane. Well, they won... and in the process, they went a tad too far, until they had largely succeeded in stamping out any other reality save the non-magical worldview they endorsed. In the Modern Day, the Technocracy has turned into an authoritarian and nigh-unstoppable conglomerate set on protecting the status quo by squashing "Reality Deviants", their "Unmutual Paradigms", and the free-will/wonderment of magic and human potential with them. And it's working, because if enough humans agree with the world you're giving them, Reality Itself changes to match that view. This leads to the final hurdle between the mages and their goals: Paradox. Do anything that's too explicitly magic, flaunt your ability to alter the way things have become, and Reality will give you a wedgie. In other words, because a mage believes he can fly, he can. Problem is, that's not what the current rules of reality say, and so it resists, sometimes even fights back. Presumably, if a mage were the last living being, they'd have near-godlike power and the opportunity to find out what the fundamental rules of reality are absent human belief. Fortunately for everything in existence, this is not the desired endgame for most mages.
I wish they went full CLAMP style and made the Shimadas/Kiriko and her Grandma just modern Onmyojis/Miko with mystical powers (the trope is so cool, but stuck in the 90's/2000's). Like, say they are familiars and the Shimadas were like magic assassins for hire(like the Sakurazukamori is in X and Tokyo Babylon), and in order to hide in plain sight they became Yakuza so the public would not mess with the magic side of the family, while having access to powerful people. Make Kiriko's family their rival, a family of protectors(and focus on Kiriko and the Yokai vs all of the yakuza/crime).
So, tech is 'positive' and magic is 'negative' in the sense of positive and negative space? That is, tech is defined by what *it* is but magic is defined by the boundaries it runs up against.
Something I should note: Lucio's healing music actually has some grounding in something real. I don't know if the science ever actually shook out, but some studies were done showing that people exposed to cats during their recovery process were on average recovered faster than those who didn't. The conclusion drawn from this was that the sound frequencies of a cat's purr mildly accelerated convalescence. Another study was done with just playing recordings of cats purring and the study as I recall led to similar results. So Lucio's healing music may be based on or using that concept.
i like that additive vs subtractive worldbuilding idea, makes me think like what magic systems could be described additively. like maybe the middle ages mfs were onto something about alchemy, and future researchers find out how to make it work. then that basically is that worlds low level programming language for magic, to be expanded on with more complex methods, but its still rooted in alchemy. because alchemy was something that was researched well enough, even if ineffective, there is a stable baseline, unlike 'magic'
Why has BlizzardOW just completely overlooked the reasonable sci-fi explanation of nanites inside of the ink of their tattoos. Since in the original Shimada cinematic, Hanzo's dragons clearly came out of his tattoos and not his bow. This also would be really strange, since the Shimada's are swordsmen, and he took up the bow in shame. So why would there be a special bow that also uses the Shimada dragons? They should have just said nanites. Genji only has one because he lost a lot of his nanite ink with a good portion of his body. Hanzo still has all of his ink. These nanites provide different utilities, like enhancing people and dealing damage. It's sci-fi, it's cool, it's reasonable, and it's expandable to any other characters within that circle.
I do think it’s worth noting that when the narrative team changed they seemed to change their stance on the “hard sci-fi” Either that or they just stopped caring and refused to come up with an explanation for anything
for such a specific and niche topic i didnt think id be that interested in, you did a really good job at holding my attention with your commentary. great work!!!
I think ATLA manages to have an additive magic systen by starting with the premise of "control one of the 4 elements by straining yourself" and building off of that as the series goes instead of starting with the premise of just "magic"
I feel like rather then magic, it's religious belief. Every "magic" comes from some sort of religious belief. Whether it be Zenyatta's healing (which canonically is pointed out to "not make sense" and "it just is" by a Mercy/Zen conversation) or Kiriko's "Fox Spirit" or Illari's whole society and how she wiped it out. Religion obviously exists within the Overwatch world and it has a big hand in a lot of things. Calling it "Magic" might be the way to go, however, as I think saying it's religion opens up a whole can of worms. But I think that's why they explicitly don't want to say it's "magic". Because it isn't. It's religion. They've essentially caused a problem for themselves and they have no way of fixing it.
Echo can duplicate the heroes with what you call magic and use their abilities with the her technology proving that this is all just sufficiently advanced technology disguised as magic.
I mean the lore makes it clear tech is in Japan too. All of Kirikos gang are teched up to shit, the Shimada are arms dealers and tech specialists. it just happens the three specific Japanese people in the game happen to derive their powers from spiritualism, seemingly because it was a foundational part of their family legacy. Similarly in Cyberpunk, despite being technologically far more advanced than most countries, Japan actively seeks to keep old dated tradition alive even through all that advancement....Which I will add is NOT marginalization, that is.....A core fundamental part of the national identity of Japan as an IRL country. Japan as a whole keeps its traditions and its history heavily steeped into the very foundations of their society even in the modern era for better or worse. It is not otherness, its not racism, Japan really IS like that historically. Only difference here is that apparently Kami are a real thing in Overwatch, and a select few clans still hold the tradition of staying in contact with them to gain their powers. Logically speaking this would mean technically anyone COULD tap into that power the same way Omnics can unlock transcendence, its just likely most people don't see a need to when tech is so easily and readily accessible to the masses. Hell its made clear the Shimada are seen as weirdos for their choice of using dated weapons to begin with. Its more than likely with enough training and spiritual focus, others could unlock the powers of a spirit guardian.....but like....why the fuck would anyone do that when they can just replace their arm with a fucking railgun, or create miniature suns to eradicate their enemy? TLDR: Easy explanation. Magic exists but.....Why the fuck would you spend 20 years training to do shit Frank from down the road can replicate with $500 and a weekend of medical therapy? The Shimada bros are already factually odd balls for favoring Katana and Bows (something many heroes comment on), the rest we see all use guns and specialized tech after all.
The historical thing is what strikes me the most, and the reason why this "drama" doesn't bother me at all. Like it's insane to me that the japanese government was so protectionist that they'd still fight with swords during a time where they already had electricity and steam engines. This is a bit like an extension of that. Reality is crazier than fiction in this case, so obviously writers wanna play with that concept.
It is kinda racist? Why do only the japanese heros specifically have magic, the first two? Sure, thats fine! They are brothers after all. But kiriko makes it suspicious, why does she ALSO need a magic spirit? Can she not get cool kitsune *themed* technology? Its not malicious racism, its weeb shit.
You know, If you want to give it a scientific explanation, just look to Psionic Powers from StarCraft (Another game from Blizzard) In StarCraft, In Terrans (humans), The capability that being Psionic is passed down through bloodlines. What do we see with Overwatch? Only The Shimadas can control the Dragons. The Spirit Dragons are possibly connected to the psychic emanation of both Hanzo and Genji. Afterall, another form of Psychic is someone who can commune with SPIRITS. In Starcraft, Kerrigan's psionic powers allow her to do typical psychic stuff (telepathy, telekinesis, etc). However, she is also seen to utilize it to create Energy Blasts that look very similar to electricity. And Hanzo is heavily storm-based - - Note the storm design on both his tattoos and The Shimada Clan in general. It's very possible that DragonStrike and DragonBlade are just large-scale Psionic Abilities that take the shape of dragons. A very noticable trait of Psionic Powers in Starcraft is that they cause glowing eyes while they're in use, and just glow brightly in general. One of the key parts about Hanzo and Genji's ultimates is that they glow, and Hanzo's tattoo glows while casting DragonStrike. In the Kerrigan vs Zeratul cinematic, Kerrigan uses her telekinesis to halt Zeratul in place, which causes creates a lot of noticeable wind. It would also explain Hanzo and Genji's ability to double jump, as it could be a telekinetic push from their Psionic Powers, as, In SC, Kerrigan was capable of levitation and even flight. (Another small little bit, is that even in Starcraft, a Dominion Marine even jokes that it's basically just magic.) So, it's NOT magic, just Psionic Energy.
it is CRAZY how good this video is, I did not expect this level of quality at all from a channel I've never heard of before about Overwatch lore of all things. Definitely going to watch all your other stuff, this is great
Hanzo and Genji's dragons never struck me as unexplainable magic. Hanzo has a holographic nano tech whatever Dragon projected from an implant in his tattoo that can use an arrow as a guiding system so it can be aimed, and the whole thing is voice activated. Genji has the same thing only he uses his laser sword instead of an arrow. Hanzo's other arrows don't read as magic to me at all, sonic arrow is literally just a sonar device strapped to an arrow. I agree that it looks like magic, and I think that's kind of the point. Humans invented all this fancy technology and decided to flavor it as mythical weapons and techniques from their histories and cultures, and frankly that's raw af. Germany made mech suits and decided to make them look like medieval knights. Mercy's got a device that shoots a beam of nano machines that heal people, and she turned it into the caduceus staff. Of course the Shimada clan got this tech and decided to make it look like a spirit dragon. As for Kiriko she just has a lot of bad writing issues in general, and from her animated short they do make it seem like magic, but her stuff can still be explained away. The paper has heat seeking nano machines, the suzu has the same tech as bap lamp but in like a grenade form. The teleport is a bit wonky, maybe its also heat seeking, and it comes from an implant in her eyes that she stole from the Shimada with also gives her the same hologram tech as Hanzo and Genji, but she decided to make it look like the fox spirit her ancestors believed in. also a side note in my personal opinion I don't think they should have explicit magic in overwatch. I think it would clash with the whole science flavored as magic thing they have going on.
In the animated short, Dragons, How does Hanzos dragons get overwritten by Genjis if it's his own implant, his sword would have to have fast hacking to guide and throw it back at Hanzo. The arrow also turns into two big dragons that hurt you somehow, so they can't be holographic otherwise, having it be flashy obvious dragons would be pointless. As for Kiriko, everything you've said is even more of a stretch, especially when you don't really explain how she teleports in the first place. Sure, Moira and Reaper are similar in terms of how their bodies dissapate, but at least their background is science related in the first place. The shimada clan background doesn't imply anything for their "tech", aside from being in the current world where everyone has some sort of tech.
I figured that the dragon and fox spirits are interdimensional beings. The dragons need an anchor to our plane of reality, so they make bonds with the Shimada family and in return, they allow the Shimadas to call them to their plane when they need to destroy things. Same thing with the fox spirit, which probably has some energy field that works like nano healing. Maybe? I'unno.
no the fox healing is a spiritual based ability it sends fox energy to the wound and it heals the soul of the person which also heals the body like JJK or Naruto
@@Kishiiknight What do you mean "no"? They're saying that's what they thought. You're just throwing your headcanon on top of someone elses for no good reason. It's ok for you to share your own ideas, but you cannot claim the truth value of the thing you made up to be higher than theirs.
My assumption is that the "magic" elements in overwatch are sentient nano machine clouds that took on the personas of these spirits from Japanese mythology, thus if the spirit can teleport people, the cloud understands that as a command it's able to execute with whatever technology it has implemented
@@Kavukamari but every country has a mystical/spiritual side how is that a stereotype? the stereotype has always been that Japan is full of nerds building robots, they actually keep their temples and shrines preserved, have had a proud history of their old practices and rituals preserved as well to this day
Hi, I love your videos but I think on your Zen part you misunderstood what the game is saying The implication that "humans cannot use the Iris so it is not magic" is like saying "a goblin cannot cast Fireball so it is not magic", being tied to specifically Omnic souls does not diminish from how it is bestowed to them from a higher divine plane
Hanzo, Kiriko and Genji could simply be imprinted tech protected by some very serious institutions like the Shimada clan and the Fox cult/temple. For all I know, Kiriko might have a tiny printer under her kimono where she simply keeps on printing her ofuda and shoving it into people. Hanzo and Genji could have a whole swarm of nano tech inside their tats that simply come alive on command to mess up everything on their way. AND it can also not be that deep: all 3 japanese characters are much more related than the majority of the cast and it can make some sense that they share similar traits. Just like Brig and Torb. It's not like ALL japanese people are magical, just like it was shown on previous lore material. It's just that the 3 in-game japanese characters are. But ye, to choose to make your japanese in-game representation straight up magical-like ninjas is kinda problematic, but some people can also find very problematic the Overwatch take of Australia. All that being said, after the launch of OW2 we can pretty much see that there was a change in what they envision for the game (lore included). I wouldn't be surprised if they decide that magic is, indeed, real anytime soon. Good vid!
Id like to add that its weird the japanese characters are just not allowed to use modern weapons Instead of rocket Launchers, pulse rifles or fusion powered machine guns they get weapons from 1000s of years ago, like why does genji not have a gun, he was part of blackwatch who were known as no nonsense black-ops killers so why would they have a guy wjo leaves a ton of evidence everwhere by throwing ninja stars!?
Especially because it’s not like Japan does that now either. Like there aren’t modern Japanese special forces running around with kunai and throwing stars, for the Japan of Overwatch to get to the point where Genji and Kiriko and Hanzo are at it would’ve had to regress at least a couple centuries back from where we presently are today instead of advancing like everyone else. It’s so bizarre.
@@TheViveros Genji and Hanzo could very well be trained by a clan that likes to stay in there old ways plus it’s not like they reject technology entirely because Hanzo still uses technology.
To be fair, Reinhardt, Brigette, Ramattra, and Doomfist all have weapons that aren't guns, so it's not *just* the Japanese characters. (Even then, the Japanese weapons are comparatively low tech.)
It's less weird if you think of it as an analogue to their real world history. Japan used to be so protectionist when we came over there with our guns that they didn't widely adopt modern weaponry for hundreds of years. Of course they aren't anymore currently (although there's still cultural holdovers from being isolated for such a long time). But there isn't really another country that has this kind of historical precedent so if you're looking to do the "low-tech isolationist country in a sci-fi world" trope, Japan is the obvious choice.
You can argue about it being the other way around, but for me giving more magic to other cultures would dillute what makes Japanese heroes stand out amongst the cast of unique characters though. I don't want to put unique hero identity and genuinely cool settings at risk of being more accurately representative of other's culture, Overwatch was founded upon a roster of stereotypes and tropes. Eventually you'll just ran into the same problem of hero uniqueness and diversity again, only this time the magic ones who were unique no longer are so. Just see any MOBA, where it all becomes little but aestethic differences in all but a very few rare exceptions, that's the end point you're looking at here. It's the same reason I like Route 66 the best out of all the american maps, or Junkertown out of any of the Australian ones. It's exaggeration and overfixation over something people might associate with these countries blossomed into something very cool. These very same interpretations, even when wrongfully done, can give us beautiful maps like Dorado. Japan being this way should be explained for sure -- it'd make for some very fun worldbuilding, personally I just always assumed it was the Shimada's who kept the whole ancient aesthethic going on- but I'd prefer it to stay this way and keep it's uniqueness rather than for it to become yet another normal, real world counterpart. Maps like Anubis, Volskaya Industries and Hanamura are a lot more interesting than others that take away the wildness like MIDtown or New Queen Street.
"A better example is the Heir Chronicles-" aaaaaand I very nearly spit water all over my laptop lol. My gods, I never expected to hear ANYONE reference those books outside of me and the one friend I managed to convince to read them.
I love the way you write and express your talking points. It feels very reminiscent to the way I tend to think about these things, but i never really made a channel to talk about it online. A lot of the opinions ive had about overwatch, despite my love for it, tend to pop up in these videos and it makes me feel happy that I’m not the only one with the said viewpoint/opinion.
At the risk of splitting hairs, I'd argue that magic as intrinsic quality is far from the default in fantasy - there are plenty of high-magic settings where everyone can do little spells to do things like dry their own hair with further magic development being the result of work, study, or both. Even in lower magic settings, it's very common to position the difference between Joe Everybody and a master magician as being akin to the difference between a layman and a scientist, or a professional artist, or a monk -- that is, magic within the setting requiring a lot of perseverence, or a specific mindset, or knowledge. There's even quite a few pieces of classic fantasy that position magic as being kind of a mystery cult -- here I don't use cult in the Waco sense, I'm specifically referring to things in the millieu of Orphism. I would actually argue that unless a work is actively trying to say something about eugenics or hereditary royalty, this is a much better shape for a LOT of works to take, and I wish more authors would explore it rather than taking the comparatively simple route of "some people are just born magic". I would argue it makes a lot of worlds feel more open-ended, mysterious, and interesting. In hindsight I suppose this doesn't really add a whole lot to the conversation, but I suppose I just wanted to talk about it. My actual contribution to the discussion is this: I think they should confirm that the Japanese heroes are magic, but only after adding some batshit British ceremonial magician who does Hermetic-influenced spells and like... has a fucking gun or something. Just some jackoff invoking the Watchtowers for abilties or something. You know, "Fomalhaut behind me" (dash) "Regulus before me" (big blasty ult) etc etc. Extra points if they dismiss the Japanese characters as using holograms.
@@lavernebennet7395 I like where your head is at, but no - John Constantine is an occult-flavored spin on the private detective character, and Marvel's approach to magic is generally pretty loosey-goosey. Which is fine - that's not the point of his stories, the point of his stories are having a hot grimy bisexual private dick save a leggy dame from the amulet of tindalphos or whatever. By the way, I wouldn't object to a magical PI in Overwatch, I'm just saying that's not what I meant. I'm talking about like, some upper-crust Golden Dawn type.
Very interesting take. Loved this video essay. I've referred to a lot of the skills (even "science" ones like Moira's abilities) as magic when I explain Overwatch to friends who haven't played it. Like it's a "team FPS with magic and axes as well". Would be cool if they made it canon.
I always just imagined that the Shimada clan had access to a God program like Anubis, which provided them with technology so advanced it appears as magic to humans
How is Buddhist robot *NOT* magic? Like, I get that he's not a spell caster or anything, but he's a robot that just manifested these energy powers unrelated to his actual construction.
Sometimes I like to leave a little trap in my videos to see who comments before finishing the video. This was one of those, because I specifically address this later on.
The Heir Chronicles! First one is called The Warrior Heir, then it’s The Wizard Heir, The Dragon Heir, and then I can’t remember the names of the last two.
You should check out the book The Space Prodigal. It's magic vs technology with a grandiose story, complete with centaur civil wars, astronauts named with numbers, and even a giant evil space baby. I think I'm gonna read it again soon loll
My thoughts on this kind of thing is that the more magical characters, not just kiriko, ganji, and hanzo but also illari, and zen are still harnessing some kind of technology, they just don't fully understand it themselves. As such, they believe it to be spiritual, and are unreliable narrators when it comes to how their own abilities function. so zen doesn't actually know why his healing works beyond a vague connection to the omnic religious beliefs, just that it does. In the case of zen and illari we the audience just happen to be given more of an idea of what that technology might be and so it appears less magical. The fox and dragon spirits may well be powerful shimada technology that the youngest were given use of, but with a false spiritual explanation. In a way, they are the ipad kids of nanotech, they grew up natural users of the technology without knowing the details of it's function. Side note, imo sigma is by far the most magical characters in the game in terms of raw abilities. He is also one of the *most* tech/science-coded characters, seems to have a decent understanding of how his abilities work when lucid, and even claims to have communicated with the omnic god(?). He is also literally insane. I don't think this is a coincidence- it may only be possible for most minds to comprehend the bleeding edge of ow universe tech in abstract, partly spiritual ways
There are some weird arguments in the video but I understand the feeling. I think a major hiccup is that we are confusing genre and aesthetics a lot. I'd argue Overwatch is *not* sci-fi, it only co-opts the aesthetics of sci-fi. Almost all the the technology in the game is essentially magic. Describing it as a piece of technology doesn't really make most of these characters make sense. As you mentioned, there's the commonly repeated quote that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic but we should also consider that sufficiently detailed magic is basically the same as technology. I do think Blizzard should just stop tiptoe-ing but it's mainly because I don't think it actually matters. If what they are worried about are the consequences of magic being real I don't know how that's any different from the batshit insane stuff tech can also do in this universe. You balance them the same way: don't establish feats that you think might be too much and/or handwave plotholes by just saying "that's beyond the limit" I don't think it's that deep. Overwatch doesn't need to be super logical. It's essentially a superhero comic book universe.
The Heir Chronicles! I really regret not putting it on screen, I didn’t realize until it went live that it wouldn’t be obvious that it’s heir instead of air.
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (3/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IVwR87OH0_A/mqdefault.jpg)
the wildest magic of all is how sombra's emp compels soldier's legs to stop moving so quickly
I mean most of the roster has cybernetic augmentations, so maybe it can be explained that way
Or how Cassidy is suddenly incapable of rolling while loading his gun.
@@hootax8980 yet reloads his gun while rolling
The EMP turns off his sneakers
Soldiers legs are in fact cybernetic. Part of his super soldier program
It's 1am and I'm about to watch a 30 minute video essay on a game I uninstalled a year ago
TASTE
You and me both
That's very responsible. I'm here at 2 am
Same bruv, I quit in season 4, the day it was announced that they’re cancelling story mode.
Don't feel too bad it's for for 4 and it's a game I've never played
Zenyatta in-lore is confirmed to use "something unknown" to float, since he's confirmed to not use any kind of thruster or field to float. Since it was confirmed he doesn't use any form of technology for it, it has never been explained or elaborated on at all. Everyone is looking for him specifically to learn what he has. He also isn't even a member OF the overwatch unit, just knows hanging around with them is where he's supposed to be due to "The iris" so nobody can kill him and dig through his mind to find the secrets.
“Sometimes what we call magic is just science we do not yet understand”
@@beanjuiice5569 and sometimes it's also just magic, we confronted the shadow lords for their secrets and that's the only plausible explanation for clingfilm.
I think the Skulduggery Pleasant series had a fun joke about fridge magnets actually being a magic item that made its way into the non-magic world so they had to do a whole load of shenanigans to make people believe it was because they were magnetic and not magic
Yeah Sigma and Zenyatta will talk to each other about that. "Ah, the Iris! We've met." "How.. fortunate for you."
Yeah the whole Iris thing is definitely magic to some degree. Like you’re telling me this robot can levitate without repulsors and has telekinesis? Yeah that’s magic.
but zenyatta doesnt hang around overwatch?? doesnt he hang around his temple for the most part??? like he wasnt a part of any of the pve missions, and when he IS shown, hes once again by himself in the monastery. when does he hang around overwatch in the lore? this is a genuine question, im not trying to attack.
It's always so funny to me when a setting with its own power system just also have magic, which is classified as an entirely different thing. Like Star Wars having magic and witches with powers totally separate from the Force is just so funny.
Genuinely one of my favourite weird things in fiction when they’re like “Oh, yeah, we have our own mysterious power in this fictional universe, but don’t get it twisted, it’s not magic. How do we know? Because there’s also people doing actual magic and it’s different.” It’s so stupid, I love it so much.
See, the force IS magic. But they don't write it that way because that would dumb it down and make it way less interesting.
@@TheViveros the entire rwby universe in a paragraph
@austinmcmahan6267 how would that dumb it down? It's a descriptor lol
@@plus9775 a lazy descriptor. Zero thought put into it
What im getting from this is we need an American character with a magic bald eagle
So Cassidy?
@@kimicrewe4443 Cassidy but he rides around on a giant eagle
@@pokimanefartcompilationWe're still waiting on that robot steed.
@@pokimanefartcompilationNow THATS a better way to let him hinder than have it be a grenade
You mean Peacemaker?
The level of technology in overwatch is so stupidly high that blizzard can just say "oh yeah kiriko is actualy covered in nanobots and they desintegrate her here and recreate her near only near teammates because she sparkled them with her nanobots too"
Kiriko nanobotted all over the place.
its makes more sense that she teleports through the spirt world using it as a wormhole than nanobots doing all of that, the whole plot is about the omni struggle of them basically being alive and having a soul spirits fits in better
Ah yes, the Star Trek version of teleportation that is basically a murder/clone device.
I mean... Sombra can do it, Tracer can travel in time-space, Sigma is in love-hate relatoinship with gravity
@@Chameleonred5 Yeah if that was the actual lore reason I'd be fucking terrified and go on the Star Trek conundrum again. That stuff plagued my nightmares for so long
This reminded me of a scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron when the scientist was trying to explain Quick Sliver's and Scarlet Witch's powers. I found myself a bit put off because in the back of my mind I was like "the writers seem really embarrassed about anything supernatural or magical". A lot of media in the mid 2010's seemed to be that way. It was like the "nerd culture" of the time was obsessed with being "rational and logical" in order to be smart and taken seriously.
I mean, I enjoy that. Feels dumbed down and lazy to just say magic. I love when it has scientific explanations even if it isn't real. It's much more interesting to relate to stuff like electromagnetism or something than to just say "magic!"
I'm a science nerd. Also, the beauty of overwatch is how science-y it is. Genetically altered monkey, time slipping, artificial decay, much more interesting than to say "this person just has magical abilities."
the funniest thing was that, after whedon left, the Russos were just like "fuck that noise, Magic is here and its fucking rad"
@@austinmcmahan6267 The origins of sandman and a werewolf are both equally supernatural, and the only reason people treat them differently is because people nowadays use technology they don't understand in a daily basis. "Magic" often has the same level of gestured explanation as the sciencey stuff. The only real difference is sciency stuff implies that someone who isn't you actually knows what's going on, which is a more familiar feeling than "oh yeah no one knows why that happens".
Becoming a living supernatural phoenomenon due to falling into a particle accelerator or radiation or unexplained "experiments" is no more thoughtful than if it was due to being born in december 25th on a full moon to a family of 6 younger sisters or some family lineage bullshit or some elder forgotten god.
Science is cool.
@@austinmcmahan6267 The fact you think any of those examples are 'scientific' in any meaningful way, but magic is ICKKYY, is absolutely hilarious, and just goes to show you don't actually care about MuH ScaCienCe in any way, just the appearance of it.
listing how the supports heal:
-lucios healing music
-zenyattas healing orbs
-"moiras healing piss" i was NOT ready for that shit
I came looking for this comment, I had to rewind cause HER WHAT??? LMFAOO
whenever i play Moira i always tell my friends to get in my golden shower when i heal them
Her ‘Gatorade’ helps replenish electrolytes. Be sure to drink a sufficient amount during wartimes.
Im here JUST 4 THAT HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA
Zenyatta's healing balls
That throwaway about moiras healing being piss at 7:15,its a long running meme but hearing it brought up in a lore video makes me realize it would absolutely be in character for her to heal with piss and just expect her unknowing team mates to be fine with it
You can't spray someone with piss without them finding out.
@@Jartran72Science finds a way.
@@Jartran72 If she would manage to make healing piss, she would defenitely be able to find a way to cover the smell with something else
Snipin’s a good job mate, it”s good work, out of ‘ours, and I guarantee you’ll never go ‘ungry…
I would've honestly bought "nanomachines, son" as an explanation, but the "spirits" could easily be a set of benevolent but still alien artificial intelligences, each favoring a particular family for arcane reasons. They might live on the net, or on satellites, and project themselves through things like swords, bows, omnics, etc.
Exactly! Spirits or deities that now have a way to project themselves because of humanities advancements!
So, Digimon?
Spirits most of the time, at least in my eyes, are about trancendental beings of pure amaterial substance being granted reality through patterns, rituals or some embodying structure.
It makes TOTAL sense for a world with insane technology such as hard light, time travel, omnics etc to suddently and without people realizing to have invited stuff like warhammer machine spirits to have more of a tangible presence in the world where before they'd at most make a leaf fall off a tree or a chill to go up your spine.
i really wished they made the spirits like ancient nanomachines that somehow got sent back in time (like tracer) and became one with the earth, developing over time, to become the magical beings in this world.
@@TyBe-uo4ud that's a super interesting idea!!!!!
The interaction with zenyatta and Sigma
SIg: "Oh the Iris! We've met!"
And then Zen responds:
Z: "How...fortunate for you."
Sigma has had some interaction with this higher power the omics access...it is possible to work more with this one. I'd love to see it. This interaction is pretty neat to me.
I wonder if Zen doesn’t fully believe Sigma - and it’s possible that Sigma *may* just have hallucinated it. Man’s brain did get ripped apart by a black hole, to be fair lmao
@@TheViveros I like to think that Sigma is actually just old-man joking at least 30-40% of the time, but nobody gets it because of the other 60-70% he's genuinely off his rocker. Like claiming he's met the Iris to Zen is just a poor-taste joke to try to break the ice, or when Moira comment's on how he's been quieter then usual and he utters some complete non-sequitur about frogs or particle colliders just to tease her back. But then again, I'm not sure if any blizzard writer has thought about it as much as I have...
"Oh yeah i met robot jesus, he sings to me sometimes"
"you fuckin WHAT"
“Did you see him with your eyes or with your mind?”
“It is the saaame 😭”
it's worth considering sigma is not all there. him having met the iris could be a result of his insanity
I see Genji's deflect as a lite version of Zen's Transcendence. Like Zen suddenly have multiple arms while protecting his surrounding while Genji needs to manually move his "arms" to protect himself. I'd like to think that Zen taught Genji how to transcend but he cannot just grasp it yet. He can only do the "multiple arms" part.
I love this idea, thank you for the headcanon man
I thought the multiple arms was just a visual representative of Genji moving his arms really quickly to deflect everything.
I don't think he's actually sprouting more arms to do it.
This is hardly the case. Rather Zen just enters a state that literally allows him to nuh uh ignore damage because for a brief while he's above what's bodily. "I can have a sword ran through my body and not blink an eye", stuff like that.
But mechanics wise this is just healing so powerful it surpasses basically all damage income, so we can also see this as a kind of invigorating presence that boosts the allies' morale up to the point they forget about injuries, similar to Brigitte's Rally. Or Zen literally just heals himself and the party because this is the simplest answer.
@@pokimanefartcompilation most likely the case tbh
We literally see Genji deflect in the Dragons cinematic, it has nothing to do with transcendence.
He's a cyborg, so he moves fast. There's nothing more to his speed than that.
My favorite thing is that Overwatch 2 also added a Zenyatta and Mercy interaction where they pretty much go "well, maybe what some call magic is just advanced science!"
Mercy: I refuse to believe that your healing is magical!"
Zenyatta: What seems like magic is sometimes science we don't yet understand.
Only to release Kiriko and go "oh hey, ACTUAL magic!!"
To add to why Magic could push the omnic plot is that you could make it that magic as a whole, or at least most of it requires the user to have a soul. The fact that Omnic basically would have their own branch in this magical tree is solid proof of their existence as equal lifeforms who have an actual life despite them not having access to human type Magic they still have it so the existence of the iris Magic more or less forces the wider public to see that omnic are like them despite not being organic. You could do so much if you just opened the Pandora box of fictional magic that would improve the story if done right. You could even have some people who view Sym and Lifeweaver and hard light users as heretics with their hardlight tech and see it is advancing too far too quickly. I mean, Symmetra is using only light to transport people from point A to B in seconds, and Lifeweaver is making a tree or something. I still don't fully get him, to be honest, but still you could do a lot with people having an aversion to cybernetics to alter the body or hardlight as a whole. And you can have people like Sym, for example, see Magic as something too unpredictable and too unstable to really put faith in, hence her opting to use cold tech that is similar to magic
lifeweaver connects hardlight tech and nature.
Lifeweaver has the technology to create literal lifeforms from light. Technically he has the key to create biological beings made of flesh just from pure light, what is crazy.
i know the secrets of the Shimada i wont tell you.
I don't do guesses, what's your prize
No you don’t.. heh
It’s superpowers, not magic. They touched on this in the kiriko mythic season, they have a nexus that they can tap into much like omnics can, it’s hard light manipulation. Hanzo’s and genji’s dragons aren’t mythical creatures they are just hard light constructs. Kiriko’s teleport abilities are a result of tapping into that said nexus, hers is more centered around time dilation, hence why her ultimate allows allies to move and shoot faster, her suzu freezes and even can reverse certain effects placed on the body due to time manipulation, her healing ofuda are just healing constructs created through biolight
This is not magic it’s just superpowers.
@@rafaelwells7247Yeah, so much more realistic!
Yeah, dude. If they're just hard-light constructs, then more than just Shimadas could wield the dragons.
Something something japanese warcrimes
“Fem robot Jesus sacrificed herself on a mountain in Nepal” LMAOO that line made me laugh so hard 💀😭😭
Also “gay people which we know is unrealistic”
@@The_god_of_reeeeeeeee I can't tell if they were being serious with that or not.
@@caldercockatoo2234 given that after they said it you can hear a slight laugh as they speak, i assume it was a joke
@@caldercockatoo2234 "for legal reasons thats a joke"
A fun character concept I've brainstormed is a foil to Moira, which also helps to expand the vague "magic" thing going on in Overwatch. The character is a support hero from Ireland, like Moira, but she channels her abilities through her connection to a forest spirit. The basic idea is that her family comes from a long line of druids who have kept this forest spirit safe and secret from the rest of the world.
At the very least, Blizzard just needs to add another "magic/spirit" hero from a culture other than Japan.
Isn't moira literally a foil to Mercy already
@@ink3487 Yes, she is.
so something akin to skye from val, that'd be cool ig
@@ink3487 Moira falls into the "mad scientist" archetype, as opposed to the "humble healer" of Mercy. In terms of personality they're foils, but in terms of abilities a druidic character would be a very good foil
I thought of a character that I could put in many of my projects but I also thought would make a good OW character with a unique passive. It's a man turned into a will'O'wisp by a priestess and spiritually tied to a gaint voodoo doll like body that looks to be made of a strong potatoe sack like fabric full of sand. He figured out the will'o'wisp can leave the artificial body but not far because it is tied to it, the wisp can only go about two arms length from the body ( the wisp also can look away from himself. Aswell as phase through walls and around corners if close enough) and he need to learn to control his ragdoll like body. There is more to it but not important. His fighting style is by using centripetal force to hit his enemys with heavy punching bag like arms and legs. Something like Capoeira.
TLDR: I think if they ever do that, they should make it psychic powers/ESP instead of straight up magic. I know it's essentially the same thing, given a different coat of paint, but I do think the way it's presented is important to keep the story's established tone and genre. Overwatch puts a lot of emphasis on science and human ingenuity, so something that can still be explained and used through tech would feel more appropriate.
- - - -
Personally, I feel like calling it magic wouldn't really work, mainly because magic as a term is firmly grounded in fantasy as a genre.
However, there IS a term for "magic" in science-fiction, and that is psychic powers/ESP. To me, it feels a lot more sci-fi while keeping the same purpose.
You could even worldbuild the idea that people just called it magic for the longest time, because they didn't really understand it.
And maybe there was tech developed to make use of that power, kinda like a magic focus.
Maybe the reason Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko's powers manifest as japanese spirits is because it's tied to how they view their abilities because of their families history/legends (if just subconsciously). Maybe strong enough psychic powers just manifest as sort of psychic constructs that other people can see.
You could even tie it back to how omnic can achieve seemingly-supernatural abilities through spirituality, as you mentioned. Maybe having some kinda spiritual experience is a way to unlock one's psychic powers, for any number of reasons.
Psychic powers were essentially the last gasp of magic in a materialistic society, so I think using them in this context would be excellent.
Sombra emailing herself to her translocator is genuinely hilarious
Bro dropped one of the hardest transitions @10:30 and thought we wouldnt notice
the only consistency between omnic magic and shimada (and kiriko) magic is that they are getting magic from a higher power
omincs from the iris and the Japanese characters from spirits
this also solves at least some of the problem of how you narratively explain the limits: you can only do the amount of magic granted to you. If you are not given the magic to do something, you can't do it.
This reminds me of a voice line interaction between Zenyatta and Sigma where Sigma causally mentioning that he met the Iris, so human can interact with this power. Does this mean that Sigma is a little bit magical?
@@Delathers2651 i mean he's the guy whp can create black holes out of nowhere and fly
@@ДюсековИльясactually why does he fly? I don’t remember his story did he get gravity powers or did he meet the iris and it wasnt just a joke and zerlies for the same reason zen does
@@tastedivinefury2198Sigma’s backstory is basically that he tried harnessing a black hole, but it went wrong. Black holes affect gravity, and iirc gravity was talked about or mentioned in the origin story, so yeah there’s something there.
I only really know stuff from the origin story, so there might be additional info I don’t know.
@@SauceyRedHNI heard that the melody he hears is the same melody the omnics hear from the iris or smth? No clue if it's true bc I can't find any info on it but that's interesting
There’s no reasonable explanation for how the dragons and spirit Fox work barring ridiculously high-end technology. They should just bite the bullet and say it’s magic.
It's neither of those, spiritual ≠ magical
The kitsuny and the dragons aren't tec, but they aren't magic either
@@sthepcorms6747I think we should start calling it spiritualism. Because it is magic, but magic sounds too casual
@@sthepcorms6747 I’m lost on how a fox that lets you grant immortality, heal with paper charms, regulate bodily functions and teleport out of thin air is not magical
@@marngao i mean, a lot of what humans can do could be considered magic if we weren't so used to it
@@Mazapan404 there is a reason why is 2 differences, first cultural differences the fox and dragon spirits are a real life thing they are things that people believe in, calling it magic would be disrespectful. second off all its divine power not magic, they call upon spirits instead it coming from them, they're mana or any onther, were spiritual power come from gods or lesser gods.
As much as I'd be down with blizzard embracing magic, as it allows for more design iteration, I could see them go the Zenyatta route, where the spirit magic is actually a form of science that no one, including the users of it understand yet.
Though I don't know if there's a huge distinction between that and straight up magic.
At that point it's basically magic. Or at least practically speaking it's magic.
All magic is "a form of science" in some regard. Science is the process of understanding our universe. If magic exists then the science of magic will be trying to explain and understand magic.
Science isn't some diametrically opposed force to magic, it's a mindset of curiosity, experimentation, and documentation. Wizards are quite literally magic scientists.
Reaper is lowkey magic too bruh he legit used to eat peoples souls
yeah, back when it was rumored that he was the result of a failed Mercy Rez. And thus ended in the "middle" turning him undead. They scrapped that and made him Moira's pet project.
@@RikkeDK1996 Back when Moira wasn't in the game yet and the implication was that he was a failed first attempt at a Rez, I considered the fact that Mercy canonically uses healing nanomachines. The universe called them "biotics" and they're the same thing that Soldier: 76 uses to heal.
My theory was that Reaper was the result of Gabriel Reyes' corpse being consumed and incompletely reconstructed via Mercy's nanomachinery, and due to the malfunction the nanobots (which would have to scan your brain to restore memory) Absorbed his consciousness and then instead of implanting it _into_ the reconstructed body, they overwrote their programming.
Essentially, under the failed Mercy Rez interpretation, Reaper was not a poorly-healed Gabriel Reyes but instead a cloud of barely-structured nanomachines that _think_ they're Gabriel Reyes, and are constantly in a state of trying and failing to reconstruct him fully. The "souls" he thinks he's consuming from the drops he had as his passive ability at the time weren't actually souls: they're the remaining biotic nanomachines left over from that person's past healing sessions, or he's subsuming their corpses to fuel his constantly-failing regeneration.
@@Splitcyclewastaken This is such an unbelievably cool explanation!
I think... Reaper is interesting as he's still that. He's still this reformatting and decaying person. A buncha atoms in a trench coat. Him getting health on hit (or was it a kill), could be him just completely latching himself onto someone and stripping their lifeforce, much like Moira does to function. Actually... literally just use Moira as the core concept for what Reaper represents. The only reason why Moira regens her healing meter and self-heals in this difference is because she also experiments on herself. It's likely she's hooked up to her tech to sustain herself.
I just find the creepy bio-radiation thing to be fun.
@@Splitcyclewastaken U are a god
So as a japanese guy, here is my opinion
Overwatchs portrayal of japan is very backward, Hanamura was a very pretty map but it enforced very stereotypical tropes of japanese culture, look at Lijiang Tower, its more about showing a realistic and positive look on chinese culture while still feeling very chinese in style its not some super over the top chinese temple or castle with giant dragon statues everywhere to make sure you know its china. every japanese hero needing magic somewhat fills a poor stereotype that these heroes because theyre japanese must have magic to be unique, imo hanzo and genji would be perfectly fine with out the dragons (lore wise) and honestly without magic their relationship more complex since its their blood that connects them not the stupid dragons. its almost like the dragons only were made for symbolism and for the cool scene in the animated short , Blizzard had no ideas for kiriko and said F it, fox magic
spirits and magic aren't the same thing tho, in Mexico we have spirits and magic and they are separate things same goes for Japan you should know that if you're from Japan
@@Kishiiknight They are effectively the same thing. Unexplained and unexplainable phenomena that do not even pretend to operate by real-life rules of physics.
don't forget the part where the 3 japanese characters are a kunoichi, ninja and kyudo (basically the only 'ancient tradition' characters in the game), 2 of the 3 can double jump and they can all climb walls... blizzard went so hard on the anti-racist that they ended up circling back to racism again
@@Ska1high at this rate they would release another JP character who is a Samurai wielding an Odachi and rides a spirit horse or something
@@Chameleonred5 No
There are SO many wonderfully unique myths and legends among all the worlds cultures related to magic, they really should do something with them.
-an estranged kid/sibling/other family member of Torb that has taken his craft in the direction of Norse Runic magic
-somebody with a contract with a Djinn that helps fight alongside them in maybe a turret ability or Bob-like ult. Especially since japanese mythical creatures seem real why not others?
-illari seems VERY fantasy as well they can do something with a helios or godly celestial body
Idk im mostly a Norse and greeco roman nerd but im sure every civilization in history has had similar things you can pull from
- A Jewish Moses inspired hero whose abilities are based on the 10 plagues and other stuff Moses did.
- A Medusa looking hero (or Talon mercenary) who can turn people to stone
- Some dude based on HP Lovecraft stuff and can summon horrors from other worlds as his power (like Sigma kinda but not science based)
@@mariustan9275 with magic, you could straight-up have a vampire as a hero
Or maybe a druidic character harnessing the wrath of nature
An assassin drawing on the power of Cernobog (a god of darkness)
Hell, you can have a character who draws inspiration from hags and the Baba Yaga
Imagine trying to choose a religion in the overwatch universe.
"I could go with these ones but Genji from the overwatch cartoon that i watched as a child is a real guy and uses a real Shinto spirit as a weapon. So probably that one or the monks that live in the mountains and sometimes just transcend into a higher plane of existence"
I always wondered about this too. They could always lean heavily into "magic is just science we don't yet understand" and attribute magical abilities to some type of energy yet to be studied (kind of like what they did with hard light but framing it as a newer science)
might just be me, but the "this technology is too advanced for any of us to understand, even their wielders" doesn't make a whole lot of sense in most stories, as it's usually something you would see in post-apocalyptic settings like warhammer 40k, where humanity had a golden age, then they collapsed, and now they're re-discovering all the technology that was made during said golden age.
i don't know if this works in overwatch, mostly because the world doesn't read that way to me.
if instead we make overwatch a setting with very low magic, then this problem is mostly solved, as magic is, by default, hard to understand in a world where everyone has embraced technology.
I really appreciate you bringing up the aspect of mysticism and how Western media is so quick to tokenize and make Eastern cultures, indigenous cultures, and cultures that are foreign to them in general so different. It creates harmful stereotypes and makes room for cultural misinformation and fetishization which is incredibly harmful.
I get what you mean but in overwatch every country has their think like America had the super soldier program, South Korea had their Mecha program, Germany has the Crusader program, and Japan has their spirit magic that's just how the world is and to be honest I really like that each country has their program that makes then Unique😊
I’m just happy that people agree with me that having ONLY Japanese characters be able to do magic feels… kind of orientalist. It’s like Japan is propped up as some magical fantasy land by westerners, rather than as a real place with its own rich culture just like every other country around the world.
Anyways, here’s my pitch for establishing magic in Overwatch:
Spirits in this universe are supernatural beings who possess people and give them special powers, and take on different forms based on their culture. I think this could be flexible enough for it to work with what we already have, and be able to represent other cultures. Also, it would make creating limits a bit easier since a spirit’s powers and limits can be tied to mythological creatures which will make them more familliar to us and easier to understand (also explaining why the Japanese character’s spirits look like cultural elements from Japan).
But that’s just one idea, they could also use telepathic powers as an explanation or even say that certain mythological creatures just straight up exist and we’ll get to play as a mermaid or something at some point.
I prefer to use the suggestion I once saw in a tumblr post: Overwatch is a future setting where Shintoism is canon to its reality. It depicts a future where Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko all have spirit powers because they're participating in a religion that also happens to match their reality.
Describing a religion as "canon". Gives me a grade A Aneurysm.
I feel like Illari lowkey has a similar “sort of magic sort of spiritual” style of abilities as the japanese characters. Her powers are rooted in the spirituality of her culture instead of science as well.
I think Arcanum is a great example of magic and tech. Tech works by following rules, magic works by breaking rules. And that's also why they mess with eachother
Spiritual robots is the hardest fucking concept in Overwatch and it’s a genuine shame how underused and wasted is. Our antagonist is a religious leader, but instead of a genuine conflict of interest and an insurrection based on racial identity and faith, we get just brainwashing machines.
And the idea of seeing Genji “regain his soul” as he embraces his nature as a machine is too good to trash it by explaining the Shimada techniques as just tech
I'm saving this video to my Writing Advice playlist. I've been working on a fantasy series for a few years, and my magic system is based on the one in Dungeons & Dragons, but I've cut out a lot of spells and changed the way others work for the sake of what I think is better storytelling. What you say about magical vs. non-magical people and having to be reductive in settings with magic is good advice for anyone looking to create their own fantasy (or sci-fi) world.
i think i might keep that in mind as well. Those were good points indeed
One old theory I really like is that the "spirits" are extremely old, extremely advanced technology that got passed down through the generations.
Under this theory, the dragons (Kiriko didn't exist at the time but still fits the theory) are large advanced hardlight projections, similar to symmetra's constructs but turned up to 11. Nobody remembers how to make them, but they could theoretically be replicated and are based in technology. The myth and mystique surrounding the Shimadas is cultivated to discourage others from attempting to steal the technology of the dragons. The same goes for why they all train so rigorously from birth.
Sadly, this theory got lost to time and the devs went for the "just don't question it" method.
tbh I think "there was extremely advanced ancient technology" is a bigger logical leap than "there's magic"
@@ahdog8 Agreed. We're working with presumably usual human history, as the crisis did not happen long ago or last long enough for such technology to be lost. So who'd have the means to make this sci fi tech? Aliens?
You are literally opening a can of worms pointing to Previously Advance Civilizations.
Makes sense now with archeologist character why Talon and various organizations are so much into ancient civilizations in OW.
Overwatch, the one timeline where Graham Hancock was correct. Now there is a take I wasn't expecting, but one that could certainly work. Hell, we know the Iris is a thing, who is to say that it wasn't discovered before and Omnics are the first ones to have harnessed its power.
Fuck it, let's go all the way. Atlantis was a thing and it really did sink under the ocean. It was hyper advanced and parts of its tech spread across the world. The myths and heroes of old actually has some level of truth to them as they where the few that got access to Atlantean tech, but at the time it was seen as magic. As Zenyata quoted; Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
As a side note, Clarke's three laws are in general quite insightful.
I’m sorry but there is nothing scientific about Moriah. My girl is a vampire mage.
His point is not that she's scientifically accurate, it's that she is able to be explained by Overwatch's scientific rules while Hanzo, Genji, and now Kiriko never could
Mariah is a literal scientist tho
How dare you, she's a biologist!
Monique is definitely a scientist that just wanted to cosplay a dark sorceress
@@imaadhaq540 what about sigma i don't think he can be explained by ow he uses black holes controlled by his mind
Zen: Magic is just science we don't know about.
Magic is weird science.
@@_V.Va_ you could see magic as manipulation of elements, mana and stuff, which could technically be called some form of chemistry and physics and stuff
It just depends on what degree the understanding of "how magic works" is in the world/universe
People are joking that Japan works the same way as it does in Guilty Gear, but I think we should reach and say Overwatch and Guilty Gear are in the same universe
I appreciate the attempt here but all tech in the guilty gear universe is explicitly using magic, they have stopped using electricity altogether since 1999
Didnt Japan get nuked by That Man in GG
@@raidencolanot by That Man, but by Justice
Overwatch isn’t just sci-fi, it’s optimistic futurism. Having spiritualism in there makes sense, especially having that spiritualism have meaningful positive impact. Overwatch is utopia-adjacent.
ram is basically a mage with a staff, but keeping it tech and not magic fits the ow universe more because it's supposed to be our earth
there are comments from like 6+ years ago of devs saying the dragons are tech not magic at blizzcon
this misconception comes from people wanting everything to be explained, when the angle should be future tech is so advanced it looks like magic
i think keeping it tech based is rare for a super hero universes and it's kind of what sets it apart from dc/marvel or even valorant
At least Valorant explains it by saying how Radianite basically causes mutations that gives people powers. Kind of like genetic mutations in X-Men. These powers are scaled differently, ranging from agents like Jett creating non-lethal blasts of wind to agents like Iso who can literally trap you in an alternate dimension. Then we have agents who blur that line like Cypher, Breach, Chamber, and Harbor who are all just regular people, but have access to advanced tech that make them stronger than some Radianites.
Overwatch doesn't really have that ambiguity. The Japanese heroes stick out like sore thumbs compared to everyone else. The OW devs dug themselves into a hole.
@@inplane9970there's not really a hole - the whole point here is that it doesn't need explaining. It's sufficiently advanced tech, you getting bent out of shape over it is your own problem.
@@elnekosauce Nobody is getting bent out of shape over OW. It's just thematically mediocre and squanders any lore potential the series had. Which is fitting considering people just mindlessly play the game now ever since Blizz stopped giving a hoot, rather than seeing how cool the whole OW universe really is.
Games cannot survive just on gameplay alone. It's the thematics, the lore, and the aesthetics that creates a healthy emotional connection to a series. You grow to genuinely love the characters and the worldbuilding because it's interesting.
@@inplane9970omg someone who knows the Val and ow lore? Idk why but when I get into a game/show I learn every single bit of lore, inside and out, I know everything LMFAO
But the Japanese heroes stick out like a sore thumb when all the others are all more or less tech themed and make sense. Tracer has a sort of time machine chest plate. Sigma got in a lab accident and was experimenting with gravity and can manipulate gravity. Pharah has a rocket launcher and jetpack. But Hanzo, Genji and Kriko? Summon spirits and maybe gods onto the battlefield and really stick out. Since severely changing them would be unpopular as heck maybe just have more clearly magic heroes. To be honest it really stretches my suspension of disbelief to try to justify summoning energy dragons with tech when they come out of nowhere and Hanzo said only Shimada clan members can control the dragons, like it's a blood brother power. Just say it's magic. Or spiritual. Or just calling on the divine.@jayreese8522
I always thought it would be relatively easy to explain the Shimada bros' dragons away, like Hanzo's could be similar to hard light, a kind of nano-cybernetic advancement contained in his tattoo, which produces like, a damaging hologram. And Genji's dragon almost seems more for show than anything, but it could be allowing him to cut through the air with more velocity, or it's indicative of an internal process that powers him up in other ways.
And then there's Kiriko, leading me to believe they did not think about it as hard as I have.
Genjis dragon cant be be just for show if it completely countered and attacked Hanzo back at him in the "Dragons" short and also gives him power when using the blade. Also Kiriko is clearly magic
I never forgot Reaper’s original passive collecting the “souls” of whoever he kills to recover health. To me, this always implied that there was a supernatural element to the game’s lore despite being sci-fi.
I remember a developer update back in 2017 when Kaplan mentioned that he had been asked about this pssove’s relevance to reaper’s lore. He said that there were times when he had to put aside lore relevance in certain circumstances to meet and execute their vision for the gameplay of some heroes.
I'm glad somebody thinks about these things and makes interesting vids like these. My logic basically goes "Overwatch stars superheroes, magic exists in superhero fiction, and mages are cool."
I stopped caring about OW's lore and story long, long ago, but just from a gameplay perspective, yeah, I'd play as a wizard. I'd use magic to tank for my team, absolutely. Let's do this.
I think dismissing Illaris abilities as technological just because “she’s harnessing the sun” is pretty poor in the magic vs science debate as well. She’s not using any tech to do it right? Just something she unlocked inside herself. Sounds pretty magical to me.
She is using tech. The abilities within herself exist in theory and they're trained prior to their augmentations, but those powers aren't unlocked until the solar threading ceremony where the Inti warriors are augmented. That's why nobody knew how powerful she was until then, and why it managed to wipe everyone out.
@@TheViverosso they harness an innate power with science, sounds like a mix
Which is what I said in the video?
@@TheViveros But you also say the Japanese are the only ones with magic abilities
@@TheViveros You contradict yourself a lot, but in the end I fully understand what you mean even though it felt like a maze
5:16 for a bonus to the “it’s scifi tech, it doesn’t have to be realistic” thing, it doesn’t have to be realistic like you said but it has to be realistic in universe, like the given examples all the teleportation is science based (self digitization, hard light travel, disassemble and reassemble, being a non temporally locked human, etc) and have more or less believable reasoning as to why they can teleport
14:00 if they do classify the Japanese trio as magic they do have at least one thing on it as a downside: genji has an entire set of vents on his cybernetics with the sole purpose of venting away as much heat as possible from his body after he uses his dragons so it’s safe to say whether it’s magic or not it puts his body under a lot of stress and makes it heat up drastically, another is the three seem like they need some body part to channel the power through, kiriko seems to use her eyes as those are what glows when she uses her “summon” ability and hanzo uses his tattoo on his arm so it’s likely safe to assume genji does something similar as well under his cybernetics
the only magic in the game is where reaper keeps getting his guns
Kiriko alone has introduced so many lore related issues that I have a hard time enjoying the character. I feel like she really needed to be fleshed out and separate from the Shimada bros
Its always been my personal head cannon that magic is real just incredibly rare and so hard to do and learn that its often less efficient than just using tech. My supporting evidence is that the only characters capable of it are humans trained from childhood by people with generations of knowledge and supercomputers so strong that they can think and feel.
My fan theory is that Moira is magic too . Like, she was a scientist, and dabbled on dark magic to get her powers.
One detail that seems to be overlooked in this video is that not all Japanese characters in the Overwatch universe are magical or have access to spirits. It's specifically Hanzo, Genji, and Kiriko who are part of clans associated with spirits. Their clan's prominence likely comes from the power they obtained by worshiping these spirits, making them somewhat superhuman. Genji and Hanzo don't have healing abilities; instead, they harness the destructive force of the dragons they revere. Kiriko, on the other hand, can heal because her grandmother taught her to channel the supportive energy of the fox spirit. The powers Kiriko derives from the fox spirit-teleportation, healing, cleansing, invincibility-are all supportive in nature, with teleportation providing an escape mechanism. Kiriko's combat skills, however, come from her mother, not the fox spirit.
yes I see the Iris the same way its an spiritual entity that heals the body, one achieves a connection to it by deep meditation I also wouldn't lump spirits and magic together as they are not the same, Gods don't use magic they have power or command elements and reality, same with these guardian spirits
I absolutely love the way you describe the difference between scfi and magic. Scfi settings is asking what can technology do and magic settings is asking what magic can't do. To many times I see magic settings not getting that idea right or not answering the question at all.
Anyways pretty cool video.
Ironically Battleborn hit this balance with characters like Orendi and Thorn existing alongside characters like Caldarius and Marquis. You've even got characters that blur the line like Alani who has a deep reverence for water but is using nanotech to manipulate water rather than magic. They even had this in borderlands.
alternatively, they could take a page out of white wolfs books.
Awesome, but Impractical: Magic itself if you're not really careful. Any spells a mage casts that look or feel like real magic makes reality really unhappy, and likely to complain about it in the form of curses, monsters, and ultimately ejection from reality altogether. Mages instead are forced to keep their magic Boring, but Practical; sticking with effects that potential onlookers would either quickly rationalize away or not even notice in the first place.
While reality apparently has certain basic fundamentals, for the most part, the laws of reality exist because mankind ''believes'' it exists by certain laws. Each average human, or "Sleeper," perceives the world in certain terms, and their perception contributes to the Consensus of reality. The Consensus reinforces how reality works, which in turn reinforces the Sleepers' beliefs, and so the cycle continues. Mages are the exception, humans who've Awakened to their innate power: they've realized the truth of the world, and they have the ability to reshape it to their will.
A few things stand between mages and the magical playground of reality, of course. First, there are the competing paradigms: Every mage understands magic in different terms, be it "hyper-advanced science," "the divine emanations of the Almighty," or "the Old Ways", so trying to get any two mages to agree on anything is tricky. But they kind of have to, because of the second reason: The Technocracy. Long ago, when the mages actually did have their magical playground, there were a few too many who became Sorcerous Overlord and who made life even harder for the hapless majority of Muggles. In response, a group of other mages/scholars/knights/builders/etc decided to team up as the Order of Reason and fight the sorcerers (and vampires, and were-things and the Fair Folk, and so on) with Science/Art/Religion/Not Magic to make the world better for the average Joe and Jane. Well, they won... and in the process, they went a tad too far, until they had largely succeeded in stamping out any other reality save the non-magical worldview they endorsed.
In the Modern Day, the Technocracy has turned into an authoritarian and nigh-unstoppable conglomerate set on protecting the status quo by squashing "Reality Deviants", their "Unmutual Paradigms", and the free-will/wonderment of magic and human potential with them. And it's working, because if enough humans agree with the world you're giving them, Reality Itself changes to match that view. This leads to the final hurdle between the mages and their goals: Paradox. Do anything that's too explicitly magic, flaunt your ability to alter the way things have become, and Reality will give you a wedgie. In other words, because a mage believes he can fly, he can. Problem is, that's not what the current rules of reality say, and so it resists, sometimes even fights back. Presumably, if a mage were the last living being, they'd have near-godlike power and the opportunity to find out what the fundamental rules of reality are absent human belief. Fortunately for everything in existence, this is not the desired endgame for most mages.
I wish they went full CLAMP style and made the Shimadas/Kiriko and her Grandma just modern Onmyojis/Miko with mystical powers (the trope is so cool, but stuck in the 90's/2000's). Like, say they are familiars and the Shimadas were like magic assassins for hire(like the Sakurazukamori is in X and Tokyo Babylon), and in order to hide in plain sight they became Yakuza so the public would not mess with the magic side of the family, while having access to powerful people. Make Kiriko's family their rival, a family of protectors(and focus on Kiriko and the Yokai vs all of the yakuza/crime).
So, tech is 'positive' and magic is 'negative' in the sense of positive and negative space? That is, tech is defined by what *it* is but magic is defined by the boundaries it runs up against.
Something I should note: Lucio's healing music actually has some grounding in something real.
I don't know if the science ever actually shook out, but some studies were done showing that people exposed to cats during their recovery process were on average recovered faster than those who didn't.
The conclusion drawn from this was that the sound frequencies of a cat's purr mildly accelerated convalescence. Another study was done with just playing recordings of cats purring and the study as I recall led to similar results.
So Lucio's healing music may be based on or using that concept.
i like that additive vs subtractive worldbuilding idea, makes me think like what magic systems could be described additively. like maybe the middle ages mfs were onto something about alchemy, and future researchers find out how to make it work. then that basically is that worlds low level programming language for magic, to be expanded on with more complex methods, but its still rooted in alchemy.
because alchemy was something that was researched well enough, even if ineffective, there is a stable baseline, unlike 'magic'
Why has BlizzardOW just completely overlooked the reasonable sci-fi explanation of nanites inside of the ink of their tattoos. Since in the original Shimada cinematic, Hanzo's dragons clearly came out of his tattoos and not his bow. This also would be really strange, since the Shimada's are swordsmen, and he took up the bow in shame. So why would there be a special bow that also uses the Shimada dragons?
They should have just said nanites. Genji only has one because he lost a lot of his nanite ink with a good portion of his body. Hanzo still has all of his ink.
These nanites provide different utilities, like enhancing people and dealing damage. It's sci-fi, it's cool, it's reasonable, and it's expandable to any other characters within that circle.
Winton speaks perfect English, it's anatomically impossible for Gorillas to mimic human speech.
He's a genetically enhanced gorilla
he's a genetic experiment though isnt he? so hes not 1-to-1 with a regular gorilla
Thanks for reminding me of the heir series! When I was in middle school I read like the first 4 books up in 2 days i loved them so much
My copies of The Warrior Heir and The Wizard Heir are fully falling to pieces, I read those books over and over and over again lol
Magic do be existing in Overwatch 🤓
I had to watch this video on .75 speed because your talking speed is something else, man.
Great piece of content, did enjoy it.
I do think it’s worth noting that when the narrative team changed they seemed to change their stance on the “hard sci-fi”
Either that or they just stopped caring and refused to come up with an explanation for anything
for such a specific and niche topic i didnt think id be that interested in, you did a really good job at holding my attention with your commentary. great work!!!
I think ATLA manages to have an additive magic systen by starting with the premise of "control one of the 4 elements by straining yourself" and building off of that as the series goes instead of starting with the premise of just "magic"
kiriko is just a walking lore enigma in general
I feel like rather then magic, it's religious belief. Every "magic" comes from some sort of religious belief. Whether it be Zenyatta's healing (which canonically is pointed out to "not make sense" and "it just is" by a Mercy/Zen conversation) or Kiriko's "Fox Spirit" or Illari's whole society and how she wiped it out. Religion obviously exists within the Overwatch world and it has a big hand in a lot of things. Calling it "Magic" might be the way to go, however, as I think saying it's religion opens up a whole can of worms. But I think that's why they explicitly don't want to say it's "magic". Because it isn't. It's religion. They've essentially caused a problem for themselves and they have no way of fixing it.
Echo can duplicate the heroes with what you call magic and use their abilities with the her technology proving that this is all just sufficiently advanced technology disguised as magic.
I mean the lore makes it clear tech is in Japan too. All of Kirikos gang are teched up to shit, the Shimada are arms dealers and tech specialists. it just happens the three specific Japanese people in the game happen to derive their powers from spiritualism, seemingly because it was a foundational part of their family legacy.
Similarly in Cyberpunk, despite being technologically far more advanced than most countries, Japan actively seeks to keep old dated tradition alive even through all that advancement....Which I will add is NOT marginalization, that is.....A core fundamental part of the national identity of Japan as an IRL country. Japan as a whole keeps its traditions and its history heavily steeped into the very foundations of their society even in the modern era for better or worse.
It is not otherness, its not racism, Japan really IS like that historically. Only difference here is that apparently Kami are a real thing in Overwatch, and a select few clans still hold the tradition of staying in contact with them to gain their powers. Logically speaking this would mean technically anyone COULD tap into that power the same way Omnics can unlock transcendence, its just likely most people don't see a need to when tech is so easily and readily accessible to the masses.
Hell its made clear the Shimada are seen as weirdos for their choice of using dated weapons to begin with. Its more than likely with enough training and spiritual focus, others could unlock the powers of a spirit guardian.....but like....why the fuck would anyone do that when they can just replace their arm with a fucking railgun, or create miniature suns to eradicate their enemy?
TLDR: Easy explanation. Magic exists but.....Why the fuck would you spend 20 years training to do shit Frank from down the road can replicate with $500 and a weekend of medical therapy? The Shimada bros are already factually odd balls for favoring Katana and Bows (something many heroes comment on), the rest we see all use guns and specialized tech after all.
The historical thing is what strikes me the most, and the reason why this "drama" doesn't bother me at all. Like it's insane to me that the japanese government was so protectionist that they'd still fight with swords during a time where they already had electricity and steam engines.
This is a bit like an extension of that. Reality is crazier than fiction in this case, so obviously writers wanna play with that concept.
It is kinda racist? Why do only the japanese heros specifically have magic, the first two? Sure, thats fine! They are brothers after all. But kiriko makes it suspicious, why does she ALSO need a magic spirit? Can she not get cool kitsune *themed* technology?
Its not malicious racism, its weeb shit.
You know, If you want to give it a scientific explanation, just look to Psionic Powers from StarCraft (Another game from Blizzard)
In StarCraft, In Terrans (humans), The capability that being Psionic is passed down through bloodlines. What do we see with Overwatch? Only The Shimadas can control the Dragons. The Spirit Dragons are possibly connected to the psychic emanation of both Hanzo and Genji. Afterall, another form of Psychic is someone who can commune with SPIRITS.
In Starcraft, Kerrigan's psionic powers allow her to do typical psychic stuff (telepathy, telekinesis, etc). However, she is also seen to utilize it to create Energy Blasts that look very similar to electricity. And Hanzo is heavily storm-based - - Note the storm design on both his tattoos and The Shimada Clan in general. It's very possible that DragonStrike and DragonBlade are just large-scale Psionic Abilities that take the shape of dragons.
A very noticable trait of Psionic Powers in Starcraft is that they cause glowing eyes while they're in use, and just glow brightly in general. One of the key parts about Hanzo and Genji's ultimates is that they glow, and Hanzo's tattoo glows while casting DragonStrike.
In the Kerrigan vs Zeratul cinematic, Kerrigan uses her telekinesis to halt Zeratul in place, which causes creates a lot of noticeable wind. It would also explain Hanzo and Genji's ability to double jump, as it could be a telekinetic push from their Psionic Powers, as, In SC, Kerrigan was capable of levitation and even flight.
(Another small little bit, is that even in Starcraft, a Dominion Marine even jokes that it's basically just magic.)
So, it's NOT magic, just Psionic Energy.
VIVEROS VIDEO WOOOOO istg you're out here making some of the highest quality content its so good- very insightful!!
At the end of the day, everything is just magic with extra steps.
bro speaks extremely fast
it is CRAZY how good this video is, I did not expect this level of quality at all from a channel I've never heard of before about Overwatch lore of all things. Definitely going to watch all your other stuff, this is great
Hanzo and Genji's dragons never struck me as unexplainable magic. Hanzo has a holographic nano tech whatever Dragon projected from an implant in his tattoo that can use an arrow as a guiding system so it can be aimed, and the whole thing is voice activated. Genji has the same thing only he uses his laser sword instead of an arrow. Hanzo's other arrows don't read as magic to me at all, sonic arrow is literally just a sonar device strapped to an arrow. I agree that it looks like magic, and I think that's kind of the point. Humans invented all this fancy technology and decided to flavor it as mythical weapons and techniques from their histories and cultures, and frankly that's raw af. Germany made mech suits and decided to make them look like medieval knights. Mercy's got a device that shoots a beam of nano machines that heal people, and she turned it into the caduceus staff. Of course the Shimada clan got this tech and decided to make it look like a spirit dragon. As for Kiriko she just has a lot of bad writing issues in general, and from her animated short they do make it seem like magic, but her stuff can still be explained away. The paper has heat seeking nano machines, the suzu has the same tech as bap lamp but in like a grenade form. The teleport is a bit wonky, maybe its also heat seeking, and it comes from an implant in her eyes that she stole from the Shimada with also gives her the same hologram tech as Hanzo and Genji, but she decided to make it look like the fox spirit her ancestors believed in. also a side note in my personal opinion I don't think they should have explicit magic in overwatch. I think it would clash with the whole science flavored as magic thing they have going on.
In the animated short, Dragons, How does Hanzos dragons get overwritten by Genjis if it's his own implant, his sword would have to have fast hacking to guide and throw it back at Hanzo. The arrow also turns into two big dragons that hurt you somehow, so they can't be holographic otherwise, having it be flashy obvious dragons would be pointless. As for Kiriko, everything you've said is even more of a stretch, especially when you don't really explain how she teleports in the first place. Sure, Moira and Reaper are similar in terms of how their bodies dissapate, but at least their background is science related in the first place. The shimada clan background doesn't imply anything for their "tech", aside from being in the current world where everyone has some sort of tech.
I figured that the dragon and fox spirits are interdimensional beings. The dragons need an anchor to our plane of reality, so they make bonds with the Shimada family and in return, they allow the Shimadas to call them to their plane when they need to destroy things. Same thing with the fox spirit, which probably has some energy field that works like nano healing. Maybe? I'unno.
no the fox healing is a spiritual based ability it sends fox energy to the wound and it heals the soul of the person which also heals the body like JJK or Naruto
@@Kishiiknight What do you mean "no"? They're saying that's what they thought.
You're just throwing your headcanon on top of someone elses for no good reason. It's ok for you to share your own ideas, but you cannot claim the truth value of the thing you made up to be higher than theirs.
For some reason this feels like guilty gear. Only Japan gets all the cool magic stuff
My assumption is that the "magic" elements in overwatch are sentient nano machine clouds that took on the personas of these spirits from Japanese mythology, thus if the spirit can teleport people, the cloud understands that as a command it's able to execute with whatever technology it has implemented
Kind of a cop out but the tech is there in universe and it's a believable enough explanation
It is definitely a good point about stereotypes of Japan being a weird magical land
@@Kavukamari but every country has a mystical/spiritual side how is that a stereotype? the stereotype has always been that Japan is full of nerds building robots, they actually keep their temples and shrines preserved, have had a proud history of their old practices and rituals preserved as well to this day
Oooooo! 21:36. That is gonna be controversial. I like that take, hilarious you said it so bluntly.
Hi, I love your videos but I think on your Zen part you misunderstood what the game is saying
The implication that "humans cannot use the Iris so it is not magic" is like saying "a goblin cannot cast Fireball so it is not magic", being tied to specifically Omnic souls does not diminish from how it is bestowed to them from a higher divine plane
Hanzo, Kiriko and Genji could simply be imprinted tech protected by some very serious institutions like the Shimada clan and the Fox cult/temple. For all I know, Kiriko might have a tiny printer under her kimono where she simply keeps on printing her ofuda and shoving it into people. Hanzo and Genji could have a whole swarm of nano tech inside their tats that simply come alive on command to mess up everything on their way.
AND it can also not be that deep: all 3 japanese characters are much more related than the majority of the cast and it can make some sense that they share similar traits. Just like Brig and Torb. It's not like ALL japanese people are magical, just like it was shown on previous lore material. It's just that the 3 in-game japanese characters are. But ye, to choose to make your japanese in-game representation straight up magical-like ninjas is kinda problematic, but some people can also find very problematic the Overwatch take of Australia.
All that being said, after the launch of OW2 we can pretty much see that there was a change in what they envision for the game (lore included). I wouldn't be surprised if they decide that magic is, indeed, real anytime soon. Good vid!
Id like to add that its weird the japanese characters are just not allowed to use modern weapons
Instead of rocket Launchers, pulse rifles or fusion powered machine guns they get weapons from 1000s of years ago, like why does genji not have a gun, he was part of blackwatch who were known as no nonsense black-ops killers so why would they have a guy wjo leaves a ton of evidence everwhere by throwing ninja stars!?
Especially because it’s not like Japan does that now either. Like there aren’t modern Japanese special forces running around with kunai and throwing stars, for the Japan of Overwatch to get to the point where Genji and Kiriko and Hanzo are at it would’ve had to regress at least a couple centuries back from where we presently are today instead of advancing like everyone else. It’s so bizarre.
@@TheViveros Genji and Hanzo could very well be trained by a clan that likes to stay in there old ways plus it’s not like they reject technology entirely because Hanzo still uses technology.
You say that like the head of Blackwatch doesn’t dual wield shotguns that he tosses away when they’re out of ammo
To be fair, Reinhardt, Brigette, Ramattra, and Doomfist all have weapons that aren't guns, so it's not *just* the Japanese characters. (Even then, the Japanese weapons are comparatively low tech.)
It's less weird if you think of it as an analogue to their real world history. Japan used to be so protectionist when we came over there with our guns that they didn't widely adopt modern weaponry for hundreds of years.
Of course they aren't anymore currently (although there's still cultural holdovers from being isolated for such a long time). But there isn't really another country that has this kind of historical precedent so if you're looking to do the "low-tech isolationist country in a sci-fi world" trope, Japan is the obvious choice.
There being higher beings that can grant people magic but they all live in Japan (except one robot) raises so many larger world building questions
You can argue about it being the other way around, but for me giving more magic to other cultures would dillute what makes Japanese heroes stand out amongst the cast of unique characters though. I don't want to put unique hero identity and genuinely cool settings at risk of being more accurately representative of other's culture, Overwatch was founded upon a roster of stereotypes and tropes. Eventually you'll just ran into the same problem of hero uniqueness and diversity again, only this time the magic ones who were unique no longer are so. Just see any MOBA, where it all becomes little but aestethic differences in all but a very few rare exceptions, that's the end point you're looking at here.
It's the same reason I like Route 66 the best out of all the american maps, or Junkertown out of any of the Australian ones. It's exaggeration and overfixation over something people might associate with these countries blossomed into something very cool. These very same interpretations, even when wrongfully done, can give us beautiful maps like Dorado.
Japan being this way should be explained for sure -- it'd make for some very fun worldbuilding, personally I just always assumed it was the Shimada's who kept the whole ancient aesthethic going on- but I'd prefer it to stay this way and keep it's uniqueness rather than for it to become yet another normal, real world counterpart. Maps like Anubis, Volskaya Industries and Hanamura are a lot more interesting than others that take away the wildness like MIDtown or New Queen Street.
"A better example is the Heir Chronicles-" aaaaaand I very nearly spit water all over my laptop lol. My gods, I never expected to hear ANYONE reference those books outside of me and the one friend I managed to convince to read them.
What about psionics/telekinesis to explain this stuff? I feel like it can still safely fall within the sci-fi aspect without being magic
I love the way you write and express your talking points. It feels very reminiscent to the way I tend to think about these things, but i never really made a channel to talk about it online. A lot of the opinions ive had about overwatch, despite my love for it, tend to pop up in these videos and it makes me feel happy that I’m not the only one with the said viewpoint/opinion.
babe wake up! I so excited for this video!
At the risk of splitting hairs, I'd argue that magic as intrinsic quality is far from the default in fantasy - there are plenty of high-magic settings where everyone can do little spells to do things like dry their own hair with further magic development being the result of work, study, or both. Even in lower magic settings, it's very common to position the difference between Joe Everybody and a master magician as being akin to the difference between a layman and a scientist, or a professional artist, or a monk -- that is, magic within the setting requiring a lot of perseverence, or a specific mindset, or knowledge. There's even quite a few pieces of classic fantasy that position magic as being kind of a mystery cult -- here I don't use cult in the Waco sense, I'm specifically referring to things in the millieu of Orphism.
I would actually argue that unless a work is actively trying to say something about eugenics or hereditary royalty, this is a much better shape for a LOT of works to take, and I wish more authors would explore it rather than taking the comparatively simple route of "some people are just born magic". I would argue it makes a lot of worlds feel more open-ended, mysterious, and interesting.
In hindsight I suppose this doesn't really add a whole lot to the conversation, but I suppose I just wanted to talk about it.
My actual contribution to the discussion is this: I think they should confirm that the Japanese heroes are magic, but only after adding some batshit British ceremonial magician who does Hermetic-influenced spells and like... has a fucking gun or something. Just some jackoff invoking the Watchtowers for abilties or something. You know, "Fomalhaut behind me" (dash) "Regulus before me" (big blasty ult) etc etc. Extra points if they dismiss the Japanese characters as using holograms.
"some batshit British ceremonial magician" so, John Constantine?
@@lavernebennet7395 I like where your head is at, but no - John Constantine is an occult-flavored spin on the private detective character, and Marvel's approach to magic is generally pretty loosey-goosey. Which is fine - that's not the point of his stories, the point of his stories are having a hot grimy bisexual private dick save a leggy dame from the amulet of tindalphos or whatever.
By the way, I wouldn't object to a magical PI in Overwatch, I'm just saying that's not what I meant.
I'm talking about like, some upper-crust Golden Dawn type.
It is also worth mentioning that all of zens abilities afaik are NOT cannon to the real lore and are ONLY gameplay mechanics.
Even the floating?
Thats not a confirmed until we see something about him in lore.
Very interesting take. Loved this video essay. I've referred to a lot of the skills (even "science" ones like Moira's abilities) as magic when I explain Overwatch to friends who haven't played it. Like it's a "team FPS with magic and axes as well". Would be cool if they made it canon.
I always just imagined that the Shimada clan had access to a God program like Anubis, which provided them with technology so advanced it appears as magic to humans
How is Buddhist robot *NOT* magic?
Like, I get that he's not a spell caster or anything, but he's a robot that just manifested these energy powers unrelated to his actual construction.
Sometimes I like to leave a little trap in my videos to see who comments before finishing the video. This was one of those, because I specifically address this later on.
What's that series of books you talk about in part two called again? Couldn't find 'em
The Heir Chronicles! First one is called The Warrior Heir, then it’s The Wizard Heir, The Dragon Heir, and then I can’t remember the names of the last two.
@@TheViveros thank you! Understood air the first time. I'll check them out ^^
You should check out the book The Space Prodigal. It's magic vs technology with a grandiose story, complete with centaur civil wars, astronauts named with numbers, and even a giant evil space baby. I think I'm gonna read it again soon loll
My thoughts on this kind of thing is that the more magical characters, not just kiriko, ganji, and hanzo but also illari, and zen are still harnessing some kind of technology, they just don't fully understand it themselves. As such, they believe it to be spiritual, and are unreliable narrators when it comes to how their own abilities function. so zen doesn't actually know why his healing works beyond a vague connection to the omnic religious beliefs, just that it does. In the case of zen and illari we the audience just happen to be given more of an idea of what that technology might be and so it appears less magical. The fox and dragon spirits may well be powerful shimada technology that the youngest were given use of, but with a false spiritual explanation. In a way, they are the ipad kids of nanotech, they grew up natural users of the technology without knowing the details of it's function.
Side note, imo sigma is by far the most magical characters in the game in terms of raw abilities. He is also one of the *most* tech/science-coded characters, seems to have a decent understanding of how his abilities work when lucid, and even claims to have communicated with the omnic god(?). He is also literally insane. I don't think this is a coincidence- it may only be possible for most minds to comprehend the bleeding edge of ow universe tech in abstract, partly spiritual ways
There are some weird arguments in the video but I understand the feeling.
I think a major hiccup is that we are confusing genre and aesthetics a lot. I'd argue Overwatch is *not* sci-fi, it only co-opts the aesthetics of sci-fi. Almost all the the technology in the game is essentially magic. Describing it as a piece of technology doesn't really make most of these characters make sense.
As you mentioned, there's the commonly repeated quote that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic but we should also consider that sufficiently detailed magic is basically the same as technology.
I do think Blizzard should just stop tiptoe-ing but it's mainly because I don't think it actually matters. If what they are worried about are the consequences of magic being real I don't know how that's any different from the batshit insane stuff tech can also do in this universe. You balance them the same way: don't establish feats that you think might be too much and/or handwave plotholes by just saying "that's beyond the limit"
I don't think it's that deep. Overwatch doesn't need to be super logical. It's essentially a superhero comic book universe.
what's that book ya yapped about? sounds interesting, i want to read it
The Heir Chronicles! I really regret not putting it on screen, I didn’t realize until it went live that it wouldn’t be obvious that it’s heir instead of air.
@@TheViveros thanks for the fast reply and for the recommendation my guy
btw, yes, i did think you said air and couldn't find the damn book lmao