OK, I’ll be real with you guys, I haven’t played Overwatch in a good minute now. However, I still like keeping up with everything about Overwatch. The world that they’ve build and the characters that inhabit those world are fascinating and fun to watch. Recently, Overwatch revealed a brand new character called Ashe, a super dope looking girl with a shotgun and two friends who just happen to be robots. Now, I watched the reveal trailer, enjoyed the animation that came with it and moved on. Funny enough, I wasn’t aware that it’s a common thing to complain about diversity after each reveal.
So apparently, there’s talk that Overwatch isn’t doing enough for diversity. When I heard that, it confused the heck outta me. I mean, one look at that roster and already I’m bombarded with diversity. I dove deeper into this discussion and what I learned is that Overwatch has yet to add a Black woman in the game. Now, I took a second look at that roster and if we’re been technical, they kinda did. A while back, didn’t they introduce Efi Oladele, a Numbanian inventor that created a kickass robot named Orisa. Yeah I know, to be fair, technically she isn’t playable but her robot is playable. My point is that Blizzard aren’t afraid when it comes to been diverse, it’s kinda their stick at this point. However, I think it’s important that Blizzard adds a character that fits the narrative rather than adding a diverse character just to fit a quota.
Think about it. If Blizzard caved in and added a character because there was an outcry, that character may not be as appreciated and loved as the rest of her fellow cast members who were added in naturally. Creating a character isn’t an easy job. There’s a lot of questions that has to be answered to give them life and purpose. That’s why I find it weird that people are complaining about this. I dunno, I’ve said this in the past and I’ll continue to say it, I’d rather have characters that fills a purpose to the plot rather than a half-assed lazily crafted character that’s just there to fill the quota and gets easily forgotten. It’s almost impossible to add every ethnic and nationality to one game. To be honest as well, I’d consider Pharah and Ana to be Black women too as they hail from Egypt, an African country. Black people or people of African decent come in all shades of colour, so by definition, we already have two great playable black women and one young black girl as backlore in the game.
