Blizzard has released a string of excellent Overwatch animated shorts over the years. While the shorts are sublimely rendered and help to sketch out the backstories of the cast, Blizzard hasn’t neatly pulled together the sprawling narrative of this universe so far. The developers have pledged to do a better job of that in-game starting with Overwatch 2‘s sixth season, which gets under way in August. Before we get there, though, Blizzard is releasing an Overwatch anime.
The three-episode miniseries is called Genesis. The title and a trailer suggest that it will focus on the early days of the Overwatch task force, which was set up amid a global war against robots. The clip shows a glimpse of humans and robots living in harmony before an AI rebellion kicked off the Omnic Crisis. It features three heroes from the game — Reinhardt, Torbjörn and Ana — as well as Mina Liao, an AI researcher and fellow founding member of the Overwatch organization.
The teaser, which has a different animation style from previous shorts, suggests the miniseries will help to tie together some of the many disparate, transmedia strands of the Overwatch narrative before co-op story missions go live in Overwatch 2. The first episode will hit YouTube on July 6th and it’s just over five minutes long.
Overwatch fans have been begging for a show or even a movie based on the franchise for years. This miniseries might be as close as they get for now, but who knows? If it proves popular enough, Blizzard may be persuaded to invest in a bigger project that can put the Overwatch universe in front of a whole new audience. Meanwhile, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller says each of the game’s story missions will have an opening and closing cinematic to help spell out more of the narrative.
The rich, memorable cast of characters played a major role in making the original Overwatch a cultural phenomenon when it debuted in 2016. If Blizzard is successful in shining the spotlight more brightly on them again, that might help fans forgive the studio for some of the missteps it has made with Overwatch 2 recently.
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