Ever since the release of Overwatch in 2016, it’s been clear that the lore-rich world Blizzard created was one that was conducive to a large animated TV series or even a full-length cinematic feature.
With Blizzard’s release of the anime short series Genesis over the course of this past month, the developer had an opportunity to truly make something special for Overwatch fans with about 20 minutes of animated brilliance that we all know they’re capable of.
But instead, the new anime series was yet another microscopic morsel, not substantive enough to satisfy the game’s fans. Similar to many of Blizzard’s other ventures into Overwatch lore, Genesis introduced some basic concepts of lore for fans but left us wishing that they had done more to further the plot and deepen our understanding of the game.
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The premise of Genesis was simple, but intriguing, on the surface. Blizzard used a documentary-style approach to explain the original Omnic crisis and the foundation of Overwatch. The first episode walks us through the creation of Aurora, the world’s first sentient robot.
The next episode discusses how Aurora handled the overwhelming experience of being “born” as an Omnic and introduced the Omnic crisis, which was started by a rogue AI program called Anubis. This included mentions of the beginnings of the group called Overwatch. The final episode showed Aurora sacrificing herself to give other Omnics sentience to help end the war between the rogue Anubis program and humans.
The story arc of the anime series perfectly serves its purpose. For fans that were already in tune with the Overwatch universe’s lore, however, the series falls a bit flat and doesn’t add much value. There isn’t too much from the series that die-hard Overwatch fans weren’t already, at least mostly, aware of.
It’s difficult to be too frustrated because at its core, the series is only about 18 minutes of content, and its purpose is to serve as a marketing tool for the game’s upcoming PvE content in Overwatch 2: Invasion that includes the addition of Story Missions to the game.
But I can’t help but feel like there’s just a little bit more Blizzard could have done to give us a better understanding of Aurora, Anubis, or the Overwatch team in general. One would hope that the Story Missions coming in August might help provide us with some more substantive lore, but considering how stingy Blizzard was with giving us lore in Genesis, it wouldn’t be surprising if all we’re doing next month is fighting some AI Omnics with no real explanation.
