Overwatch is entering a new era, and that comes with new annual storylines and an emphasis on lore that actually pushes the story forward. But this isn’t the first time we’ve been told to expect a new focus on narrative in the hero shooter. Once upon a time it was supposed to receive a cooperative campaign that told the story of the titular organization fighting Null Sector, an army of Omnic machines led by Ramattra, a radical leader fighting for machine freedom. Since the campaign’s quiet cancellation, Blizzard has released a few pieces of external media that seemingly wrapped up this story pretty cleanly.
Now, Null Sector and Ramattra are nowhere to be seen in Overwatch’s new Reign of Talon storyline. As a Ramattra player, I had to ask if Blizzard was dropping the story of the Omnic Crisis in favor of focusing on Vendetta and her ascent up the ranks of the terrorist organization Talon.
“Ramattra is such an incredible character,” narrative lead Miranda Moyer said when I asked if the Omnic Crisis storyline was being swept under the rug during a group interview on the Blizzard campus. “He is one of the most compelling villains that I think Overwatch has, obviously, but that the whole of Blizzard has ever had. I think he’s someone who a lot of people can relate to despite the bad things that he does. So I personally am very excited about a lot of the storyline that he still has available. As we saw in the Reconciliation comic, he is currently down in Antarctica, so I feel like there is still a lot of room and places to take his specific story.”
“Yeah, we haven’t cut any leads,” added audio & technical director Scott Lawson. “There’s plenty of potential for us to keep developing.”
So it sounds like Blizzard is open to revisiting Ramattra and the Omnic Crisis conflict, but that may not happen in this initial story event focusing on Talon’s rise. Given the amount of turnover the narrative team has undergone from the beginning of Overwatch to now, with original lead writer Michael Chu leaving Blizzard in 2020 and several others on the story side being subject to layoffs following Activision Blizzard’s merger with Xbox and the narrative campaign’s cancelation, it makes sense that some things would have shifted. Even if Ramattra does return in a future season, though, we’ll still be left to wonder what the story would have been had Blizzard followed through on the planned campaign.
