Overwatch 2 is celebrating Pride Month, not only presenting some cosmetics alluding to the LGTBIQ+ community, but it has also changed one of the game’s maps, adding decorations with, for example, the colors of the pride flag. This is the Midtown map where, for a few hours, rainbow zebra crossings and a wide range of waving identity flags have been included.
And also, Blizzard has made another change within the map, which has attracted attention, repainting the police cars on the map to look like normal sport utility vehicles. Change that was discovered by several players, among them the YouTuber Niandra, who comments in a video that this decoration, offers a more extensive evaluation of the first Pride event in Overwatch 2. “One interesting thing to note is that in the original Midtown there are Police cars scattered around the map, however, have also been redesigned with a Pride parade theme to make them just generic,” he comments in the video.
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A change that Niandra finds “interesting”, as in a way, she says, it suggests that Blizzard is openly acknowledging the sentiment that “there are no cops in pride” and that it stems from the widely documented discrimination of the police and their oppression of LGBTQA+ people. In her analysis, Niandra also recalls that Overwatch 2’s Pride event goes beyond this, as it introduces new short stories that explore the identities of characters like Pharah and Baptiste.
Although these changes in the lore of these characters have come with a controversial decision, since LGBTQIA+ issues are controversial and even punishable by law in some countries, Blizzard blocked the Pride event in certain territories. As senior producer Brandy Stiles stated: “We have technologies to limit this content from going out to countries that have laws that don’t tolerate LGBT content. This helps us protect those players.”
But on the other hand, the inclusive content in Overwatch 2 and above all, in the game’s stories will not stop, since Jen Stacey, Overwatch 2’s senior narrative designer, assured that they are thinking about the possibility of including a trans character in the game or modify the story of an already available hero. This was commented on in a recent interview, where she said: “That’s definitely a conversation we have on this team, and it’s something we care about. I can’t speak too much about our future development plans for any of our heroes, but I know it’s something we think about and talk about.”
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