I made this video to go through Michael Chu's posts in which he retcon's D.Va's lore. He passes it off as 'clarification' but I can't see a path where you can argue in good faith that this is anything other than a retcon, and a betrayal of all the SC2/D.Va fans.
I go point-by-point through his posts, video essay style, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic and the video itself. I'm still new to the video essay format so comments/constructive criticism would be great!
thing is WCS is going to lose its support from Blizz in the next few years; they don't want Overwatch fans to connect with D.VA on a game that Blizzard just dropped.
ATVI needs to separate SC2 from OW because SC2 is going to take a bullet in the next 5 years whereas according to ATVI's grand plans OW is just starting.
"ya, D.Va was orginally a Starcraft2 pro. you remember SC2 right? that game that slowly fizzled out and never met the high lofty esports euphoria and ecstacy that SC1 did? ya that game. That game that was supposed to be an esport forever and ATVI/Blizzard just drastically scaled back their support. Ya, So D.Va left SC2 Esports because its not longer viable and she bought a big Pink Mech and started defending earth."
>thing is WCS is going to lose its support from Blizz in the next few years; they don't want Overwatch fans to connect with D.VA on a game that Blizzard just dropped.
I mean, they've supported the game all the way into being the first esport to have major links to the Olympics. Truuuuust me on this one, Blizz is dedicated to SC2 in the long term That's the perception I have at least and I feel fairly well informed in that.
I appreciate your comments man!
FUN FACT THO apparently this misconception runs so deep that Jeff Kaplan himself refered to D.Va as a StarCraft pro specifically in this Forbes interview from January 9th 2018. Less than a month ago.xd
Blizzard employees getting caught bullshitting about something financially inconsequential and then doubling down with even more bullshit is a warning sign to Blizzard fan boys like myself.
Its good catching them on meaningless BS and watching their employees continue to lie. I'm glad I've given OW $40 USD and not one penny more.
I'm not spending another nickel on OW unless it includes real playable content.
DISCLAIMER: i fully respect your anger about the lore being changed due to your deep connection to the Mech character. i'm speaking in a cold, calculated, 100% financial way.
its getting harder and harder to be a Blizzard mark/fan-boy.
To be honest, I think the retcon kind of makes sense. Lore-wise, that is. The fact that they claim it isn't a retcon seems somewhat absurd, and the arguments they presented to back this statement up were underwhelming to say the least. However, I personally always found the ex-SC2 pro to be the one thing I didn't like about D.Va's lore, meaning I'm somewhat biased in favor of this change.
From my point of view it always struck me as an almost cringeworthy attempt at self-promotion (Cyan presented a very different, and equally valid, perspective in the video -- I'm not arguing against that viewpoint), as well as just plain unrealistic. Yes I know there are talking apes in Overwatch, but those apes exist because of and act in consistency with the established logic of the overwatch universe. But if SC2 is the same game with the same mechanics in the OW universe as in the real world it shouldn't make you a good pilot. Assuming you want to put competent people as pilots in your super expensive high-tech mechs, you'd probably look somewhere other than progamers. The fact that Airforce ACE (admittedly they didn't operate an SC2 team, but BW and SC2 are both in the RTS-genre) outright said that progamers aren't automatically good pilots, and need the same amount of training as everyone else in spite of any theoretically overlapping skillset is as close to definite proof as you'll ever get here (imo).
Naturally, I don't think that the verisimilitude of the OW universe is the reason they changed this. They wouldn't have put it in the lore in the first place if that were the case. Also, the lore in OW is very fast and loose, generally speaking, so I don't think one relatively minor thing like this would be reason enough to retcon D.Va's backstory. Nor would it have bothered me that much if they had just kept it in the game. It's more likely insurance against unfavorable articles in the event that they drop support for SC2 before they drop OW. I can't really think of any other plausible reason to make this change. I doubt they'll drop support for either game any time soon though.
On February 04 2018 00:52 TehRei wrote: From my point of view it [D.Va being an SC2 pro] always struck me as an almost cringeworthy attempt at self-promotion (Cyan presented a very different, and equally valid, perspective in the video -- I'm not arguing against that viewpoint), as well as just plain unrealistic.
And that what's makes it even worse for me. It took me years to get used to convince myself to believe this bullshit story and now they tell me it was all for nothing?
D.Va's backstory is the reason there are memes about her being a gremlin that eats Doritos and drinks Mountain Dew. It felt like the lore was to make her "relatable", but transparently so in the same way like a grandparent would listen to rap music and wear skater clothes to try and be 'cool'. "Look at D.Va, she's a gamer, just like youuuuuuu!!" is the message I picked up from one of the most laughably fan-service-based characters Blizzard has ever conceived. I mean, Jesus Christ, the skills one has to develop to play SC2 have virtually nothing to do with any FPS game. Macro/Micro-management, multitasking, interpreting build orders, learning build orders -- all of these are non-transferable skills to a FPS.
Why is it so Earth-shatteringly catastrophic that someone from Blizzard would go "Maybe she should play Titanfall 5"? Or maybe since Blizzard exists in her universe and developed SC2, maybe she played current-day Overwatch, which prepared her to be recruited for the actual Overwatch team. Maybe she even played as D.Va in current-day Overwatch, and was intrigued by the character because the character in the game resembled herself exactly and liked SC2, and it's an infinite series of reflecting mirrors. Who knows? I will say this, though: despite the fact (aka my personal opinion) that Blizzard hasn't written any decent lore since WoW Vanilla, this change actually makes some sense on a purely logical level of D.Va needing some kind of mech-driving FPS game experience in order to have a transferable skill to a world-defending organization, which still sounds really stupid. In fact, that's basically the plot to the Adam Sandler movie, Pixels. The fact that Blizzard changed the lore seems like such a non-issue that I'm surprised that there are already a ton of Youtube videos up with people going "WTF THIS IS DUMB, DVA WAS ALWAYS SC2 PLAYER, BUT NOW THEY CHANGE IT? CHANGE IT BACK. FIX DVA. HASHTAG NOT MY DVA."
Edit: Before you go, "What if Blizzard bastardized your favorite game's lore?" and they already did it with SC2. This is very minor compared to how badly SC2 was written.
On February 07 2018 09:06 riotjune wrote: No way she's a Titanfall progamer, a game published by Electronic Arts. Don't think it's Hearthstone either. Maybe it's Destiny 5?
I feel like she should be an Overwatch progamer. I've decided that if she's going to play games from our universe, she may as well be an Overwatch player who mains as D.Va.
I dont mind expanding on past lore. I just hate when they rewrite stuff. So I am happy for some more info on D.Va, especially if its a direction where the lore crazy people already went. Never expected D.Va to only play 1 game at pro level anyway. So I am not surprised lol.
On February 08 2018 01:10 FeyFey wrote: I dont mind expanding on past lore. I just hate when they rewrite stuff. So I am happy for some more info on D.Va, especially if its a direction where the lore crazy people already went. Never expected D.Va to only play 1 game at pro level anyway. So I am not surprised lol.
Nah, they're saying she never went pro in SC2. There's no way they could have her be pro in SC2 and another game (Let's say "Overwatch") because she allegedly started SC2 at 16 and was recruited to MEKA at 19. That would mean while absolutely dominating the SC2 scene without a single defeat, that was just her side-hustle, and she was more well-known for a completely different game. Maybe her real name is Hana Sue.
I'd also like to mention that it's a video game with outlandish characters like a man who becomes black vapor and a talking gorilla, so I don't understand why realism of the type of game she was pro at matters literally at all, although it was cooler when it was SC2 cause Blizzard.
On February 07 2018 09:06 riotjune wrote: No way she's a Titanfall progamer, a game published by Electronic Arts. Don't think it's Hearthstone either. Maybe it's Destiny 5?
I feel like she should be an Overwatch progamer. I've decided that if she's going to play games from our universe, she may as well be an Overwatch player who mains as D.Va.
That would beg the question, what the story of the D.Va in the Overwatch game in the Overwatch game would be.
On February 07 2018 09:06 riotjune wrote: No way she's a Titanfall progamer, a game published by Electronic Arts. Don't think it's Hearthstone either. Maybe it's Destiny 5?
I feel like she should be an Overwatch progamer. I've decided that if she's going to play games from our universe, she may as well be an Overwatch player who mains as D.Va.
That would beg the question, what the story of the D.Va in the Overwatch game in the Overwatch game would be.
On February 07 2018 09:06 riotjune wrote: No way she's a Titanfall progamer, a game published by Electronic Arts. Don't think it's Hearthstone either. Maybe it's Destiny 5?
I feel like she should be an Overwatch progamer. I've decided that if she's going to play games from our universe, she may as well be an Overwatch player who mains as D.Va.
That would beg the question, what the story of the D.Va in the Overwatch game in the Overwatch game would be.
Every iteration of D.Va in each sub-universe is that she was an Overwatch player prior to joining MEKA, ad infinitum.