Watch On
Overwatch, one of the pioneers of the live service model, has finally come full circle with an official Fortnite collab this week. For years, Blizzard kept its iconic heroes close to its chest, but now they’ve been released, free to show up as premium cosmetics elsewhere in the live service multiverse.
In a world where Destiny 2 has a whole Star Wars-themed expansion and the stars of the Fallout TV show are earning killstreaks in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, anything is possible. So when the rumors of a Fortnite collab started a few months ago, they seemed plausible.
And here we are: Mercy from Overwatch has officially hit the Griddy, Genji is dancing to Cardi B, D.Va is editing her way to a victory royale, and Tracer is blinking across the Sandy Strip. Overwatch heroes are now skins in the game that took what Blizzard started and turned it into the business model that every major publisher is desperate to emulate.
Alongside the skins are recreations of popular Overwatch maps, like Hanamura and King’s Row. While you’re gathering loot, you can find Tracer’s twin pistols which shift your view into first-person. It’s just like playing Overwatch, if Overwatch were a massive battle royale where the only objective is to kill anything that moves until you’re the last one standing.
There’s something wrong about seeing Mercy, a support hero in Overwatch, carrying around an AK-47. Overwatch’s universe is supposed to be a hopeful version of the future, and while there are major caveats to that, dropping these heroes into a completely different context renders them into the same charmless, plastic toys that every iconic character seems doomed to become.
It doesn’t help that they all spout lines from Overwatch like you’re pulling a string on their backs. In the trailer, Mercy floats onto the screen to say, “Heroes never die” like she does in the original Overwatch teaser cinematic, except she isn’t really saying it to anyone in particular. She’s just there to kick off more references as Tracer and D.Va join in with their own phrases from Overwatch. D.Va’s “Nerf this!” is particularly nonsensical because, without her exploding mech, it’s unclear what she’s even referring to.
This is what the age of collabs has brought to gaming: An insatiable maw that chews up once-memorable characters and spits them back out as barely recognizable cosmetics for $19.99. Overwatch is just the latest game to be swallowed up in a trend that doesn’t show any signs of stopping soon.
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