by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

After the reveal of the “Soldier 76” teaser image from earlier, one of our staffers recalled that it might not necessarily be an entirely new concept: apparently, Chris Metzen (currently Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development at Blizzard, and generally recognized as the guy who does the big amp-the-crowd pitch at BlizzCon every year) had an independent comic submission that he wrote with the same name back in 2004.

You can read Metzen’s own summary of the concept on the art anthology site Sons of the Storm, which while not an official Blizzard site is made up of current and former Blizzard artists including Samwise Didier, Glenn Rane, and Wei Wang.

This is the part of Metzen’s concept that stuck out to us:

Essentially, the character – S:76 – is an old super soldier (there was a whole series of them – though the term ‘super soldier’ will likely NEVER be used). These guys had special micro-chips implanted in their brain stems that regulate their autonomic systems – giving them sporadic boosts of speed, endurance, aggression and strength. Anyway, 76 was left behind on a botched assassination mission over thirty years ago. Wounded and alone he has wandered the seedy back-alleys of South America as an amnesiac ever since. The government has presumed him dead all these years.

While he was away – America devolved into a war-zone. The nation (for a number of reasons – rampant domestic terrorism being a biggie) lost all sense of itself as the Second American Civil War erupted between the Federal controlled east and a loose conflagration of western states. The country is in chaos. Race riots and worse are erupting in every major population center. Things are not good.

As fate would have it, our hero finds his way home to a very different America than he knew. Still suffering from amnesia, he must attempt to come to terms with his shadowed past in order to chose the right side to fight for.

You can also check out some pages from the comic as well as some concept art by Metzen himself. While none of it quite matches the silhouette of the 76 we’ve seen in the teasers, it’s possible that Metzen lifted parts of his own concept when Team 4 needed heroes for the Overwatch roster. That the old concept inspired the current one isn’t outside the realm of possibility; we know that Metzen is very personally involved in Overwatch’s development at the moment, since it’s Blizzard’s first new franchise in eighteen years.

The element where 76 can attain super-human speed and strength definitely sound consistent with how he’s been described in the Overwatch teasers so far, as do the mentions of advanced military training and surgical precision. The idea that he’s a man out of time, who may have gone out of commission before or during the Omnic Crisis and re-awakened in a post-Crisis world, certainly sounds like it offers a rationale for the character’s involvement in the Overwatch narrative.

The question about whether he’s fighting for the right team or not also echoes the flexibility of all of the characters we’ve seen so far: while many characters like Winston, Tracer, and McCree sound like they’re still basically on Team Overwatch even after the organization’s dissolution, there’s still plenty to suggest that they’re considered rogues by national governments, and that might be consistent with what 76 is all about. Not knowing much about the actual histories of characters like Widowmaker and Reaper, though, gives the sense that while they look evil and sound evil, that might simply be a matter of perspective.

The mention of 76 waking up in South America is also consistent with something else: if you click on the map picture from the Watchpoint: Grand Mesa article, you see a complete world map that calls out the Grand Mesa location AND a location in Peru called Arequipa.

So the narrative forming for me at this point goes like this: 76, an early soldier in the Overwatch ranks, loses his memory during the Omnic Crisis and is presumed dead by all parties. He wanders aimlessly in South America before he stumbles upon an abandoned Watchpoint in Arequipa, which triggers his memories to come back. Realizing that Overwatch has been dismantled but that there is still evil in the world that needs to be fought, 76 takes it upon himself to raid former Watchpoints for ordnance. Which brings us to today.

We’re certain to know more about 76 as we get closer to gamescom, and while there’s no guarantee that this old concept of Metzen’s has anything in common aside from the name, we feel like it’s too significant a coincidence to pass up.