We love Overwatch. So we assembled 22 of our best writers and set them to work—a writer to jump into the skin (or robotic shell) of each character. The result is 22 odes. You can use the “Overwatch odes” tag to leaf through them all, or use the handy list at the bottom of this post.
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He may look like a figurine from the inevitable Disney Infinity Mad Max playset, but in live action he would be Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler (2008). He huffs his corpulent form across Overwatch’s maps like a chain-smoking asthmatic, grunting like a boar with its head stuck in the plastic feed bin.
At age four Roadhog’s mother called him in for dinner. When he didn’t respond she came storming out the back porch door and found him rolling nakedly in the mud. Frustrated and hot from cooking she shouted, “Come, now! Only pigs play in the mud!” Roadhog, pausing for a moment from his gleeful tunneling screamed back “Then I am a pig! A fat piggy! A FAT UGLY PIG!”
Occasionally he slams another canister of solvent into his sewn-up gas mask, eyes clouding at the edges as the channels of his nose are cauterized by the fumes. He barely raises his eyes from the ground, his foot-high jump closing all paths off but the widest and flattest, as if he was preternaturally suited to asphalt highways.
At age 10, Roadhog had worn his Mad Max VHS down to little more than screams of white noise. His copy of Mortal Kombat was cracked and caked in muck, and had to be hammered into his Genesis with a grubby fist before it would work. That was how he liked it.
After emptying his homemade weapon into whatever meaty target wanders past, Roadhog cracks it open and jams in handfuls of scrap, gathered from the hulking wrecks of rusted tankers, oil caked and skeletal. He once took a shit on the calcified remains of the Great Barrier Reef.
At age 15, Roadhog’s therapist suggested his lashing out was also a kind of reaching out, to bring others closer to him. Thats where he got the idea for the hook.
Next to the angelic and athletic cast of Overwatch, Roadhog’s abjection is near Shakespearean. He is Falstaff, he is both Gargantua and Pantagruel. Come down from your balcony sweet Widowmaker, he beckons, descend to me, oh, angel Mercy. With his hook he brings all to his level, wraps them in his glorious perversity, his fuming corpulence, his polluting mire.
Then he shoots them in the face. Hurr hurr hurr.
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Offensive Heroes
Genji – Genji is with you
McCree – Who you kidding? McCree is Overwatch‘s true shooter
Pharah – Don’t play fair, play Pharah, exclusively
Reaper – In defense of Reaper, the patron saint of mall-goth teens
Soldier 76 – Soldier 76 is here to make everyone else look good
Tracer – A series of limericks about Tracer, because why not
Defensive Heroes
Bastion – Bastion is the machine pointed at the world
Hanzo – Hanzo “looks like a good man,” my Japanese mom raves
Junkrat – I have fallen in love with Junkrat
Mei – Here comes Mei, the badass nerd hell-bent on revenge
Torbjörn – An ode to hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Torbjörn
Widowmaker – Widowmaker made a widow of me
Tank Heroes
D.Va – An ode to D.Va, the sassiest dream girl this side of Overwatch
Reinhardt – An ode to Reinhardt, tortured scion of a broken land
Winston – Winston, the Science Gorilla, is in charge
Zarya – Zarya makes Mother Russia her bitch
Support Heroes
Ana – Ana is the protective mother we all want
Lucio – Inside the idiot party-bubble of Lucio
Mercy – Mercy is the most terrifying character in Overwatch
Symmetra – Go ahead, sleep on Symmetra
Zenyatta – Praise be to Zenyatta, then chill the heck out