Blizzard Entertainment has unleashed a new comic book named ‘Search & Destroy’ which is devoted to Overwatch, focusing on the character Freja and her adventure of searching for the mysterious Emre. The Blizzard comic was first highlighted by the official Overwatch Twitter account, accompanied by a reading done by Freja’s voice, Olivia Le Andersen. The timing of this release caused players to instantly discuss the possible new heroes and the narrative that the game is still developing.
So top of the world is Blizzard with yet another new comic book, right? And it’s essentially about Freja. The bow and arrow girl from the previous season, recollect? Yup, she! The post hints at her searching for this dude Emre, at the end of which she has “more questions than answers”, that’s just like… the most typical Blizzard lore situation ever. They just can’t stop with the mystery boxes. Nonetheless, the most astonishing part is that Olivia Le Andersen, the actress for the lead character, was brought in to read the whole comic. That’s actually quite impressive. It turns into a little event.
On the flip side, let’s not fool ourselves, players’ reactions are not merely about the story of the comic. No, they are rather quickly speculating about Emre being the next hero. One user even, CharadasEd98314, just kept on repeating “PLEASE BE A TANK” over and over again. The urgency is indeed very much alive, dude. Tanks are the ones who get the most recently, but I suppose one never gets tired of that. Another user, You_Cant_Beat_D, just said, “I need him in the game yesterday.” The hype is there, even though the fellow has just been barely introduced.
Going after this, the conversation about lore took place. An everlasting lore discussion. Players appreciate that. One of them, enchanted, quotes himself: “FREJA AND EMRE WE ALL CHEERED.” On the other hand, some are rather unimpressed. User trabucooo1 was a bit sarcastic when he said, “Juno got a short story that accomplish nothing, just a reminder that she exists, illari is another trader for future things that will never happen and ramatta lore was literally ‘i must go my planet needs me’ just to dissapear forever.” Ouch. That is very tough criticism. However, it does show one side of the coin of the opinion that the lore imparted through the characters does not always lead to exciting gameplay.
This created a heated debate among players. FunnyName68 had to counter with examples of how Juno, Illari, and Ramattra actually did get more lore. TimeKeeper810 then made a very spicy comment: “If you only care about lore in cinematic form, you don’t care about lore at all, you just want pretty pictures.” Wait what was I saying? Oh right, the point is the community is divided between the all-consuming readers of every blog post and comic and the people just wanting the big and expensive animated shorts. And to be honest? Both sides are correct.
An additional major point has been raised by OverFire, a fan news source. They are Turkish, so they have caught a potential mistake in the pronunciation of Emre’s name in the comic. They request Blizzard to double-check the name for cultural representation to be correct, meaning it should be “Emré,” not “Émre.” This is an important point. Gamers care a lot about this issue and Blizzard is generally very helpful in this respect. Someone has pointed out an incident with Brigitte’s name back in the day. So they might fix it if he turns into a playable character.
There are some very hilarious discussions about it happening right now. One user compared whatever happened to Emre to “Overwatch’s version of Mara struck like Jingliu,” which is a deep-cut Genshin Impact reference that was beyond my understanding for a while. And de_stuben said Freja’s “TRUE LOVE GOT WINTER SOLDIERED,” which is a fantastic Marvel parallel. It suggests that he could have been brainwashed or turned into a weapon, which is an old trope and would add a cool twist to her storyline.
So what does all this lead to? Is Emre going to be released soon? No doubt about it, the comic virtually screams setup. With the 10th anniversary of Overwatch 2 just around the corner, as player aquzxa put it, perhaps we will witness an era of more frequent lore drops. Players are already starving for it, even though they rather dispute the format. The speculation as to what his role could be—Tank, DPS, or Support—is well underway, with MagmarxioGaming analyzing his “pistol and mega hand” to conclude that he is a DPS. It is such sleuthing that keeps the community active even during the off-season.
