I mentioned a few days ago that Blizzard would be releasing a new Overwatch animated short called Dragons today. It bears a reminder now, though, because it's out, and it's really good.
Dragons tells the story of the sons of the Shimada clan, Hanzo and Genji, who had something of a philosophical falling out and dealt with it in the only way that ninjas know: murder! Except it turns out that it was really more of an attempted murder, followed by a whopper of a medical misdiagnosis, years of self-recrimination and regret, a spot of Robocopping, and "Honor—Do You Have It?"
I have to admit to being somewhat mystified by the amount of effort Blizzard puts into creating the narrative backcloth for what is, unless I'm missing something, a fairly straightforward class-based online shooter. It's great that it does, and obviously serves a purpose—if Blizzard puts this much effort into extraneous origin stories, imagine how much it must be investing into the game itself—but come on, triple-A RPGs don't usually get this much pre-release lore.
As good as it is, it is perhaps not the most original tale of brotherly redemption ever told. YouTuber Krunkidile predicted the plot in a recent stream, and then animated and posted his version several hours before the real trailer went up. The result speaks for itself.
