In Overwatch, Is Magic Real?

Zenyatta in-lore is confirmed to use “something unknown” to float, since he’s confirmed to not use any kind of thruster or field to float. Since it was confirmed he doesn’t use any form of technology for it, it has never been explained or elaborated on at all. Everyone is looking for him specifically to learn what he has. He also isn’t even a member OF the overwatch unit, just knows hanging around with them is where he’s supposed to be due to “The iris” so nobody can kill him and dig through his mind to find the secrets.

I would’ve honestly bought “nanomachines, son” as an explanation, but the “spirits” could easily be a set of benevolent but still alien artificial intelligences, each favoring a particular family for arcane reasons. They might live on the net, or on satellites, and project themselves through things like swords, bows, omnics, etc.

To add to why Magic could push the omnic plot is that you could make it that magic as a whole, or at least most of it requires the user to have a soul. The fact that Omnic basically would have their own branch in this magical tree is solid proof of their existence as equal lifeforms who have an actual life despite them not having access to human type Magic they still have it so the existence of the iris Magic more or less forces the wider public to see that omnic are like them despite not being organic. You could do so much if you just opened the Pandora box of fictional magic that would improve the story if done right. You could even have some people who view Sym and Lifeweaver and hard light users as heretics with their hardlight tech and see it is advancing too far too quickly. I mean, Symmetra is using only light to transport people from point A to B in seconds, and Lifeweaver is making a tree or something. I still don’t fully get him, to be honest, but still you could do a lot with people having an aversion to cybernetics to alter the body or hardlight as a whole. And you can have people like Sym, for example, see Magic as something too unpredictable and too unstable to really put faith in, hence her opting to use cold tech that is similar to magic

the only consistency between omnic magic and shimada (and kiriko) magic is that they are getting magic from a higher power omincs from the iris and the Japanese characters from spirits this also solves at least some of the problem of how you narratively explain the limits: you can only do the amount of magic granted to you. If you are not given the magic to do something, you can’t do it.

There are SO many wonderfully unique myths and legends among all the worlds cultures related to magic, they really should do something with them. -an estranged kid/sibling/other family member of Torb that has taken his craft in the direction of Norse Runic magic -somebody with a contract with a Djinn that helps fight alongside them in maybe a turret ability or Bob-like ult. Especially since japanese mythical creatures seem real why not others? -illari seems VERY fantasy as well they can do something with a helios or godly celestial body Idk im mostly a Norse and greeco roman nerd but im sure every civilization in history has had similar things you can pull from

As much as I’d be down with blizzard embracing magic, as it allows for more design iteration, I could see them go the Zenyatta route, where the spirit magic is actually a form of science that no one, including the users of it understand yet. Though I don’t know if there’s a huge distinction between that and straight up magic.

So as a japanese guy, here is my opinion Overwatchs portrayal of japan is very backward, Hanamura was a very pretty map but it enforced very stereotypical tropes of japanese culture, look at Lijiang Tower, its more about showing a realistic and positive look on chinese culture while still feeling very chinese in style its not some super over the top chinese temple or castle with giant dragon statues everywhere to make sure you know its china. every japanese hero needing magic somewhat fills a poor stereotype that these heroes because theyre japanese must have magic to be unique, imo hanzo and genji would be perfectly fine with out the dragons (lore wise) and honestly without magic their relationship more complex since its their blood that connects them not the stupid dragons. its almost like the dragons only were made for symbolism and for the cool scene in the animated short, Blizzard had no ideas for kiriko and said F it, fox magic

might just be me, but the “this technology is too advanced for any of us to understand, even their wielders” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in most stories, as it’s usually something you would see in post-apocalyptic settings like warhammer 40k, where humanity had a golden age, then they collapsed, and now they’re re-discovering all the technology that was made during said golden age. i don’t know if this works in overwatch, mostly because the world doesn’t read that way to me. if instead we make overwatch a setting with very low magic, then this problem is mostly solved, as magic is, by default, hard to understand in a world where everyone has embraced technology.

I’m saving this article to my Writing Advice playlist. I’ve been working on a fantasy series for a few years, and my magic system is based on the one in Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ve cut out a lot of spells and changed the way others work for the sake of what I think is better storytelling. What you say about magical vs. non-magical people and having to be reductive in settings with magic is good advice for anyone looking to create their own fantasy (or sci-fi) world.

One old theory I really like is that the “spirits” are extremely old, extremely advanced technology that got passed down through the generations. Under this theory, the dragons (Kiriko didn’t exist at the time but still fits the theory) are large advanced hardlight projections, similar to symmetra’s constructs but turned up to 11. Nobody remembers how to make them, but they could theoretically be replicated and are based in technology. The myth and mystique surrounding the Shimadas is cultivated to discourage others from attempting to steal the technology of the dragons. The same goes for why they all train so rigorously from birth. Sadly, this theory got lost to time and the devs went for the “just don’t question it” method.

Something I should note: Lucio’s healing music actually has some grounding in something real. I don’t know if the science ever actually shook out, but some studies were done showing that people exposed to cats during their recovery process were on average recovered faster than those who didn’t. The conclusion drawn from this was that the sound frequencies of a cat’s purr mildly accelerated convalescence. Another study was done with just playing recordings of cats purring and the study as I recall led to similar results. So Lucio’s healing music may be based on or using that concept.

Its always been my personal head cannon that magic is real just incredibly rare and so hard to do and learn that its often less efficient than just using tech. My supporting evidence is that the only characters capable of it are humans trained from childhood by people with generations of knowledge and supercomputers so strong that they can think and feel.

I really appreciate you bringing up the aspect of mysticism and how Western media is so quick to tokenize and make Eastern cultures, indigenous cultures, and cultures that are foreign to them in general so different. It creates harmful stereotypes and makes room for cultural misinformation and fetishization which is incredibly harmful.

5:16 for a bonus to the “it’s scifi tech, it doesn’t have to be realistic” thing, it doesn’t have to be realistic like you said but it has to be realistic in universe, like the given examples all the teleportation is science based (self digitization, hard light travel, disassemble and reassemble, being a non temporally locked human, etc) and have more or less believable reasoning as to why they can teleport 14:00 if they do classify the Japanese trio as magic they do have at least one thing on it as a downside: genji has an entire set of vents on his cybernetics with the sole purpose of venting away as much heat as possible from his body after he uses his dragons so it’s safe to say whether it’s magic or not it puts his body under a lot of stress and makes it heat up drastically, another is the three seem like they need some body part to website the power through, kiriko seems to use her eyes as those are what glows when she uses her “summon” ability and hanzo uses his tattoo on his arm so it’s likely safe to assume genji does something similar as well under his cybernetics

I’m just happy that people agree with me that having ONLY Japanese characters be able to do magic feels… kind of orientalist. It’s like Japan is propped up as some magical fantasy land by westerners, rather than as a real place with its own rich culture just like every other country around the world. Anyways, here’s my pitch for establishing magic in Overwatch: Spirits in this universe are supernatural beings who possess people and give them special powers, and take on different forms based on their culture. I think this could be flexible enough for it to work with what we already have, and be able to represent other cultures. Also, it would make creating limits a bit easier since a spirit’s powers and limits can be tied to mythological creatures which will make them more familliar to us and easier to understand (also explaining why the Japanese character’s spirits look like cultural elements from Japan). But that’s just one idea, they could also use telepathic powers as an explanation or even say that certain mythological creatures just straight up exist and we’ll get to play as a mermaid or something at some point.

I figured that the dragon and fox spirits are interdimensional beings. The dragons need an anchor to our plane of reality, so they make bonds with the Shimada family and in return, they allow the Shimadas to call them to their plane when they need to destroy things. Same thing with the fox spirit, which probably has some energy field that works like nano healing. Maybe? I’unno.

I mean the lore makes it clear tech is in Japan too. All of Kirikos gang are teched up to shit, the Shimada are arms dealers and tech specialists. it just happens the three specific Japanese people in the game happen to derive their powers from spiritualism, seemingly because it was a foundational part of their family legacy. Similarly in Cyberpunk, despite being technologically far more advanced than most countries, Japan actively seeks to keep old dated tradition alive even through all that advancement….Which I will add is NOT marginalization, that is…..A core fundamental part of the national identity of Japan as an IRL country. Japan as a whole keeps its traditions and its history heavily steeped into the very foundations of their society even in the modern era for better or worse. It is not otherness, its not racism, Japan really IS like that historically. Only difference here is that apparently Kami are a real thing in Overwatch, and a select few clans still hold the tradition of staying in contact with them to gain their powers. Logically speaking this would mean technically anyone COULD tap into that power the same way Omnics can unlock transcendence, its just likely most people don’t see a need to when tech is so easily and readily accessible to the masses. Hell its made clear the Shimada are seen as weirdos for their choice of using dated weapons to begin with. Its more than likely with enough training and spiritual focus, others could unlock the powers of a spirit guardian.

You know, If you want to give it a scientific explanation, just look to Psionic Powers from StarCraft (Another game from Blizzard) In StarCraft, In Terrans (humans), The capability that being Psionic is passed down through bloodlines. What do we see with Overwatch? Only The Shimadas can control the Dragons. The Spirit Dragons are possibly connected to the psychic emanation of both Hanzo and Genji. Afterall, another form of Psychic is someone who can commune with SPIRITS. In Starcraft, Kerrigan’s psionic powers allow her to do typical psychic stuff (telepathy, telekinesis, etc). However, she is also seen to utilize it to create Energy Blasts that look very similar to electricity. And Hanzo is heavily storm-based – – Note the storm design on both his tattoos and The Shimada Clan in general. It’s very possible that DragonStrike and DragonBlade are just large-scale Psionic Abilities that take the shape of dragons. A very noticable trait of Psionic Powers in Starcraft is that they cause glowing eyes while they’re in use, and just glow brightly in general. One of the key parts about Hanzo and Genji’s ultimates is that they glow, and Hanzo’s tattoo glows while casting DragonStrike. In the Kerrigan vs Zeratul cinematic, Kerrigan uses her telekinesis to halt Zeratul in place, which causes creates a lot of noticeable wind. It would also explain Hanzo and Genji’s ability to double jump, as it could be a telekinetic push from their Psionic Powers, as, In SC, Kerrigan was capable of levitation and even flight.

I’m glad somebody thinks about these things and makes interesting vids like these. My logic basically goes “Overwatch stars superheroes, magic exists in superhero fiction, and mages are cool.” I stopped caring about OW’s lore and story long, long ago, but just from a gameplay perspective, yeah, I’d play as a wizard. I’d use magic to tank for my team, absolutely. Let’s do this.

I feel like rather then magic, it’s religious belief. Every “magic” comes from some sort of religious belief. Whether it be Zenyatta’s healing (which canonically is pointed out to “not make sense” and “it just is” by a Mercy/Zen conversation) or Kiriko’s “Fox Spirit” or Illari’s whole society and how she wiped it out. Religion obviously exists within the Overwatch world and it has a big hand in a lot of things. Calling it “Magic” might be the way to go, however, as I think saying it’s religion opens up a whole can of worms. But I think that’s why they explicitly don’t want to say it’s “magic”. Because it isn’t. It’s religion. They’ve essentially caused a problem for themselves and they have no way of fixing it.

Id like to add that its weird the japanese characters are just not allowed to use modern weapons Instead of rocket Launchers, pulse rifles or fusion powered machine guns they get weapons from 1000s of years ago, like why does genji not have a gun, he was part of blackwatch who were known as no nonsense black-ops killers so why would they have a guy wjo leaves a ton of evidence everwhere by throwing ninja stars!?

You can argue about it being the other way around, but for me giving more magic to other cultures would dillute what makes Japanese heroes stand out amongst the cast of unique characters though. I don’t want to put unique hero identity and genuinely cool settings at risk of being more accurately representative of other’s culture, Overwatch was founded upon a roster of stereotypes and tropes. Eventually you’ll just ran into the same problem of hero uniqueness and diversity again, only this time the magic ones who were unique no longer are so. Just see any MOBA, where it all becomes little but aestethic differences in all but a very few rare exceptions, that’s the end point you’re looking at here. It’s the same reason I like Route 66 the best out of all the american maps, or Junkertown out of any of the Australian ones. It’s exaggeration and overfixation over something people might associate with these countries blossomed into something very cool. These very same interpretations, even when wrongfully done, can give us beautiful maps like Dorado. Japan being this way should be explained for sure — it’d make for some very fun worldbuilding, personally I just always assumed it was the Shimada’s who kept the whole ancient aesthethic going on- but I’d prefer it to stay this way and keep it’s uniqueness rather than for it to become yet another normal, real world counterpart. Maps like Anubis, Volskaya Industries and Hanamura are a lot more interesting than others that take away the wildness like MIDtown or New Queen Street.

Re: restrictions in magic systems – One of my favorites is in the tabletop system WyRM, where the cost of magic as it gets stronger is exponential, meanwhile spellcaster increase their ability linearly. Magic could theoretically do anything, but at a certain point it becomes an impossibility on the human side. Magic could do it, but you can’t. The sample spells don’t even go higher than the 4th circle because it’s likely you’ll never reach beyond that. Even putting aside the cost, it’s also getting more and more difficult, to a point where success becomes a statistical anomaly even if you could pony up the cost.

good vid, i agree with everything but i have a few inquiries 1. Zen’s orbs upon reload have a light blue energy hue, similar to the spirit animal motif among hanzos dragons and kirikos fox. It seems to draw on the same power system of spirituality and its motifs in OW. 2. You made a great point when you mentioned how humans cannot reach the same magic-like spirituality as omnics can, but how do we explain when Sigma stated he met the omnic god? If we dont chalk it up to him being crazy, it shows a crucial example of how humans interact with omnic spiritualism; Outside of Japan of course…

my headcannon: is that the Shimada Dragons are constituted of the same “Omnic energy” Zenyatta uses- Since Omnics have self-improving technology (i.e. capable of evolution) the dragons are essentially Omnics ascended to a pure energy form. The reason why only the Shimadas can control the dragons is because their clan made a pact with these omnics or something i guess kiriko is just stupid fanservice lol edit: ok i watched the article magic vs robots is a cool idea

At the risk of splitting hairs, I’d argue that magic as intrinsic quality is far from the default in fantasy – there are plenty of high-magic settings where everyone can do little spells to do things like dry their own hair with further magic development being the result of work, study, or both. Even in lower magic settings, it’s very common to position the difference between Joe Everybody and a master magician as being akin to the difference between a layman and a scientist, or a professional artist, or a monk — that is, magic within the setting requiring a lot of perseverence, or a specific mindset, or knowledge. There’s even quite a few pieces of classic fantasy that position magic as being kind of a mystery cult — here I don’t use cult in the Waco sense, I’m specifically referring to things in the millieu of Orphism. I would actually argue that unless a work is actively trying to say something about eugenics or hereditary royalty, this is a much better shape for a LOT of works to take, and I wish more authors would explore it rather than taking the comparatively simple route of “some people are just born magic”. I would argue it makes a lot of worlds feel more open-ended, mysterious, and interesting. In hindsight I suppose this doesn’t really add a whole lot to the conversation, but I suppose I just wanted to talk about it. My actual contribution to the discussion is this: I think they should confirm that the Japanese heroes are magic, but only after adding some batshit British ceremonial magician who does Hermetic-influenced spells and like.

Hanzo, Kiriko and Genji could simply be imprinted tech protected by some very serious institutions like the Shimada clan and the Fox cult/temple. For all I know, Kiriko might have a tiny printer under her kimono where she simply keeps on printing her ofuda and shoving it into people. Hanzo and Genji could have a whole swarm of nano tech inside their tats that simply come alive on command to mess up everything on their way. AND it can also not be that deep: all 3 japanese characters are much more related than the majority of the cast and it can make some sense that they share similar traits. Just like Brig and Torb. It’s not like ALL japanese people are magical, just like it was shown on previous lore material. It’s just that the 3 in-game japanese characters are. But ye, to choose to make your japanese in-game representation straight up magical-like ninjas is kinda problematic, but some people can also find very problematic the Overwatch take of Australia. All that being said, after the launch of OW2 we can pretty much see that there was a change in what they envision for the game (lore included). I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide that magic is, indeed, real anytime soon. Good vid!

you ever see Generator Rex. I think it is something like that in Overwatch also. where nanobots or something like them are just everywhere in the Overwatch world. the spirits can just be AI that can activate the nanobots in different ways. the AI is just given spiritual respect. kind of like how most people will pet a dog in a game even though we know its not a real dog. as a techy person I love to brainstorm out how things might be able to work irl and I think that way with Overwatch also. like what kind of tech could be used to make this seemingly magic thing actually happen in that world. its the mystery of it at first. then the pay off of the reveal later on in the stories. I’m also a bit of storywriter and I love worldbuilding and magic. as long as the magic has some kind of logic to it. some type of laws of how it works. random for random can be fun at times but too repetitive if poorly done. other wise what’s the fun if everything can just be chalked up to ” its magic ” so who cares. I do. I care about how things work. its interesting to me and keeping things in range of the already set pattern of something is important. other wise you can end up breaking things that have been already set up before hand. losing any kind of like pay off in the end. other wise what’s to stop them from just going. oops all of it was just magic we thought was tech after all.

I want to say they probably get some fancy AI companion similar to Echo for their abilities. Since, she’s a robot/AI that can mimic other heroes utilizing oddly similar methods to the Fox and Dragon spirits. (Harnessing abilities through observation and replicating them through robotics.) What makes Echo unique is that she has a personality, while it seems the Fox and Dragon does not, it merely acts like a guard dog, or firewall for their host. Or they can just do magic.

I also want Overwatch universe to expand. They said that the Junker Queen fought mutants, which means that mutants are a thing in this universe, but the only mutants we know are Winston, Hammond and maybe Reaper, so where these other mutants that Junker Queen fought comes from? Plus the Paruvian hero that have “sun powers” (I don’t remember her name because I unsinstalled the game since the PvE was cancelled), which means that myths and legends are a thing (maybe? Blizzard doesn’t know either apparently)

I think a concept for how “magic” can work in Overwatch is tying it into history/lineage in some regard? The Shimadas and Kamori have familia spirits so tying magic into someone’s familial history is an obvious first step. But by making it not just family, but culture and history allows for a lot of questions on the differences between humans and omnics. Omnics gain spirituality through the iris and their existence of sentience through machines and those machines are seemingly ageless in nature. Unlike humans, an Omnic doesn’t have to craft a legacy they can just last- humans by nature if they want to be remembered need something to last beyond them, hence spirits of various forms and nature! The tying into culture/history also allows for a wider range of magical characters while still making it limited and giving a cohesive theme to these characters. So magic could be derived from spirits that grow very slowly as a culture grows or as a family grows, tradition allows for these spirits to blossom but so does evolution of tradition. It’s something that Omnics could do but not anytime soon and further delves into the themes of how life exists in the Overwatch universe, especially the contrast between Omnics and Humans. Omnics derive their power from self actualisation, humans derive theirs from cultural and historical connection Both are human expereinces ultimately but being explored through two different paths in the overwatch universe.

So much of the plots holes in Overwatch are just because Blizzard doesn’t handle its world. There’s just bits and pieces that’s sprinkled over 8 years. It has some of the most unique and interesting characters on a design level and story level, so why the hell do they just not create an animated show like Arcane or Edgerunners. People have been wanting one since the animated shorts launched. The fact that we’re having such big discussions as to whether or not the fictional universe has magic, 8 years later, is insane. A magic system is a critical function of any fictional story, so the fact we’re having such basic questions still unanswered as to where the line between fantasy and science is. That’s just bad writing and unclear story telling, plain and simple. The issue isn’t just that Blizzard cant world build, is that when their writers and animators are allowed to write and animate, they do so beautifully. OW’s shorts are amazing and the reasons the game has survived for so long despite it’s never ending screw ups is the characters. These are good characters, with a good animation team, with an interesting unexplored world. The pieces are there for an Overwatch Arcane, they just won’t bite the bullet.

They stepped out of the whole they were digging, and immediately started digging a second one right beside it when they tried to explain IN-GAME effects as IN-UNIVERSE effects. Early on in the game’s life, there was a clear divide between the gameplay, and the actual lore of the Overwatch universe. This made explaining how abilities actually worked unnecessary, because they could simply state “it’s not canon” whenever they added something that could not be explained without saying “magic,” but over time they started to blur the line between the two. Zenyatta was always a more interesting character when it couldn’t canonically float, and it’s orbs were simply a representation of it’s ability to help or hinder others with it’s wisdom. The same can be said for the Shimada’s. It was easy enough to assume the dragons (in-game, and in their cinematic) were just a visual representation of their abilities, purely for the viewer, and that the big, glowing dragons weren’t really there.

I think if they go about it similarly to Zenyatta, they can very well explain this phenomenon. Saying that the dragon and fox spirits exist as bases of Japanese spiritualism, but don’t really have a material form, but Hanzo’s, Genji’s and Kiriko’s technological weapons/tools can conjure a material form of these spirits, being able to utilize their abilities. Even then, they were only able to do this because of their physical and spiritual training (and in the case of Hanzo and Genji, being in the Shimada clan).

One of the best examples of “magic can do anything until it can’t” as mentioned in this article is the Mage RPG from World of Darkness. Mages there are basically godlike people, capable of bending and altering reality at will. They are so insanely powerful, there are few things more dangerous than a mage in that setting, and all because they basically realised that reality works by concensus and they can simply disagree with what is possible and make sense. The world is asleep, reality is a shared dream, and mages are lucid dreamers. Problem is that even if they can do that, reality still functions by concensus. It works the way it does because people belive it does. And sure, you can trick one person that it doesn’t. You can convince a hundred that you can change that. But a thousand? A million? Now it gets trickier. And reality likes to keep a status quo, it like making sense. So if you try to bend reallity too much and to violently you risk causing a paradox as the will and belief of the many outweigh your ability to believ otherwise. And when reality doesn’t make sense it rectifies that by erasing whatever caused the paradox. And when I say erase, I mean erase. Complete whipe out. Stricken from the record. Documents in the shredder. You go poof from existence itself so hard you never existed in the first place. Nobody remembers you, there are no signs of your birth, no records of what you may have done, and everything that may linger from you is rewritten to have been done by someone or something else.

There could’ve been a version of the lore where Kiriko does have a scientific explanation, because the world isn’t a monolith. Imagine if other countries heard about Sombra and wanted a ‘2.0’ version of her, with the only success being Kiriko, because of the massive crime family ‘investing’ in her. Having a teleporter would be a massive boon for them, but not something that they’d want made public. It could be a cool tradition vs tech thing where Kiriko is both. This way you can keep her backstory with the Shimadas but she doesn’t walk all over the lore. Make her the little sister figure of the brothers, then have her go her own way when Hanzo ‘killed’ Genji. Her ult can be explained as literally being the reverse of Sombra’s. Power-up instead of down. Her fox should be no different than Sombra’s abilities to pull up screens in her emotes, just unique to the individual. It would let her have some interesting interactions with more of the cast at least, which she’s severely lacking now.

Kiriko’s healing is mysticism imo. It’s old unlike the technological “advanced” ones and even in her lore she’s mixing paths from her mother and her grand mother. I don’t think too hard about but I probably would’ve just said “she has access to spirits” which is a belief system. It’d be…interesting if the spirit fox was just some type of ai.

I haven’t heard these “positive” and “negative” terms before in reference to storybuilding, so I’m just guessing you created them, and I really like the way you put it. I would just like to suggest a name change in reference to sculpting! Additive and Subtractive. Additive being something like Lumping together clay and welding/glueing, While Subtractive is like Carving and cutting. Great article!

I think this could be fixed if the “magic” that the Japanese characters use is explained as technology that they have the “right” to use for being part of the family. Like, maybe back in the day, the ancestors of these characters had weapons that for the time were really advanced and deadly that only the family knew how to use and were allowed to use. And as we move forward in time, those weapons just happen to use the same kind of tech that the Overwatch characters typically used.

I think the main reason they’re never going to say magic exists is BECAUSE of Omnic sentience. The first Omnic was scientifically sentient (and recognised as such by everyone in-universe). To end the crisis she infected all the world’s Omnics with a sentience virus (imagine a combined Zen and Sombra ult that spans the globe). Saying “oh it was magic all along” detracts from that. Especially for Bastion! Who seems to have developed it on independently of that (he still holds the Anubis code & commands which other Omnics don’t). I always assumed that Genji and Hanzo also use hard light technology and it just looked that way due to design choices of the Shimada family (to perpetuate their story and rule over the area). Hanzo’s scatter arrows I think can also be explained to be technology – he basically has a frag grenade taped to the end of an arrow. (I think Hanzo has cybernetic legs too?) Kiriko… Doesn’t have that. The fox spirit has no plausible projector besides from Kiriko herself – Genji and Hanzo have their sword and bow respectively – and while they can just claim nanomachines it doesn’t really explain the effects that well. Why does it express itself like possession? How does the healing work? The suzu? How tf can she goddamn teleport? I know they’re hinting at it being related to the age mistakes but tbh… Just admit you didn’t think the ages through?

I agree, just add magic. It really shouldn’t be that big of a deal, it just has to be controlled in order to not overshadow all the tech/sci-fi characters. In terms of only magic in Japan…I personally never thought of it that way. For me it was simply: Magic exists in specifically Hanzo,Kiriko,Genji. I think of them as sort of warlocks, specifically chosen by powerful spirits to use them and no one else can. Even in Kiriko’s short it was shown that Kiriko’s own mom didn’t believe in spirits and everyone seemed to be very surprised at her abilities, certainly magic isn’t common there.

I have always had this take and along with the Omnic Monks (Ram at least uses his magic during Annihilation) I would say part of Sigma’s and Illari’s abilities come from magic, and again with the two of them we see magic being done while using technology. Sadly it seems we’ll have to wait for another 2 heroes to come out before Overwatch decided to make this the reality, unless the healer from a Mars base turns out to wield magic. Once they do say magic exists though I’m sure Lifeweaver will have it retconned in that he his constructs, while being made from inanimate hardlight, are alive through magic.

I think it’s vaguely explained as “spiritual energy”, the Shimadas and Kiriko are tied to a faith system that gives them dragons and kitsunes, the Omnics exceed science with a lean on belief in life, usually tied to spirituality, Illari’s sort of spiritual alongside cybernetic, etc It’s definitely “magic”, but it makes sense that it could just be this energy that revolves around life and faith that people can just use alongside all of the nanotech cybernetic stuff

I’ve always explained hanzo’s and genji’s dragons as projections rather than magic. Genji’s dragon only appears when he pulls out his sword so maybe thanks to his cybernetics or his sword he is just using the projection of a dragon as a scare tactic. Wouldn’t you be afraid if a cyborg pulled out a sword and started yelling at you while trying to cut you in half? That’s pretty terrifying and then you see a freaking dragon on top of it. For Hanzo since his dragon appears after he shoots his arrow I always thought it was some sort of special piercing nano technology that the shamada clan invented and only gave to the members of the family. I figured that Hanzo just wanted it to be shaped like a dragon. As for kiriko I have no idea what her deal is. Kunai are just throwing knives. Uhh her healing ofuda could have little nanites on them that reseal skin or something. Her teleport I have no explanation for. As for her suzu I like the idea that she just throws drugs at you cause some drugs can keep you going even when your hurt. As for kitsune rush I have no idea I guesssssss……. Magic?