King’s Row EMP
Overwatch perhaps has one of the most fascinating casts of characters of any video game released this year, yet we still know so little about the world. This is primarily due to Blizzard relegating most of their actual lore to dialogue snippets, visual cues, and the odd animated short. There are a lot of interesting characters and stories that have yet to be fully discussed, especially those that revolve around the various characters. We aren’t going to focus too heavily on the back stories of characters since Blizzard will probably release a short for each one. Instead, these are 5 lesser known Overwatch stories that still need some more explaining.
Most payload maps have a fairly straightforward narrative that can be easily discovered with a bit of sleuthing or exploration. However, King’s Row is a unique example because we are actually escorting a massive EMP bomb throughout the city, which seems both incredibly dangerous and stupid if you are a Zenyatta main. We know this because of the way it flairs up at the end of the round if you are successful, but we also have a very minimal idea as to why we are doing.
Thanks to this line from explosives expert Junkrat (“So we are delivering a bomb to scrap some bots and I’m getting paid for it.”) we have a general idea as to why you’re bringing a bomb into the city. It turns out that this EMP is going to be used to wipe out an entire omnic population that is living in a slum below the final payload point. However, we still have no idea who exactly is paying us to bring this bomb or what their purposes are.
Now the easy guess would be Talon, Overwatch’s antagonist and terrorist organization, as they are no stranger to inciting violence in this town. After all, it was Widowmaker who shot what is essentially robot Gandhi (Tekhartha Mondatta) in front of a massive crowd of people. Yet, we have no idea what they would gain from demolishing an entire populace of omnics, so perhaps it’s someone else hiring your crew of 6.
Given that omnic/human tensions are at a boiling point in England, this could very well be a military operation or a mission from some anti-robot fanatics. The mystery of who and why is what makes King’s Row such a fascinating map to explore, so hopefully we will get some answers down the line.
