I’ve been playing Overwatch since 2019. I finally jumped into Blizzard’s hero shooter after the release of Bastet, a short story following the medic sniper Ana and old man vigilante Jack “Soldier: 76” Morrison, which confirmed the broody ex-Overwatch leader was once in a long-time relationship with a man named Vincent, but the two had long since split. Soldier’s devotion to Overwatch’s cause strained their connection, and eventually, Vincent married and found the life he wanted. At the time, Blizzard came under a bit of fire for sequestering this lore drop in a short story that most of Overwatch’s player base would never see. For years, it felt like Blizzard’s shooter existed in a space of plausible deniability, where it had queer characters but any sign of those identities was stashed away where bigots could ignore it. That all changed in 2023 when the game began an annual Pride Month event celebrating its queer heroes, and this year, it finally made good on a promise it made to Soldier: 76 fans six years ago.
It started out small at the end of May. Blizzard finally put a voice line in pre-match banter that references the relationship. Soldier and the game’s bisexual heartthrob Baptiste talk about how the ex-Overwatch commander once had someone who “captured [his] heart,” but he hadn’t seen this man “in a long time.” Vincent is never mentioned by name, but anyone who’s caught up on the lore knows who this exchange is about. At the time, this just seemed like Blizzard finally adding a real, tangible reference to the relationship. When the company finally announced what it was doing for Pride Month, however, it was revealed this was the precursor for a much bigger moment for Soldier: 76 and for those who have been waiting for his identity as a gay man to be more than just a footnote in Ana’s short story.
A week later, Blizzard started rolling out its Pride Month celebration. This meant the return of the Midtown Pride variant, which dresses up the New York City map to look like it’s ready for a Pride Parade, adorned in rainbow flags and devoid of cop cars. But that happens every year. This year, Blizzard put the spotlight on Soldier: 76, whose past relationship, in one new short story, went from a bullet point on his character sheet to a fully realized moment in his arc. Futures Past follows two dueling stories from Jack’s life. It continues last year’s Heroes Ascendant short story, which had him investigating the fall of Overwatch by having him team up with Illari to look further into a grander conspiracy throughout the series’ many factions, while also reflecting on his failed relationship with Vincent.
As someone who has spent years wanting to know more about who Soldier: 76 was before he became a bitter old man hell-bent on revenge, I found Futures Past so perfect that it was like something made up in my dreams. It depicts multiple stages of Jack and Vincent’s relationship, starting with their adorable meeting as university students in which we see the future vigilante’s softer side, and ending with the ultimate crumbling of their relationship years down the line. It’s angsty and sentimental in equal measure, and skillfully weaves its present-day storyline with Soldier’s nostalgic flashbacks. Caring for Illari, a young girl who has lost everyone else she ever cared for, brings up all those feelings of wanting a family with Vincent, but being unable to let go of his devotion to Overwatch. Life is full of “what ifs” to dwell on, and for a man who admits to having reached his twilight years with mostly regrets, Soldier: 76 seems like a pretty nostalgic person who constantly thinks about the mistakes he’s made, even though he has a mission to focus on.
The story ends with him writing Vincent a letter telling him both that he’s alive and that his ex-lover was right about everything, and that all wars, even the ones he’s devoted his life to, have to end some day. Because Overwatch’s story has been caught up in development issues and mostly relegated to short stories, we don’t often get moments that legitimately move things forward. The war that Soldier: 76 dedicated his life to may still be ongoing without an Overwatch 2 story mode to depict it, but seeing one of the series’ longest-running characters actually grow from who he was when the game launched in 2016 is the kind of development we’ve been denied for almost a decade. I laughed, I cried, I fist-pumped. It was perfect. After six years, I finally got the old man yaoi I’d so long desired.
If that wasn’t enough, Blizzard also stopped hiding Soldier’s identity in corners bigots wouldn’t see if they weren’t looking, giving me in-game ways to remind other players that my main is a big ol’ homosexual whether they like it or not. Soldier: 76 now has a skin called “Resilient” that uses the same color scheme as the modern gay men’s Pride flag, similar to the “Monarch” skin Venture got last year, sporting non-binary colors, as well as an emote that shows the hero raising a rainbow smoke bomb in the air. These cosmetics aren’t hidden in menus like Pride flag player banners, nor are they ambiguous like a spray of Soldier and Vincent in a Christian Side Hug. Most importantly, they’re not something that goes away when June is over, like the Pride parade Midtown map. I throw up that rainbow smoke bomb whenever I get off a good few kills in a row, in hopes that it will show up at the end in a Play of the Game.
This Pride weekend, I marched in the New York City Pride parade for the first time in my life, though it wasn’t the same route Overwatch 2 players push a payload through in the game’s map variant. Back when I lived in Georgia, I never had the opportunity to attend these events. The small, conservative town I lived in wouldn’t dare hold one, and Atlanta’s celebration was just far enough away that I never made it. At a certain point, I became jaded toward these gatherings because they were often led by corporations just looking to cash in on good press. In the months since Donald Trump’s re-election, however, a lot of these companies seem to have grown skittish and are now nowhere to be found at Pride parades, with some even cutting back funding for initiatives that support diversity. Walking through the city, passing by thousands of people there to celebrate a community that has become even more visibly disadvantaged in the past year, has a way of putting what we often consider to be toothless corporate pandering into perspective. Rainbow washing is annoying, but seeing so many people in power scatter the second they start to feel like they don’t have to show up anymore feels worse.
When the weight of the world feels like too much, I look for signs that somebody, anybody, believes that it doesn’t have to be this way; something that goes beyond slapping a rainbow on your social media profile picture. When Overwatch’s Pride event first ran in 2023, The game’s developers said that getting it out the door had been an uphill battle internally within the company. Even now, the cosmetics the studio has put in are being censored in some territories. After three years, it would have been easy for the Overwatch 2 team to just put the Pride Midtown map on rotation and call it a day, especially as plenty of other companies are leaving the queer people they once propped up out in the cold. Yet the Overwatch 2 team has learned from its past mistakes, and is trying to do right by its queer characters and players both in-game and out. In the grand scheme of things, tossing up a gay smoke bomb isn’t going to change the world. But it’s a small reminder that the world’s not beyond saving. One day, this war will end, too, and someone inside Blizzard is trying to signal that in whatever small way they can.