Ah, dating sims: the chance for each and every one of us to be a little less lonely without ever having to step away from our computer screens. Dating sims spun off from franchised games are particularly unique, because they give you the chance to romance your favorite fictional characters (instead of just shooting them, in the case ofOverwatch).
Released on Valentine’s Day in tandem with a Hanzo Cupid skin, Loverwatch (which you canplay here) is a first foray into the dating sim genre for the world of Overwatch. The browser-based sim — a glorious return to my days of HTML-based gaming — was irreverent all the whole way through, poking fun at the traditional dating sim genre without discounting it or making me feel bad for enjoying it. You choose between pursuing Genji and Mercy, and are then guided through the experience by Cupid Hanzo (and, honestly, it’s a crime the secret ending didn’treallylet me romance him). Old Cupid is a bit biased (he’smuchhappier if you romance Mercy, mostly because Genji is his brother), but he pushes you onward, railroading you into an almost impossible-to-mess-up relationship with the Overwatch hero of your choosing.
The game is more a preview into what could be more than anything. The dialogue options are limited and all seem to lead in the same direction, unless you expressly choose to ‘just stay friends’ with either hero at the last moment. It’s just the right length for an event mini-game; it took no time at all to run through the different storylines and gather all those sweet,sweetprofile pictures and titles.
Throughout the game, though, it’s made crystal clear thatnothingabout it is canon. There are several fourth-wall-breaking references to that fact — Mercy, whose real name is Angela Ziegler, says her favorite food is chocolate, but quickly reiterates that this is only the case in the dating game’s universe. Genji mentions your second date before your first has even finished, saying that since the two of you are in a dating sim, he just assumed that your initial meetingmustbe a date. Even the intro of the game contains a warning that nobody should rush off to update any wikis yet; there are hints that thismayall be a test run for a very real dating sim in the future, but for now it’s just for the fun of it.
ButBlizzard, I implore you: give us that official canonical Overwatch dating sim. Let us romanceour Overwatch mains, come what may. I want to know how Widowmaker really feels about her husband’s death; I want to take Brigitte as my date to Tracer and Emily’s wedding; I want to know exactly what happened between Cassidy and Ashe (and maybe give him a reason to love again, who’s to say).
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Dating sims give yousomuch more insight into a universe’s characters, centered as they are around gathering personal information and using it to your advantage (if you look at them in a clinical and analytical rather than romantic way). You learn characters' tragic backstories and their meaningful relationships, their likes and dislikes, and all the other things that make them tick.
The unique experience of having Genji’s brother hold your hand through the romancing process, for example, provides ample opportunity for insight into the history between them: Hanzo once left Genji for dead, only to find out later that his brother still lived as a cyborg. He’s clearly not over that dramatic chain of events, as theseveralnegative comments he makes about his brother’s personality suggest.
As a general rule, Overwatch uses cinematics and comic-style short stories to explore the lore of its characters. They’re bothgreat mediums for expandingupon video game lore, but they aren’t interactive. Something just hits different about being able to dig directly into your favorite hero’s backstory, or hearing them tell a story from their own perspective. It gives you a special insight into what’s actually going on in their heads: how Genji actually feels about the way the final Blackwatch incident shook out, or how Mercy handles her relative fame when she just wants to be a normal person more often than not.
A true Overwatch dating sim wouldn’t need to provide that level of insight into each and every character — Torbjorn is happily married, Tracer has a serious girlfriend, and Zenyatta probably wouldn’t be all too interested since he’s a monk — but providing a few more options with branching paths and even the chance to fail spectacularly would give some amazing insight into the characters we know and love. It would be wonderful to see more characters appear on the side, too, like Ana and Zenyatta did in Loverwatch; as the game references in a few tongue-in-cheek dialogue options, the latter gets very little screen time across the board, and at this point I think Zenyatta mains would take just about anything they could get.
Overwatch 2 is continuing to grow in popularity asits recent currency changeshave come through, changing the way players can earn and purchase skins. A legitimate, fully-realized dating sim set in the Overwatch universe could be exactly what existing players need to delve into the lore of the games and better connect with their favorite characters — and it could be the perfect way to tap into a whole new player base as its world expands.
