What exactly is the potentially catastrophic climate anomaly Mei was investigating in Antarctica?
Why did the other scientists die in their cryo-pods and how does the new lore revealed
in the latest Overwatch short fit into the rest of the world as a whole?
The Mei Animated short “Rise and Shine” has just released and it is packed with new
lore and information for us to breakdown and discuss!
So let’s get right into it!
The first thing I really want to talk about is the “Anomaly”.
Mei and the rest of her team were stationed at Ecopoint Antarctica to investigate mysterious
changes in the climate around earth's southernmost continent.
We previously saw reports of this anomaly on an ingame map where a note from Mei asks,
“What is causing the Anomaly, Climate change?
Unexplained phenomenon or Aliens?!”
The Anomaly in game is displayed as a red circle on a map, but in the cinematic we got
a lot more details.
This first shot is the same map as the one ingame, but now it contains a lore more details
with these small red triangle spreading out from the epicenter of the Anomaly making it
look like whatever is happening is spreading out and getting bigger.
The second map located above it seems to show the geometry of the land around the anomaly,
but the anomaly itself is a huge spike rising high above the rest of the land.
It's also coloured red while the surrounding area is green.
There is a small indicator above the map going from a frosty blue to a hot red, so this is
possibly measuring temperature, blue being very cold as it should be, green being a bit
warmer but red being much hotter.
Mei also mentions that:
“The atmospheric fluctuations above the Anomaly have gotten….. it's much worse than
we predicted”
So could these fluctuations she's talking about strange weather patterns, rising temperatures
or maybe both?
I think that this whole thing ties into global warming, but rather than being the result
of greenhouse gasses, it's being caused by this strange anomaly.
But what could the actually anomaly be?
Perhaps it's something underground and the spike of land above it is almost like a chimney
expelling fumes?
Maybe a rogue underground Omnium?
Or could it be something else rising out of the ground, perhaps a natural phenomenon like
a volcano building up pressure pushing the land and ice above upwards?
The next big lore drop came from the news reports Mei pulls up about the fall of Overwatch.
Each report and magazine moves forward in time.
The first titled Insight was likely published around the time the public started to turn
on Overwatch.
That Fighter Jet pictured at the bottom is most likely the Slipstream, the ship Tracer
piloted and whose malfunction left her lost in time.
The next report is from Atlas News with a headline about the global spread of Anti omnic
violence.
The headline below seems to mention an election, something that's later backed up in the next
magazine US Politics.
So this is something new, it seems that around the time of Overwatch’s fall an election
in the United States was taking place.
So it would make sense that Overwatch would have been a hot topic during that election,
perhaps with one side coming down in favor and the other against it.
There has always been a bit of a conspiracy around the fall of Overwatch with evidence
suggesting that Reyes (now known as Reaper) conspired to bring them down from the inside,
could Overwatch’s disgrace have been used to swing the polls in one candidate's favor?!
The main headline here is about Reyes and Blackwatch so this fall in line with that
narrative.
Other headlines talk about Drones, which is an interesting subject.
Are these drones man made or are they used by the Omnics?
Is this a new form of surveillance?
The next set of headlines are in a technology magazine called Tomorrow.
It talks about what's next for humanity, something that was also mentioned in the first magazine,
can humans stay relevant in a world filled with Omnics, machines that are better, stronger,
faster and smarter than we could ever be.
Its an interesting insight into why humanity fears Omnic’s, it's not just the threat
of another omnic crisis, but humanity is looking directly at its replacements, something they
created and now no longer have control over.
The other headline talks about nanotechnology and how it's becoming popular in many different
industries.
Mercy pioneered the research in nano tech for medical purposes so it's an interesting
nod to her but I don't think there is too much to read into here.
Next we have a report about unrest in London and this is followed up by a report on the
Turing Green Development being approved with the London Mayor and Mondatta hosting a press
conference.
The Turning Green Development was a plan to build a new home for Omnic’s in london but
before it even got started the Omnic extremist group Null Sector attacked and captured the
Mayor and Mondatta.
This event was known as the Uprising and we got to play through it ingame a couple months
ago.
One report talks about the Antarctic base going missing and includes a report on climate
change, obviously they are unaware of the existence of the mysterious anomaly.
And then the very last report from Atlas News is about Overwatch being disbanded and once
again mentions the Petras Act.
This is something that's been around since the very first animated short for Winston.
The Petras act was what shut down Overwatch, and Petras was actually a director who was
brought onboard and took over control of Overwatch during its final days.
He was in charge during the Uprising in London.
I wonder if the act is named after him because he created it, or could it be in memory of
him?
Could director Petras have died as a result of some kind of Overwatch operation and then
when they passed the act to shut Overwatch down they named it after him?
Another nice lore detail I really liked was the group photo, very much mirroring the classic
photo of the early Overwatch agents.
Its almost impossible to put the names to the faces for most of these characters, but
its likely the guy to Mei’s right is the captain mentioned in the opening scene.
We can see on his cryo chamber that he's from Numbani, being the only black member on the
team and with his hat hinting at an african connection this seems most likely.
If we really wanted to try and put names to the characters I would guess that the other
2 dressed in blue would be the other scientists, while the two dressed in yellow would be the
engineer and researcher, but this is pure speculation.
Now we need to get into the slightly grim topic of how all these people died.
They intended to go into cryostasis for just a short while, a couple weeks or so to preserves
rations and wait for more to arrive, you can see they aren't really afraid for their lives,
it's just part of the job, Mei even seems excited, but then she says this:
[Im going to leave my sensors on…..]
Of course 9 years later when a weak signal from Winston’s recall message reaches the
base its only Mei who the computer wakes up, and although no specific reason for the pods
failing is given we do know the base is running out of power, so could Mei leaving on all
of her equipment have caused the batteries to die?!
Its certainly not her fault, there wouldn't have been a problem if everything had gone
to plan, but seeing as it didnt could the drain of her equipment on the power supply
have cost her friends their lives?
In the grand scheme of things Mei’s data could save millions of lives, but maybe this
supports the reason for her drive to get that data back to the rest of the world, to do
something to make up for the deaths of her friends.
What do you think about Overwatch’s latest animated short?
I absolutely loved it and can't wait for more.
Also let me know what you think of our theories and if you have any thoughts of your own.
As always this is James for Curse saying thanks for watching, and enjoy the game!