Overwatch Crossover potential #1: Tracer · 3:10am Jun 7th, 2016
I have always been a big fan of Blizzard’s products (sans Diablo since I’ve never had the opportunity to play any of those). Overwatch is just another one that I’ve come to love (for over a year before it even came out). Thus, I am very anxious for a crossover of MLP with it.
However, I am very well aware of the potential to get crossovers with this very wrong. My hope is to help mitigate that, and even prevent that, by detailing each character of Overwatch in enough detail that potential authors can figure out what characters they could actually work with, how to make a story involving them in Equestria actually interesting, and avoid breaking a character out of what’s already been established for them.
Since this will be my first post involving an Overwatch character, it only makes sense to start with the poster girl of the game: Tracer.
Official Backstory
Link to her in-depth backstory here, but these are the basics you need to know about her history.
Lena Oxton was the youngest person to ever be inducted into Overwatch’s experimental flight program (upon which was given the call sign of “Tracer”) and was handpicked to test out a prototype, teleporting fighter jet: the Slipstream. During the test, however, something went wrong, and the jet, along with Lena, went missing.
Months later, she reappeared suffering Chronal Dissociation (she’s essentially a ghost who will disappear and reappear at random times, unable to interact with the physical world). It wasn’t until a Scientist Ape, Winston, created an arc reactor a harness for her called the Chronal Accelerator that this problem was resolved. As long as Lena wears the harness, she is able to have a physical form. Not only that, but the harness also enables her to manipulate her own time, speeding herself up and slowing herself down as she wished.
With Overwatch’s disbandment, she travels the world to right any and all wrongs she encounters.
Abilities
Pulse Pistols: think of them as light, dual sub-machine guns that seem to use her chronal accelerator as their source for ammunition. Able to unload in one second and then reload in one second, 40 ammunition total between the two pistols, and each shot dealing anywhere between 1.5-6 damage in-game depending on where you hit, these are quite the reliable weapons Lena has.
Blink: able to teleport short distances in the blink of an eye. While she can only have three charges of this that can only take her horizontally in-game, the official animatic shorts shows that she the blink seems to merely function as a quick fast-forward for her. This means that if she can’t make a jump normally, she can’t make it with a blink either. She’ll just fail the jump faster. This does mean that she can move around crazy fast, and faster if she works to improve her natural sprinting ability. This gives her an edge in which she can zip around her enemies very quickly, allowing her to feasibly punch and disable hostage takers before they can react to her.
Recall: sends Lena “Tracer” Oxton three seconds back to where, when, and how she was at that time. While the “when” of this ability is omitted in-game, the animatic short Alive shows that not only is this only a game-play aspect but that she can actually rewind farther than just three seconds due to *spoiler* her rewinding to before she set the venom mine off, and then jumping over the venom mine that had already exploded and incapacitated her *spoiler end*. However, there is a very clear cooldown with this ability even out-of-game, as can also be seen in Alive due to *MAJOR SPOILER* her not using it again to take the shot that clearly would have killed her, but would have likely saved Mandata’s life. *MAJOR SPOILER END*
Pulse Bomb: A small, sticky bomb that can dish out a LOT of damage. To give you an idea of how powerful it is, it does 400 damage in-game to enemies within 2 meters of it. The only characters that can naturally survive this are D.Va with her mech having 100 life and 400 armor, Reinhardt with his 300 life and 200 armor, Roadhog with his 600 life, and Winston with his 400 life and 100 armor. For everyone else caught in the blast, it’s a one-shot kill. Considering Equestria’s current level of technology and armor, it’s highly unlikely for the average anything to stand against the power of this bomb.
Stat specifics gathered from owinfinity.com.
Important character notes
Lena is motivated by the desire to fight against evil for the sake of protecting others. Notice the fact that when Overwatch was disbanded, she did not just go and settle down. She became a wandering hero with England being the closest thing she would have to call home (note the British accent). This means that if the temptation comes to read or write a fanfic about her ending up in Equestria and settling down in Ponyville like most human-in-Equestria fics do, run. You will not get the Lena “Tracer” Oxton of Overwatch.
If anything, Lena should quickly find a situation in which she can fight the good fight for Equestria while trying to find a way home (after all, she’s likely to have a feeling of responsibility for Earth’s safe-guarding). It could be something as small as gang activity plaguing Manehatten, or a large-scale threat to all of Equestria. Just make sure that it’s something that Tracer can actually fight, preferably with someone of Equestria. If it’s just Tracer dealing with the issue, then all you have is an Overwatch fanfic that happens to be set in the world of My Little Pony.
Personality-wise, you should think of Lena as a happy-go-lucky, optimistic hero. Happy and upbeat enough that she’d likely enjoy a break with Pinkie Pie and one of her large parties, but still devoted enough to her sense of duty to the greater good to leave as early as she has to the next morning to fight on the front lines.
A quirk to her, however, is her naivety. In the animatic short Alive, she is unable to *spoiler* understand why Widowmaker would be willing to kill Mandata *spoiler end*. This reveals some inability to understand the motivation or drive behind villains. This would make a conflict between her and Sombra be one that could easily be personal for her. Why would Sombra do the horrible things he does? How could someone just be so evil?
A conflict like this would also allow her to connect with redeemed villains like Discord, Luna, Sunset Shimmer, Trixie (kind-of. Still waiting on some more development for her), and Starlight Glimmer. They could understand the villains they’d fight because they’ve been exactly where they were before, and so could help her come to realize and understand the villain(s).
Another possible quirk of Lena’s can be seen from the fact that she’s chosen to wander the world to actively seek the good fight rather than find something else to do with her life. This could very easily stem from an inner restlessness that would keep her from staying in one place for too long which can stem from either a simple need to do something, or from some inner drive to actively seek the good fight. There is a difference between those too, and it's an important difference.
While the former can be satisfied by the latter, the latter cannot be satisfied by former. This means that in the case of the former, Lena can stay put for an extended time, and even stay on the sidelines if she’s not needed. If it’s the latter, however, Lena cannot stay put for long. She’ll need to leave her current location to find the next instance of the good fight, or it will need to come find her. She’ll continue to grow more and more restless otherwise.
Something else thing to note about her is her current age. Remember how her bio stated that she was the youngest to ever be inducted into Overwatch’s experimental flight program? She’s currently 26 years old. That means that at the same age she’s running around fighting to protect the innocents of the world, many of us are in our junior or senior years of college (for Americans at least)! So while she still has much of the energy of youth on her side, she doesn’t have the wisdom or experience age would give to her. She’s still susceptible to the temptations (and maybe trails) that many of us would encounter, much more likely to make some bad calls due to not thinking things through, not yet understand many complex ideas older folks would, and can likely still be easily fooled by the kind of things us college kids can be fooled by (unless it’s something her Overwatch training would render null).
Last note to keep in mind concerning Lena is the fact that she’s British/English (not sure what the difference is exactly if there is a difference). She’ll use different words and phrases than Americans would. So if you’re an American planning on writing/editing a story featuring her, make sure you research what British/English people would say that’s different from what Americans would. Here’s one to get you started: for the British/English, the word “cheers” can be used as a celebratory word, or to say “thanks.”
Notable Character Interaction Possibilities
While this is likely to be predictable, Rainbow Dash would likely be the best character to have to interact with Lena for multiple reasons.
With her drive to fight the good fight, she’s likely to interact more frequently with the more military side of Equestria. Notable characters would include the members of the Wonderbolts (which just so happens to now include Rainbow Dash), and Shining Armor if he’s still filling a military role since his becoming prince of the Crystal Empire. Otherwise, you're going to have to create an OC.
While off-duty, Lena is likely to look around for a bit of active fun. The key word of that sentence is “active”. She’s likely not going to be caught stopping by the spa, reading a book, or anything else that involves just standing or sitting around. Ok, she might stop for a cup of tea (because British), but she’s more likely going to be doing something that involves a lot of moving around (basketball, anyone?).
These are all things that one would see and expect of Rainbow Dash as well as of Lena Oxton, thus allowing enough commonalities for the two of them to bond over. While we can see Lena getting along with many of the other ponies of Ponyville (I point that out because that’s the place that most authors are going to send her to till the action really gets going), she’s not likely to do a lot of things with them due to not having many things for them to enjoy doing together while she’s either looking for or waiting for the next good fight.
Just because it’s unavoidable, she’s likely going to be surprised and a little off-put when she meets Pinkie Pie, but it’s doubtful for her to take very long to get used to her.
That’s it for this review. I hope that you all enjoyed this post, or at least were able to come to understand Lena “Tracer” Oxton enough to be able to write a believable crossover fic featuring her.
Please let me know what you thought about this review, and if there’s someone else you’d like for me to review. Otherwise, I plan on having my next review be on the wandering, redemption-seeking assassin/mercenary: Hanzo Shimada.
