With Overwatch's huge international cast of characters, creative fans have a lot of inspiration to draw from. Blizzard's signature art style, coupled with the variety of skins available for its roster of characters, helps to facilitate artistic interpretation from Overwatch fans, and extraneous content, in the form of animated shorts and comic books, has also helped to bolster each character's background. In an ode to the Overwatch novel Deadlock Rebels by Lyndsay Ely, a Redditor and artist has sketched a wonderful interpretation of Ashe, McCree, and B.O.B.
Deadlock Rebels is the second Overwatch novel, and it focuses on the beginnings of the Deadlock Gang, a criminal organization of which Ashe and McCree are the founding members. Taking place a long time before the happenings of the Overwatch video game, Deadlock Rebels follows Ashe and McCree's early years as criminals, with Ashe only just graduating high school in the novel, and a decades-younger McCree before his induction into the Overwatchteam. While the novels focus on events in McCree's past, the character's future may be uncertain, with recent allegations against Activision Blizzard causing many fans to request a name change for McCree in Overwatch.
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In a light-hearted take on the gang's early years, Redditor Pugbytes has depicted Ashe's 21st birthday party, with B.O.B and McCree in attendance. Ashe and McCree clink bottles together in a toast to the cowgirl's big day, while B.O.B stands behind holding a large birthday cake and sporting a festive party hat atop his metal head. The three pose for a selfie on the beach, wearing clothes resembling their skins for the Summer Games Overwatch event, and showing a lighter side to the trio compared to their usual gun-toting, Wild West ways. After reading Deadlock Rebels, Pugbytes felt the need to sketch the companions, having enjoyed the insight into the characters and the "Good slice of background for the cowlads," that it provided.
After reading 'Deadlock Rebels', had to draw some End-of-Summer Shenanigans -aka- Ashe's 21st Bday Party from
Overwatch
Notably, Pugbytes version of Ashe keeps her Deadlock Gang tattoos in tact, something the official Summer Games Overwatch skin managed to forget, and does a wonderful job of capturing a moment of joy in Ashe and McCree's relationship. While McCree became a vigilante after the dissolution of Overwatch, his focus on fighting for causes that he believed were just, Ashe continued to heist and plunder, and two became bitter rivals. With the characters being at odds with each other after McCree chose to join Overwatch, Ashe keeps a picture of McCree on a dartboard in her hideout, it's certainly a refreshing take on the pair.
Overwatch is certainly on bumpy ground lately, with the potential delay of Overwatch 2 and allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct at Activision Blizzard looming over all of the company's franchises. With that in mind, it is nice to see that Overwatch can still inspire positivity, and that fans can get enjoyment out of the game's characters and setting, despite the surrounding negativity. The light-hearted nature of Pugbyte's art helps to capture the fun of Overwatch's world, as well as the vibrant nature of Blizzard's character design, and the size of Ashe's cake shows that B.O.B isn't just a potent ultimate ability, but a great Omnic butler as well.
Overwatch is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.