Hello, everybody!
Disciple here with Overwatch Curios!
If you've ever heard of overwatch, you've heard of Tracer.
She is the quintessential poster girl for the IP and one of the first images we glimpsed
alongside Winston, Reaper, and Widowmaker during the announcement and the cinematic
trailer that followed at Blizzcon back in 2014.
She's the games embodiment of hope, fun, and charisma and happens to be a very fun
and powerful hero to play in the game.
We've heard so much about tracer in terms of lore, character development, her interactions
with other heroes, and how she fits into the Overwatch roster, but today let's take a look
at tracer and some of the things you might not know about Overwatch's premiere hero!
We all saw Tracer first during that cinematic trailer.
However, the game's development spans much farther back than late 2014 and so does Tracer!
She was actually one of the first three heroes developed for overwatch and began the hero
development routine alongside Reaper and Widowmaker.
So, it's no coincidence that you see these three make their way into that debut trailer.
Tracer would set the stage for the development of all future heroes and she was the first
to be implemented into the game.
Tracer would also be the hero the other teams would use to test the super early mechanics
of the game, like projectile firing and movement.
Sort of a crash-test dummy for Blizzard's first person shooter, you can thank tracer
for many of the games early features that developed into the sharp gameplay we all enjoy.
For the development team, being the first hero in the game makes Tracer a bit of a special
character for many and symbolised the first real identifiable piece of the large Overwatch
project.
That turned into her becoming the visual piece for Overwatch early on, and even slated her
as THE hero to grace the cover of the box art, which is so very recognizable to millions
of fans.
During that initial creation phase, Tracer conceptually began with the idea of a hero
that blinked across the map.
It's likely that her blinks had a huge distance and a much larger cooldown so it couldn't
be abused.
The concept around tracer was a mix between Fighter Pilot and Track Athlete, so you can
see where the blink + speed came from.
If tracer had kept down this road, she would probably have ended up having a much different
style of play.
Instead of a path-oriented short blink, it'd be more like a teleport from one spot on the
map to another giving her massive freedom of movement and making her an almost entirely
flank-based attack hero (even more so than she is right now).
With the longer cool down it would make using Blink a much more tactical decision sort of
like when to use an ultimate or large damaging ability on other heroes.
Of course you can see how this would be OP in the end, and of course Blizzard changed
it to be a bit more subtle of a movement buff, but it goes to show that the first Heroes
had a lot of breathing room in their creation phases with all sorts of ideas being tested!
Many players have seen the Origin skins for heroes in the game which show off what a particular
hero looked like before the present time and circumstances of the story currently in the
game.
Tracers Slipstream skin is no exception and is a direct reference to her back story.
The skin has a serious fighter pilot theme and gives tracer and even more obvious sense
of speed and style.
The Slipstream skin makes perfect sense when you check out her back story which reads:
"Lena Oxton (call sign: "Tracer") was the youngest person ever inducted into Overwatch's
experimental flight program.
Known for her fearless piloting skills, she was handpicked to test the prototype of a
teleporting fighter, the Slipstream.
But during its first flight, the aircraft's teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and it
disappeared.
Lena was presumed dead."
This skin is the outfit she wore while flying the slipstream plane, before her chronal disassociation
accident.
And as such, it is the only skin where she does not have her chronal accelerator!
This doesn't make a lot of practical sense in the game because she can still blink and
recall, which are done by using the Chronal accelerator.
But the skin is awesome and reminds us that tracer wasn't always a time traveling super
hero!
Speaking of time travel, let's hop back to a time before tracer was even tracer!
We all know that Overwatch has its earliest roots in the failed project Titan.
(If you didn't know that fact, we've got a video on that too *on-screen link?*).
During Titans development one of the classes in the MMO was the "Jumper".
He could use a high tech set of gear and a chest piece to blink around the map.
He was small, thin, very fast and agile, and had a parkour vibe to him.
The jumper was designed to be a light weapon carrying, hit and run scout that was highly
maneuverable and confused his enemies while taking shots at them.
Sounds familiar, right?
The jumper even had dual pistols and the circular glowing device on the center of the chest.
This Tiran is the direct influence toward Tracer and carried over almost entirely in
it's conception into overwatch.
Since it was so direct, it was a relatively easy transfer from one project
to the other and gave the team that working prototype they needed to kick start the project.
Overwatch has gone through a lot of changes since the reveal a few years ago.
Game mechanics have been added or changed, game modes and events have been thrown in,
& heroes have been added and tweaked.
Some heroes even got complete reworks like Symmetra and
Bastion.
However tracer hasn't been touched.
Like, at all.
Maybe the only noteworthy change is that her Butt pose was removed way back after some
controversy, but as far as the hero herself gameplay wise?
Not a single tweak since the beginning of Closed beta.
Just bug fixes and additions to her cosmetic lineup.
This is HUGE when you stop to think about it as balancing 23 heroes around eachother,
maps, game play, modes, competitive, and more is a massive undertaking that requires constant
maintenance and reworking of the entire formula, let alone individual heroes.
The complete lack of changes to Tracer show off her stability in the roster and how comfortable
the development team is with keeping her right where she should be.
Tracer is a solid hero in just about any situation and has a good number of counters while still
being a counter to many heroes herself.
Her damage is good and her mobility is second to none.
Her ultimate does exactly what it's intended to do with a decent level of skill required
to land it properly.
All balanced quite nicely with a super-small health pool making her more challenging to
play and master.
Everyone knows that tracer can blink and recall and generally annoy enemy players by doing
so.
But how she does it, you may not know.
Earlier we talked about that accident that had Tracer slipping in and out of time and
space and generally making her life a living hell, but luckily, Tracer has some super-smart
friends that were there to figure things out.
One super smart friend in particular, Winston, was able to design a device that would sort
of "anchor" Tracer into the present and prevent her from disappearing without control.
The chronal accelerator is the chest piece she wears and keeps her right where she wants
to be.
Without it, she has no control over when and where she blinks out of time.
The unintentional side effects of the device are even greater control over her chronal
displacement allowing her to "blink" and "recall" which are her primary abilities
in the game.
Tracer is also capable of removing her chronal accelerator and still maintain her point in
time.
This is shown to occur at least twice in Reflections, the Blizzard comic featuring tracer.
Blizzard later stated on Social media that, as long as Tracer is in the vicinity of her
chronal accelerator, she can maintain her point in time.
Here's a fun one: Bet you didn't know that Tracer's hair was originally black,
instead of brown.
In some early concept art pieces you can see the color difference!
Now, it may not be game-changing or a huge thing to some people, but a color difference
in design can actually change the attitude, mood, and presence of a character.
Brown hair and freckles, for example, can generally be seen as more "cute" and "carefree",
while jet-black hair and a pale complexion can give off more a sullen and badass kind
of vibe.
Lots of heroes have had minor changes made from their concept art to the finished product
to make sure their visual appearance is in line with their lore and how they carry themselves
in and out of game.
A change in appearance can make a huge difference in how you perceive a hero!
Take Reaper's default skin and his Origin Skin.
His classic skin has the mask, hood, cloak, and a much more brooding and sinister look
about it.
The Origin skin, while still dark and mysterious, shows a much more human and relatable character.
If reaper just removed his mask in his classic skin, that would make a MASSIVE difference
in your perception of the hero just from looking at him.
Tracer may not have had the full-on bubbly, cute, care-free appearance she has today if
her hair had remained black!
While many people think they know all about Tracer because she was the first Overwatch
hero they saw and heard about, she's got a few things that you may not have known,
and hopefully you now have a better arsenal of Tracer Trivia at your disposal.
I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did, give it a like and subscribe down below.
Did we miss any facts that are unknown about tracer?
Let us know down below in the comments!
As always, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one!
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