mccree was a founding member of the deadlock gang when they started in 1976, 47 years before he was born, and then was recruited by blackwatch at the age of 17
does blizzard even read their own writing
additionally, blackwatch was formed only 8 years before the storyâs present time, meaning he would be 25 at MOST, but nah who gives a damn hes 37 i guess. and overwatch itself takes place in the mid 2070s, so mccree is, canonically, three different ages ranging from 25 to 100+ depending on narrative.
i hate this game
Okay so I donât want to be this guy, or engage with the Overwatch fandom, ever, but I really need for people to stop assuming that just because youâve never even bothered to google old west gangs, the creators of a media that draws heavily on specific historical imagery must never have looked into it.Â
If you had googled it, youâd know that old west outlaw gangs were almost never the huge criminal organizations the media sensationalized them to be. They were almost always a number of gangs using the same name (taken from the location they used as their hideout) who would do their own jobs for their own gangs, and theyâd only even see each other when they happened to be using the hideout at the same time.Â
For example, the "hole-in-the-wallâ gang was actually several gangs with sovereign chains of command that had nothing to do with one another except that they agreed that theyâd all get to use the hideout (hole-in-the-wall pass) as long as they agreed to never steal from each other or rat each other out to the authorities, as well as rules for how to deal with inter-gang conflicts, should they arise. These gangs pretty much spanned however long the hideouts stayed viable, which often lasted decades.Â
Does that sound familiar? It should, if youâre trying to make definitive statements on the lore, because if it doesnât, you havenât read the lore, which means you arenât qualified to talk about how it doesnât make sense! This is exactly whatâs been stated about the âDeadlock Gangâ in Asheâs bio. Like, almost to the word, the structure of the criminal alliance in the American Southwest.Â
So, if you know literally the first thing about American Western outlaws, the reason why McCree can have a Deadlock Rebels Est. 1976 tattoo even though the Deadlock Gang was formed within his lifetime should be obvious to you. Theyâre two organizations that both operated out of Deadlock Gorge, something Iâm sure the outlaw-obsessed history buff knew about when he started his gang. The writers mustâve thought you all had basic enough media literacy to figure that out, but clearly thatâs an issue here, because people are wondering why there seems to be two different groups in Deadlock gorge called Deadlock founded at different times.Â
Now, you can dismiss everything Iâve just said. If you choose to believe that the writers based something on history (and part of history thatâs incredibly common knowledge thanks to pop culture) without knowing anything about it, and then made a whole bunch of unrelated mistakes that happen to make their story ridiculously historically accurate by accident, be my guest. Iâm not your mom, I canât force you to stop being wrong on the internet, and youâre free to call me an idiot and say Iâm reaching and pretend that poor media literacy on your part is actually poor writing on the franchiseâs part. But, if weâre going by occamâs razor on this one, doesnât it seem like âthis gang is similar to the old west gangs itâs based on because the writers did that on purposeâ is more likely than âthe writers suck so hard that they got everything about old west gangs wrong and then made a bunch of other mistakes that cancelled it out and made them right by accident?â
Also, Blackwatch wasnât founded 8 years ago. It says that nowhere. Blackwatch was already active at least 20 years âbefore present.â A blackwatch base was set up eight years ago, but âretributionâ was not ever stated to be Blackwatchâs first mission; it was actually stated to be one of Blackwatchâs last missions. Plus, McCree is directly stated to be exactly 37, having been caught in a sting operation and recruited into Overwatch as a teenager. So, I guess the question isnât âdoes blizzard even read their own writing,â itâs more, do you even read their writing, or do you just make up your own nonsense and then pat yourself on the back for calling it nonsense?
