New Overwatch Short Explores Mei's Backstory

Blizzard Entertainment hasn't been pumping out as many short films as it did last year when Overwatch's hype was all peeked out. However, the creative minds at the company are still intent on keeping fans engaged with new content, and decided to put a little time and effort into covering Mei's backstory.

The 10 minute video was posted up over on the Play Overwatch YouTube channel, where it explains a little bit more about Mei and some of the things she was up to before the current events taking place in the game's timeline.

The video starts with Mei talking into a camera where she explains that they're in the middle of a crazy ice storm and that they're running low on supplies. Off-screen we learn that in order to conserve supplies the team at the sub-station are going into cryosleep briefly.

After some time passes, the Ecopoint station receives an incoming message and one of the six cryo-tubes begins to defrost and regulate. The tube contains Mei.

Mei gets out of the tube, reactivates the assistant droid Snowball, cleans up and then checks the sensors. The sensors reveal that climate changes have become far worse than she thought, and questions exactly how long they've been in cryo. Snowball reveals that the Ecopoint team from the Overwatch division have been in cryo-sleep for nine years.

No one came to wake them up because the Overwatch team was disbanded while they were being cryogenically preserved. During that time, however, the cryo-tubes began to malfunction, and the other members of Mei's team died during the malfunction.

Just like in the other Overwatch videos, the team has disbanded and Mei is left to her own devices in order to get the sensor data the station collected over the last nine years. She's also unable to send out the data because the communications array was damaged during the snowstorm.

Mei tries one last tactic: building an ice gun to use it to climb up the tower in order to reach the top of the comms tower. However, the batteries in the sub station fail and Mei can no longer finish her device. Snowball uses his last bit of battery to charge up the station so Mei can complete her weapon, climb the tower, and attempt to reach out to the emergency Overwatch frequency where she receives Winston's call out to regroup the team.

Mei takes Snowball, gives him a bit of extra juice and then begins her trek out of the Ecopoint station on foot.

Mei's story helps explain how she devised her weapon, and a bit more about her characteristics as a playable character in Overwatch.

Blizzard definitely spent a lot of time and care in fleshing out Mei's background, and I'm sure fans appreciate the short film and can't wait for the next.