The Overwatch Dev Team Pushes the Pharah-Mercy Relationship: Part 2
More evidence suggesting that the Overwatch dev team has a strange and prurient interest in shipping Pharmercy
We previously reviewed the evidence that Overwatch 2’s head writer, Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, was a massive Pharah-Mercy shipper. Essentially, the Invasion PvE introduced strange and out-of-character lines where Genji ghosts Mercy (the woman who literally saved his life), refuses to reply to her letters, and insults her artwork as "awful". The PvE also shoehorns in an odd Pharmercy moment where Mercy gets weepy because "Fareeha's the only one who remembered I like toast". Worst of all, Gavin explicitly admitted that the Overwatch writing team thinks about how ClearTogether (his friend and a prominent Pharmercy stan account on Twitter) will react when writing new lore.
Unfortunately, this favoritism and odd behavior isn't only on the writing team. In fact, there is evidence of the art team showing similar biases. This is relevant as the art team decides which heroes get new skins each season.
For example, Ana Martinez (Character Tech Artist) is just as close with the Pharah stans on Twitter as Gavin is and has literally said this while talking to other Blizzard employees in a company Slack chat:
ClearTogether's reactions to anything pharah related gives me life
Is it normal for professional game developers to constantly think about one particular fan and how they'll react to things, or what will please them? There's more - here's Courtney Vogel (Environment Artist) gushing to ClearTogether about how much Blizzard employees adore her:
the overwatch team loves you!!!
But most obvious of all is the case of Bryan Bedford (Senior Character Artist). He publicly admits to being a Pharmercy fan trying to "nudge the needle" in the direction he wants to take Overwatch while talking to other shippers.
I am but a humble Pharmercy fan, but I’d like to try to nudge the needle for representation here and there and stuff like that just takes time to find opportunities.
He's talked about a Pharah-Mercy relationship going back all the way to 2016 when he unironically posted Tweets like this:
I see a Pharmercy and I hit “like”. You don’t choose the ship… the ship chooses you.
PharMercy is love, PharMercy is life!!!
Anyhow, remember how Pharah got the Hades Legendary skin in Season 2? Well, Bryan Bedford has openly celebrated with ClearTogether about Pharah getting that skin because now she has a Greek skin that can "go with Victory Mercy", because in Greek mythology, Persephone is the wife of Hades. He reviewed the concept art for Hades Pharah. Yes, Blizzard devs want to give Mercy a special skin just to make her into Pharah's waifu.
And apparently, even that's not enough for him, as Bryan responded to ClearTogether's requests and publicly hinted towards giving Mercy a Persephone skin one day. In other words, the push for Pharmercy isn't just taking over the lore - it may affect the skins each hero gets.
"I do love the idea - Persephone fits really well with her character... I absolutely adore a very particular fan design for 'Mercephone'."
Hades Pharah is a perfect example of the developers' obscene bias for Pharah. And on that note, it's very likely that Mercy will indeed be getting a Persephone skin. There are already 3 voicelines that directly mention Persephone for the Hades Pharah skin, and the Pharmercy clique on Twitter is suspiciously confident that it's going to happen. Recall that these Twitter stans have received advanced notice of lore developments in the past.
TL;DR - A year into Overwatch 2, there is evidence of massive bias towards Pharah on multiple fronts. Multiple members of the lore team and the art team have publicly admitted that they consider the desires and preferences of one particular Pharah fan on Twitter in their work. A Senior Character Artist directly involved in designing hero skins is an avid Pharmercy shipper who publicly discusses pushing his views in his work.
Reread Part 1 of this series below…
