Overwatch: Wheelchair Appears In Lijiang Tower, Reddit Has Ideas

Fan theorists have been dismantling the background of Overwatch for years, and they may have found a new clue. A post on the Overwatch subreddit by Karahe from Monday morning points out a wheelchair at Lijiang Tower that wasn’t there before. Checking the Capture The Flag maps from last year’s Lunar New Year event prove the wheelchair is new, prompting a flurry of speculation from the community. In a future where there are floating cars, why does anyone have a chair that needs to be firmly planted on the ground to use? In this universe, people can have their limbs replaced with robotic improvements, why not get a leg up on the competition (pun intended) and be the best robo-scientist?

We can see the chair belongs to a high-ranking member of Lucheng Interstellar, since in front of the office door it says "Restricted Area” in Chinese. There’s also a framed picture of Winston and his namesake creator, which is a bit confusing since Dr. Harold Winston supposedly died in space.

There’s another story to this wheelchair, and there’s nothing I love more than theorycrafting to start my week. Karahe believes that the chair belongs to Dr. Winston, who somehow managed to escape the Horizon Lunar Colony monkey prison break. Though the idea does have some credible evidence behind it, I prefer to make my own crazy theory. During the whole Horizon Lunar Colony tease event, we were introduced to Hammond, another ape specimen who managed to escape. Maybe he has the same level of intelligence as Winston and was able to make it back to Lucheng Interstellar. The Chinese scientists lock him in a restricted area with a desk and a wheelchair to help his broken monkey limbs around.

Overwatch is a complicated game that attempts to make healing beams, graviton surges and robot ninjas realistic enough to fit in a sci-fi setting. The lore is massively detailed, encapsulating the hysteria of a world where robots are nearly human and the ethical ramifications that come along with it. Game designers have been filling the hero shooter with hints and nods to the game’s backstory, like remnants of Hanzo arrows stuck in the walls of Hanamura or the destruction of OR-14 omnics by Doomfist at Numbani.

This is all speculation, but when Overwatch releases lore updates at a snail’s pace, it’s what you have to do to pass the time.