The well-known shooting game, Overwatch, which comes from the company Blizzard, almost ran into a big problem with a bad word.
This issue was all about a new character named Emre, who is from Turkey. His special move, called an ‘Ultimate ability,’ was planned to be named ‘Seek and Destroy’ for a long time. It wasn’t until a Turkish actor named Kerem Erdinc came in to record Emre’s voice lines that Blizzard found out about the big mistake they were about to make.
Erdinc shared his story during a group talk at Blizzard. He said, “I’ve got a story for you. I actually got to help name Emre’s special move, and the reason why is pretty funny.”
He went on to explain, “Originally, the name for Emre’s special move, where he jumps up and does his thing, was ‘Seek and Destroy.’ But the word ‘seek,’ if you change it to Turkish – and please don’t look it up – is a very bad word. It’s like the worst swear word you can think of, the ‘f-word.’ So, I told them, ‘Guys, you really should avoid using that one.'”
Erdinc then suggested, “How about ‘Search and Destroy’ instead?” And Miranda Moyer, who helps write the stories for the game, replied, “Well, that’s what we’re calling the comic books, so that works out perfectly.” Erdinc added that if they had kept the original name, “Every Turkish player would have made jokes about Emre just saying ‘f-word and destroy.'”
Emre is one of five new characters joining Overwatch on February 10th. He’s the last character from an old picture of the Overwatch group that came out years ago. When you play as Emre, he feels a lot like another character called Soldier 76, meaning he’s a type of shooter character where you run and gun. Emre can aim down his sights, which is a new thing for Overwatch. He also has grenades that bounce, a semi-automatic handgun, and different ways to move faster and get his health back. His special move makes him float in the air, looking like a computer program, and shoot powerful explosive blasts that blow up when they hit something.
Kerem Erdinc told this story to show how Blizzard lets the voice actors help shape the characters they play. This game tries to have characters from all over the world, so it’s very important to Blizzard to have a Turkish actor make a Turkish character feel real and true to life.
Joshi Zhang, a main story writer for Overwatch, said in the same interview, “Our main idea is always to rely a lot on our actors because, as a game with many different kinds of people, we want to tell stories from all sorts of backgrounds. And what makes those stories real is using the actual experiences of real people.”
“I didn’t grow up seeing Turkish characters in anything” -Kerem Erdinc
She continued, “As writers, we don’t know what those experiences are. We try to find them, and when our actors can connect with that, it’s amazing; that’s when something special happens. But we need the actors and their smart ideas to make it happen.”
“It’s always really important to us that the actors have a say in: what does this line mean to you? Because what it means to you will probably be much closer to what it means to someone like you, and someone like you might be seeing themselves in a game for the very first time.”
Erdinc mentioned he’s been a fan of Overwatch since it first came out. For him, the idea of a Turkish character being added to the game – because people had been talking about Emre for a long time – was very exciting. He said, “I was hoping for this character, just as a fan, for eight years since it was first talked about in ‘Overwatch Declassified.’ I was just obsessed with the idea of ‘oh, a Turkish hero!’ It would be so cool.”
He added, “I didn’t grow up seeing Turkish characters in anything. I can count on one hand how many there are in video games. And the Overwatch team putting so much care into bringing him in, making him truly authentic, as a Turkish character with Turkish lines…” He paused here to say he had put some jokes into the Turkish version of the game “to make Turkish players smile.” He finished by saying, “That means everything to me.”
“But it also comes with a feeling of responsibility that if I mess this up, then that would be terrible. It’s very important to me, and I take it very seriously.”
Overwatch – they’ve taken the “2” out of the name – will get its first big update, like an expansion pack, on February 10th. This update will bring new characters, but also a new look for the game’s menus and a big change in how the story is told. It also starts a year of new things added to the game under the name ‘The Reign of Talon,’ during which five more characters will be added. It’s a big, exciting time for Overwatch.
