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New Overwatch short is a tear-jerking tribute to The Iron Giant

New Overwatch short is a tear-jerking tribute to The Iron Giant

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The story of Bastion is both warming and heartbreaking

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Blizzard’s latest animated short for its team shooter Overwatch is out today, and it features the origin story of the convertible robot-turret hero Bastion. While other Overwatch shorts have done a stellar job providing world-building backstories, "The Last Bastion" — as it’s called — is more emotional powerhouse than plot point delivery.

Of course, there’s some great tidbits of Overwatch history in there to help flesh out the game’s universe in lieu of a single-player or story mode. Bastion, a peacekeeping robot, is apparently the last of his kind following the Omnic Crisis. The conflict involved an army of autonomous robots rebelling against humanity in a vicious global conflict, with the Bastion units making up a majority of the combat force. Next month, Blizzard is introducing a new Overwatch map called "Eichenwalde," which is the scene of a critical battle in the Omnic Crisis near Stuttgart, Germany and the sight of Bastion's reawakening.

We see a brief and violent glimpse of this war when Bastion analyzes the memory bank of destroyed comrade. But the story channels the best of Warner Bros.' The Iron Giant to show the robot’s inherent curiosity and love for organic life, specifically the small bird that wakes him from his 10-year slumber.