>>118449483I get the feeling that when designing the characters' backstories, they simply specified the age that best suited the personality and temperament of the character and then worked backwards on their origin story to suit the age they already picked out. That, and coomers prefer younger women and not Christmas cakes.
Tracer for example is supposed to be young and spunky, so they were set on her being in her mid-20s at most. But then it almost next to impossible for her to have had an accomplished Overwatch career AND be a RAF test pilot before that as per her accident AND still be mid-20s by the start of the Recall (after Overwatch has been shuttered for several years), leading to the retardation that is Tracer having been an 18 year old test pilot (practically a baby in professional terms) when the slipstream accident happened.
Same problem with Mercy. I remember that before the game released, it was stated that she was in her mid to late 40s, which made sense given that she was supposed to have been a highly accomplished physician and researcher running a medical department at a major hospital before even joining Overwatch. But then they retconned it to 37 because they realized Mercy being a 40+ year old was off-putting no matter how MILFy she looked. So she ends up being a teenage medical prodigy who got her doctorate before even turning 20 which starts to stretch belief.
>>118449502The timeline is actually like this:
Tracer is 26 as of the Recall, which is 5 years after Overwatch shut down, making Tracer 21 at the time Overwatch was shut. Her first mission was two years before that (she is 19 at the time of the King's Row omnic uprising, which is her first mission with Overwatch, and we are told she was with them two years.)
This means that her slipstream accident happened before she was 19, thus implying that she started pilot training at least several years before that.
