A Nigerian's thoughts on Orisa from Overwatch, the new Nigerian character

[tolu619]

So here's my thought. I've also edited the OP to include this.

First of all, I don't know what their decision making process was like, but I'm kinda happy that when they decided to have an African character, they specifically picked Nigeria. Nigeria gets a lot of exaggerated horrible representation in international media, so it's good to see a regular good, geeky representation for a change. As a kid, most of what I knew about other countries was what I saw in cartoons, games and movies, after all.

As for the actual design of the character, they really didn't do much with the Nigerian inspiration. They gave her Nigeria's colors (green) and she's wearing a mask, but the mask doesn't look Nigerian, and the embelishments and patterns on her armor don't look Nigerian at all. They could have done so much more with that. I guess it can still be fixed with alternate costumes. I've seen all her current costumes here and they look even less Nigerian inspired than the default costume, but man, I love the design of the two beetle costumes she has! 

I literally cringed when I heard them pronounce Orisa in the trailer. It should have been pronounced "Orisha". Orisa is a Yoruba word for deity. The Yoruba letter is an S with a dot beneath it, which is pronounced like "sh" in English. Her creator's name is weird too. "Oladele" is a Yoruba surname, but "Efi" isn't a Yoruba name. It's probably from the Delta area of Nigeria. Without any explicit backstory saying her parents were an inter-tribal couple, that name is almost as unusual as seeing Benedict Mohammed.

So I feel like the developers hearts are in the right place, and they keep designing a vast range of characters inspired by vastly different cultures, but I also feel like they could have done proper research with the resources available to them. With the kind of reach and popularity Overwatch has, there are already lots of YouTube videos with people saying "Oh ree sah" instead of "Oh ree sha". I fear it may make the wrong pronunciation become mainstream. Here's an article I wrote about a similar topic. I wrote that after seeing the Marvel cinematic universe interpretation of Black Panther in the Civil War movie.

It's not like it's impossible to design futuristic stuff that still looks legitimately African. It's just that they would have needed to consult an African artist or someone who understands African art patterns to pull it off. This graphic novel does it perfectly. It's a space opera, but literally everything in it is inspired by African art and sculpture. It's a step in the right direction anyway. Hopefully, when my games come out, I'll show the right way to do it. I don't like complaining or ranting then doing nothing about whatever I'm bothered about.