The Lunar New Year has come and gone, competitive season number two is almost at an end so, naturally, talk is turning to the new Overwatch characters update. Nothing official has been announced, but Game Director Jeff Kaplan weighed in on an innocuous “Sombra sitting emote?” thread to drop a bombshell regarding the frontrunner for new Overwatch character: Terry Crew - I mean - Doomfist.
In the forum thread, Kaplan seemed to dismiss the fan theory that the new Overwatch character was definitely going to be Doomfist. “24 is not who you think it is,” Kaplan wrote.
There has been a lot of speculation lately that the new Overwatch character was going to be Doomfist, so unless Kaplan was just trolling we need to look at some of the other potential Overwatch characters that could drop in an update soon. Here’s three we think are worth talking about, in order of most to least likely.
New Overwatch Character #1: Soundquake
Soundquake seems to be the most obvious choice. For starters, we already have a pretty good idea of what he’s going to look like from a promotional poster and some random dev art.
He’s also referenced in this animated short as having “chest missiles.” Based on the size of the character we can safely assume he’ll be a Tank but we don’t know anything else. Personally, I’d love to see a Tank with some support capabilities, and a sound-based Overwatch character name makes me think of Lucio’s powers. A Tank that can do some interesting AOE buffs with an ult of “chest missiles” would be fun to play with, and it seems like some oomph is going to be needed on the support/defense side of things now that Bastion is basically turning into a self-healing bullet hell.
New Overwatch Character #2: Athena
Athena is suddenly getting mentioned on the hype train more and more. Like Soundquake she’s a likely candidate because of her appearance in some promo/concept art from 2014 ( h/t u/Drathnoth ) and has appeared in some official works as Winston’s AI assistant, notably the Recall animated short and the Reflections comic. There is a connection between the onscreen AI and the mysterious robot. Athena’s symbol that appears on screen is the same symbol that appears on the white robot’s head in the promo art.
Athena helped Winston develop his barrier technology, so if the white robot is our new Overwatch character the current lore suggests a support/defense class. As I mentioned above, the recent buffs to Bastion (and PTR reports of him being a monster) are making me think that a support/defense character could help balance things out. And a robot that can, say, place Zarya-style bubbles around enemies or produce floating Symmetra-esque barriers could do a lot to counter the newly buffed Bastion.
New Overwatch Character #3: Liao
Liao is known to be one of the founding members of Overwatch and, in the context of potential new characters, a tough figure to pin down. There is not much information surrounding Liao, but a reddit post from August citing a magazine article may offer a clue. The source is the Brazilian edition of Playstation magazine and the hint is a short blurb that reads “22 heroes. Blizzard is already working on more, like cryogenesis expert Liao.” This Curse theory video on Liao also unearths some potential clues.
In the video, we learn that a piece of art shown during a comic-con panel show a diminutive girl and an omnic companion stuck in a snowstorm. These two are also part of a group shot of other founders including Reaper and Reinhardt. Is it possible we’re getting a pair of characters in the next Overwatch roster update?
Sure, anything’s possible. The duo could function a bit like Torbjorn and his turret and, if the cryo stuff is true, would seem to be on the defense or offense side of things. Another cryo defense character like Mei would seem redundant, although seeing as how Liao is a common name in southern China/Taiwan maybe the two were trained in the same time and place. But a hero who could do some of Mei’s slowdown stuff but with some higher damage and a killer ult might be fun, too.
The point is we don’t know anything except that Jeff Kaplan told us we know even less than we thought we knew. So, we’re not exactly in a position of strength here. But we know it’s only a matter of time before Blizzard releases a new Overwatch hero and, no matter who or what it is, most of will still really suck at a game we love.
Who do you think the new Overwatch character is going to be? Would you rather have a tank or support or defense or what? Let us know in the comments!
