Overwatch’s new hero, Shion, is an Omnic with the appearance of a human. She wields dual burst-fire pistols and rides a freakin’ motorcycle mid-match. Seriously.
When Overwatch’s Season 3: Into the Tiger’s Den launches tomorrow, Shion will be riding her bike all over maps everywhere and launching it at enemies for explosive damage, all while aura-farming like the ultimate Yakuza-style villain she is, with a visually stunning design to boot.
In an interview last week, Overwatch devs cited multiple action movies as inspiration for her design and kit, including John Wick being a main starting point, but Lucy Liu’s character in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and classic cyberpunk anime Akira were also mentioned. Basically, she began as an idea of a badass action movie hero who “thrives in excess,” but it all came down to “what would John Wick do?” when designing her.
Like Wick before her, Shion is incredibly proficient with her pistols, offering what I think is by far the most awesome reload animation in the game yet: she effortlessly flicks new magazines into the air, then slams the two pistols together in front of her to insert them both simultaneously.
“The way we develop heroes is we always kind of start with concept gameplay kit, at a base level, and narrative attitude,” lead hero producer Kenny Hudson said. “Miranda [Moyer, lead narrative designer] and her team sit with our animators right after that. And the animators just inhale all of that and say, ‘OK, how do we weave all of this attitude and their personality traits into their animations?’ So, yeah, like the reload is one of the coolest that we’ve seen in game and it came directly from her personality traits.”
While the initial reaction to Shion’s design turned heads and confused some, Hudson said her concept, lore, and design came together to dictate what she looked like and how she plays altogether.
“The goals that we wanted to accomplish alongside the narrative just kind of caused us to land where we landed,” he said. “You know, we’re looking at art, we’re looking at animation, how we think this character is going to move, what their attitude is going to do. And we think that where we landed with Shion just best served the wider narrative arc in the story, as well as how could we best show off this kind of attitude.”
With her Kira Pistols as her main source of damage output, she’s an incredibly mobile hero thanks to her motorcycle. But she also has additional avenues of healing and escapability, including her Evade, which buffs her 250 HP to 325 with overhealth that rapidly degrades, the Flanker subrole passive, and a powerful-sounding Major Perk called Refuel that heals her while she rides the bike.
When her kit was revealed last week, many players (myself included) noticed Refuel and the other Major Perk Faces of Death (which gives her all four Damage Subrole passives) as potential balance issues, but Hudson did not seem worried when I asked him about it.
“Overall balance, we have a lot more tools nowadays to live-monitor what’s going on,” Hudson said. “Alec [Dawson, Overwatch associate game director] always says ‘safe side of strong’ is the motto. We play-test a ton to make sure that things aren’t crazy across a wide level of player skill, and we think we landed in a good place, but we always have the tools to live-monitor stats, see what’s going on, and then dial things back if need be faster than ever before.”
Vendetta launched in a very strong place, and the vibe I’m getting with Shion after seeing her kit in action is that she has a good chance of feeling similar. The hope is that, if she gets out of control once players everywhere get a chance to figure out her feel, the reins will be brought in quickly.
“In the spirit of making this hero fun, finding out what works and what doesn’t, we feel like we landed in a really good place,” he said. “But we’ll see what happens when things go live and do what needs to be done if something needs to be done.”
Hudson said Shion was designed with combos in mind, remarking that “we wanted players to build their own dynamic combos” while using the primary fire and Execution secondary fire as the main methods of mayhem, using it in tandem with Evade to either begin or end engagements with overhealth. Execution especially looks strong, as it fires bullets in an X-pattern if you tap the button (it reminded me of Cassidy’s Fan the Hammer a little bit, great for dealing burst damage up close), while holding it down will release them all at once in a rapid, more accurate firing pattern for longer ranges.
As another highly mobile flanking hero (Blizzard described Vendetta the same way at the end of last year), Hudson says she will play really well with dive and brawl compositions, particularly with Ramattra or Junker Queen as Tank, and Supports like Brigitte and Lúcio.
“We’ve even seen Lifeweaver combos with a charged up primary fire and then throwing the bike and maybe getting yanked back works really well,” he said.
Like other mobile flankers, though, he said she’ll have a tough time with crowd control abilities and heroes like Sombra’s hacking or Ana’s sleep dart, but it remains to be seen just yet how capable she is in the right hands.
Hudson described her as a “glass cannon” who’s easily taken down when out of position, but her multiple methods of gaining health and getting out of trouble could be cause for some concern when she launches tomorrow, June 16.
