No es Sombra
After teasing her imminent arrival for a week or so, Blizzard has lifted the veil on who Overwatch‘s 22nd hero is. And, she’s exactly as we expected. Mostly.
Her name is Ana Amari and she’s a sniping support character. The video below goes into her lore and backstory, but the most important detail is probably that she’s Pharah’s mother. Also, she’s sporting a permanent patch because Widowmaker shot her eye out some time ago.
As for gameplay, the reveal trailer shows that she can heal allies and damage foes just by shooting them with the darts from her biotic rifle. She’s also equipped with grenades that heal and damage, but over an area of effect. Her primary ability is a stun that puts enemies to sleep temporarily; it’s good for canceling an opponent’s ultimate as Ana demonstrates on an unlucky McCree in the video up top. Lastly, her ultimate is Nano Boost, which targets a specific teammate and temporarily boosts their speed, attack, and damage resistance.
Now we know some specifics about how she plays, but we already had a good idea from Blizzard’s build up to the reveal. The one thing we didn’t have right is her name. It was widely assumed that this character would be Sombra. It’s not, obviously. We have no idea if Sombra will never exist as an Overwatch hero or if she’s coming sometime later.
What we do know is that this all means Ana should be available for everyone soon. She’s playable on Overwatch‘s Public Test Realm today and Blizzard says that there will be more details about a full release in the near future. Whenever that happens, Ana will be free because Blizzard has said in the past that all post-launch content for Overwatch will be free.
Our first look at Overwatch’s new hero, Ana [Eurogamer]
