After several weeks of speculation, Blizzard recently announced that the 24th playable Overwatch hero will be Orisa, a robot built by young prodigy Efi Oladele to protect the people of Numbani from danger.
Orisa’s origin story was revealed in a short video narrated by Efi, which explains how Efi was the only one to “not give up on” Orisa’s AI model, and she tinkered and developed Orisa’s features to improve her, as well as to “give her a heart”:
Overwatch’s game director, Jeff Kaplan, also appeared in a longer Developer Update video, where he further explained Orisa’s development process, as well as some of her in-game features and abilities:
Orisa will be a Tank hero (if you couldn’t tell from her giant gun and general bulkiness) and her main weapon is described by Kaplan as being a “projectile based machine gun”. This primary weapon reportedly has a great range (better than most of the other Tanks’ weapons) but will impair movement speed when in use. The alternate choices for her primary weapon include something called “Halt!”, whereby Orisa detonates a graviton charge, which will bring nearby enemies into her range. It’s essentially a less powerful version of Zarya’s Ultimate ability, looking at gameplay footage. She also has a protective, 900 health barrier ability (similar to Reinhardt’s, except it’s a ranged ability, where you can place the barrier from a distance) and a “Fortify” ability which reduces damage taken. Her Ultimate is something called Supercharger, which increases the damage inflicted by the players on your team.
Customisation-wise, she has a good selection of starter skins, emotes, sprays and highlight intros, the designs of which are inspired by African culture and conflated with Overwatch’s sleek, stylistic approach to designing paint and bodywork for futuristic AI technology:
Right now she only has one voice line, in which she simply says “Following my programming”, but it’s assumed that she’ll be receiving more in the future, some of which may contain spoilers for upcoming Doomfist-centric content.
She also currently has two character-specific achievements: “Halt State”, which is unlocked by causing 1000 damage with a single use of the “Halt!” ability, and also “Overclocked”, which is achieved by amplified 900 damage with a single use of Orisa’ Ultimate ability.
Are you excited to play as Orisa, or are you just disappointed that you don’t get to play as Doomfist, and/or an eleven year old murder child? Let us know in the comments below!
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
