Last week, we took a look at some of the teaser images posted by Blizzard that referenced a new type of weapon belonging to an incoming new Overwatch hero. Today, those rumors of a new hero have been confirmed as Blizzard revealed Ana, a new “sniper-healer” type of character. Story-wise, she’s Pharah’s mother, who vanished after a mission gone wrong. You can check out the origin video below, which has strangely made some of us here really freaking misty-eyed.
To summarize: Ana was gravely wounded by the former Overwatch operative Widowmaker during a hostage rescue mission (apparently after Widowmaker had been “turned” to Talon, the “bad guys” in Overwatch). She was shot and blinded in one eye, and essentially vanished, assumed dead. We’ve yet to see what kind of impact her return might have on Pharah, who followed in her mother’s footsteps to join the Overwatch team. All I can say is: drama boooomb.
When it comes to gameplay, Ana looks to be (like I said) a “sniper-healer” type of character. She seems to switch freely between support and defense, as she can fire healing darts that provide a solid heal, power-up darts that add damage (like Mercy’s staff), a sleeping dart (like McCree’s flashbang), all alongside being able to just shoot folks like any other sniper. I feel like the skill cap on Ana is going to be pretty darn high, as juggling so many roles in one character is sure to be fairly complicated. As well, your effectiveness as a healer depends a lot on your accuracy.
What I find perhaps most interesting about Ana is the fact that Blizzard didn’t de-age her in some way. A lot of the characters, when you consider the timeline, feel like they should be older than they seem to be. There are plenty of science-fictiony reasons they’re not (Tracer caught in a time warp, Mei frozen a la Bucky), but Ana seems to have aged not only gracefully but… bad ass-ly? Is that even a word? No, Jessica, no it’s not.
This is all to say that I’m super glad that there’s a bit of representation here for not only women of color but older women of color. We need more older badass heroes to play as, and Ana fits that bill quite well, I must say.
Get excited, people.
(via Kotaku)
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