I'm very excited to be here with an

awesome Developer Update, because we are

introducing the 24th hero to Overwatch today.

So, we're here to talk about Orisa.

Orisa is a brand new character.

A lot of you probably haven't heard of her before.

But she has a really cool backstory.

So we want to talk a little bit about that

and introduce you to how Orisa came to be.

So, I'm going to back way up to the Omnic Crisis

which, as many of you know, was this terrible

world war that happened where robots

sort of took over the world.

Humans fought back. Overwatch was a big part of that.

We eventually struck peace with the omnics.

But during that Omnic Crisis

there are many different omnic units

used in the battles. So, as you know

Bastion, as an example, was one of those

units that was using the battle.

Well, there was another unit called the OR-14

which was specifically designed

to fight against the humans and

be part of the Omnic Crisis.

Well, fast-forward many years later after

the Omnic Crisis; peace has been struck.

We're in the city of Numbani where

humans and omnics get along great.

It's actually one of the most technologically

advanced and peaceful cities on the planet.

But they to start run into some strife

From a local villain who you

might have heard of before.

His name is Doomfist.

And in order to guard against Doomfist's attack

and protect the city against any other

dangers that might come about

the citizens of Numbani developed a more

advanced version of the old OR-14 unit

which they, not surprisingly, called the OR-15.

So, it was one version higher.

Well the OR-15s initially were okay and

suited for battle but they eventually

lost horrifically against Doomfist,

specifically in a battle that took place

in the Numbani airport.

And most of the citizens of Numbani

just gave up on the OR-15s.

You know, they failed miserably.

They're laying in pieces scattered

throughout the airport terminal this is no good.

We give up on these things.

Well, there was a young girl who didn't give

up hope. Her name is Efi.

She's an extremely smart girl

excellent at science, robotics, mathematics,

programming. She still had hope.

She still believed in what these OR-15 units

were supposed to do for her city.

So, she, sort of, as a scrappy young girl, took

the pieces back to her workshop

worked on this unit and created the evolution

to what the OR-14 and OR-15s were

and named it Orisa. She made a single heroic unit

that wasn't supposed to be part of

a huge battalion but was supposed to be

a specific individual hero and named it Orisa.

So, Orisa in terms of the timeline

of Overwatch is a brand new hero just on

the scene. So, we have yet to see what

Orisa is really going to do. So, that's

part of what's very exciting. Most of our

our heroes have a big historical

background. We've seen them succeed and fail

in their past history, as where Orisa is new

on the scene and it is Efi who has

created her, who is really encouraging

her to become a new hero of the future.

Now let's talk about mechanically what

Orisa does and what she brings to the

game and why we designed Orisa the way

we did. So, let's talk about her abilities first.

First of all she's a tank.

So, she will be in the tank role.

Her primary weapon is called "The Fusion Driver."

Think of it as a projectile-based machine gun

She moves a little bit more

slowly when she's shooting it, but it has a

good range to it. Probably more range

than almost any of our tanks have on

their weapons. Maybe Zarya's alternate

fire goes you know equally far.

But she's got a good range on it,

good rate of fire,

really high-sustained weapon with a

large clip size. So, that's the Fusion Driver.

The alternate fire ability on the

Fusion Driver is of extreme utility.

So, it sends out, basically, a pulse. Think of

Zarya's Graviton Charge, which is Zarya's ultimate.

But it sends out a single pulse

out from her and then you can click your

alternate fire again and will bring any

affected targets within its radius for a

very short period of time. So, it's like a

little mini Graviton Surge that she can

do more often and mostly she's using it

for positioning or re-positioning her targets.

It also you know briefly puts

them in place, so if you have a teammate

who's a Widowmaker or Hanzo or even Orisa

with her her great range on her gun,

can shoot towards that and it really helps

you line up some critical shots that can happen.

You can also pull people around

corners with it. So that's a really fun

ability that she has. She also has a tank

ability called "Fortify."

And what Fortify does is it

not only makes Orisa a little bit

tougher but it prevents Orisa from

sustaining any sort of crowd-control

ability that might be used against her.

So, like the most obvious examples are

maybe Pharah's Concussive Blast, which

normally knocks people around you know

moves them out of position. If Orisa has

fortify on, and she's going over that

bridge in the gardens of Lijiang tower,

you can't knock her off at that point.

She's she's in place. Plus, she doesn't

take as much damage as well. So, Fortify

is a very useful, very straightforward

tank ability. Now one of Orisa's most

defining abilities is her Protective Barrier.

The Protective Barrier is, you know,

think along the lines of

Reinhardt's barrier shield or Winston's

barrier bubble that he throws out.

The protective barrier has quite a range to it.

It's roughly the size and shape of about

half of Winston's bubble, and it goes out

anywhere where she targets it.

So it can be in front of her, could be slightly off

to the side, she can use it in close on

herself or she could use it you know

further in front of her to shield an ally.

And it creates a barrier that has

the normal amount of damage you can take

like other barriers in the game you can

destroy it.

Things that go through barriers like

Symmetra's alternate fire will go through

this, so it's got a lot of utility to it.

And a lot of use and a lot of protectiveness.

And lastly there is her

ultimate ability which is her

Supercharger. So, she wears this drum like

item on her back. When her ultimate's up

she can take it off her back, throw it

down on the ground, and it's effectively

damage boosting anybody who's in line of

sight of the Supercharger. Now the thing

about the Supercharger is, is that the

enemy team can kill the Supercharger.

So, you really need to make sure to protect

your Supercharger either with your

protective barrier or maybe you want to

put the Supercharger you know just out

off to the side out of line of sight of

your enemies but in line of sight of

your teammates. So, there's some gameplay

there to figuring out where the

Supercharger is because if the enemy

team kills it right away then your team

loses all that benefit. Now with Orisa I

really want to talk about why are we

adding another tank, because I know that

topic will come up and a lot of people

are sort of wondering you know how do we

pick what heroes come next and there's a

lot of reasons for that but primarily

with Orisa we were looking at our tank

line-up and you know we have heroes like

D.Va and Winston who are much more

disruptive in terms of tanking.

They're much more defined by their mobility, they

like to get in, they like to get out.

They don't stay in one place for too long.

They cause a lot of disruption and harassment.

You've got somebody like Roadhog.

He's all about punishing people who

are out of position and positioning

himself to punish people who are out of

position. So, he plays a very different

sort of role, but we're spending a lot of

time looking at Reinhardt and saying what

really defines Reinhardt and why is he so

important and critical to Overwatch?

And we started to describe Reinhardt that the

term that we would use on the

development team which we call him an

"anchor tank." And what we mean by that is

that Reinhardt almost anchors the

entire team with a properly

positioned Reinhardt, the team builds and

positions around Reinhardt. Because he

doesn't have a lot of mobility abilities

and because he has that protective

barrier in front of him

you sort of know where to position

yourself and when the team is going to

engage or disengage based upon what

Reinhardt is doing. So, we like this idea of

what we kept calling an anchor tank and

we felt like players needed more options

in that sort of anchor tank role.

We wanted another tank that teams could

build around and position around and

even though we think that tanks like

Winston and D.Va are really great and what

they bring to the game they're not

necessarily bringing what Reinhardt was

bringing. So, we hope that in Orisa

there's now another option to a

low-mobility tank but one that brings a high

amount of protection in her Protective

Barrier where you kind of see her on the

battlefield and go "oh, okay we're

approaching from from this angle. I will

get behind Orisa. I'll follow Orisa.

She'll put the barrier up. We'll follow

her in and will engage in that regard."

So, we know that there are concerns about

barriers in the game

we've actually you know we've been

working on Bastion re-tuning him to be

more effective against barriers. We do

have some very effective heroes against

barriers right now, for example Symmetra

with her alternate fire goes directly

through them. Obviously, Reinhardt's

Fire Strike goes through barriers as well.

Junkrat's grenades do

tremendous damage to barriers and will

melt them very quickly and if barriers

become too much of a thing, we're looking

at those in terms of balance and how

to adjust accordingly. Most of all we

just wanted to bring a new and exciting

hero to Overwatch. Not only does she fill

a role that we felt was very needed.

Not just a tank but one of these anchor

tanks that you really build a team around.