Overwatch’s new hero Echo can ‘duplicate’ enemies and use their abilities against them
Yesterday, Blizzard unveiled the subsequent character coming to Overwatch: A sophisticated Omnic named Echo who was created by Dr. Mina Liao, the long-unrevealed sixth founding member of the web supergroup. As we speak, Echo grew to become playable on the Overwatch PTR, and Blizzard revealed extra about her historical past (Blizzard refers to Echo as “her”) and what she brings to the combat.
“Echo is a very particular character for us in that our gamers have recognized about her for a really very long time,” sport director Jeff Kaplan said. Echo was seen and named within the massive Overwatch 2 cinematic launched final yr, however Kaplan identified that she really appeared lengthy earlier than that: “Gamers had really seen Echo in earlier variations of the paintings for Overwatch. She was featured within the Reunion cinematic, the place McCree frees her from the Impasse Gang.”
Kaplan additionally revealed extra about Liao, lengthy generally known as a founding member of Overwatch however recognized solely by time till now. She got here to workforce from Omnica Company, the corporate accountable for creating the Omnics, and after the top of the Omnic Disaster she continued her work to create an “adaptive studying robotic” that would adapt to fill specialised roles on demand.
That resulted within the creation of Echo, however when Liao was killed in an assault on her laboratory, the Overwatch workforce shut down the mission and put Echo into chilly storage. She was unintentionally freed when a prepare transporting her to a brand new facility was hijacked by the Impasse Gang, resulting in her dramatic rescue by McCree, and her determination to hitch the Overwatch workforce.
“Mina Liao lives on by means of Echo,” Kaplan stated. “Echo absorbed a lot of who Liao was, and can also be always adapting to all the brokers round her.”
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That adaptability is mirrored in Echo’s in-game capabilities. Her major assault, Tri-Shot, fires three pictures directly in a triangular sample, and she will additionally alt-fire sticky bombs with a delayed detonation. She will fly freely, which sounds useful, can glide whereas falling, and likewise has a “focusing beam” that inflicts “very excessive harm to targets with lower than half well being.” It will get the identical harm enhance towards obstacles which might be lower than half well being.
Echo’s final means is particularly attention-grabbing: “Duplicate” allows her to duplicate a focused enemy character and acquire use of their talents. It isn’t a disguise—Kaplan emphasised within the character introduction video that Echo’s duplicates might be visually distinct from the “actual” characters—nevertheless it does grant her some fairly wild-sounding powers.
“If the enemy workforce has a Reinhardt and I am Echo, I can use my final means on Reinhardt, after which for a reasonably vital time frame I get to play as Reinhardt additionally on the battlefield,” Kaplan saays within the developer replace video. “And along with that, my ult era as Reinhardt throughout that timeframe is extraordinarily accelerated, to the purpose the place with some characters—Tracer for instance, we have seen it with Roadhog—Echo within the type of these characters can really get off a number of final talents.
“I do know all of it sounds loopy, if it is too loopy we are going to steadiness it again additional than it’s, however it’s an especially enjoyable factor.”
Echo is now playable on the Overwatch PTR, however is not going to be coming to the brand new experimental card, as Kaplan stated “the expertise does not permit us to try this.” He additionally warned that the PTR could possibly be “extended” due to the balancing and tuning required with the discharge of a brand new character.
