Welcome OverWatch’s 32nd hero, Echo.
Blizzard has confirmed that Echo will be joining OverWatch as the latest playable hero almost two years after she was displayed to the public.
About Echo
You’ve seen her before: a sleek, cyclopean omnic, hovering in the backlines of the earliest Overwatch roster art. You’ve heard whispers of her progenitor: Mina Liao, one of the founders of Overwatch, her expertise invaluable to Jack Morrison, Gabriel Reyes, and Ana Amari against the looming threat of the Omnic Crisis. Now, she’s finally here—Echo, the 32nd hero to join the ranks of the Overwatch roster.
“Echo is a really special character for us in that our players have known about her for a very long time,” says Overwatch’s Game Director Jeff Kaplan, his fondness for the game’s newest hero evident, like a parent speaking about the child they’ve watched grow up and just sent off to college. “Players had actually seen Echo in earlier versions of the artwork for Overwatch. She was featured in the “Reunion” cinematic, where McCree frees her from the Deadlock Gang.”
While we’ve had several glimpses of Echo throughout the years, Dr. Mina Liao is a relatively new figure to Overwatch fans. “There were a few founding members of Overwatch—obviously, there were people like Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes,” says Kaplan. “
And, as they were founding Overwatch, they invited someone named Doctor Mina Liao, a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics who had previously worked for the Omnica Corporation, which had built the Omnics originally, to join them. Morrison wanted to employ somebody who was an absolute expert and understood robotics to make Overwatch more educated and intelligent when it came to the Omnic Crisis.
