New Character Orisa Coming to Overwatch Next Week

Update: After some PTR testing, the new tank's on her way.

By Chloi Rad

Orisa will be released fully on PC, Xbox One and PS4 next Tuesday, March 21, Blizzard has announced.

The announcement tweet also comes with a short making-of documentary, which is well worth watching if you're a fan - perhaps most interestingly, we see that Orisa was prototyped in-house as a Gothic-skinned Zarya holding a Bastion turret:

Overwatch's latest character is a centaur-like tank class hero named Orisa. Blizzard hasn't said when she'll be available in the full game yet, but for now PC players can demo her on Overwatch's public test realm.

According to her official hero page, "Orisa serves as the central anchor of her team, and defends her teammates from the frontline with a protective barrier. She can attack from long range, fortify her own defenses, launch graviton charges to slow and move enemies, and deploy a Supercharger to boost the damage output of multiple allies at once."

Orisa's primary weapon is the Fusion Driver, an automatic projectile cannon. She can also launch a detonatable graviton charge, which slows the movement of nearby enemies and pulls them towards the explosion.

Her other abilities include Fortify, which temporarily reduces the damage Orisa takes and is immune to "action-impairing effects" like Sombra's Hack ability, and a deployable Protective Barrier, which plants a stationary, destructible shield to protect teammates from enemy fire. Her ultimate, Supercharger, allows her to plant a damage-buffing device that affects allied heroes within Orisa's line of sight. Like the stationary barrier, her Supercharger device can be destroyed by enemy fire.

Based in Numbani, the young Guardian Robot was constructed from scrap parts of decommissioned OR15 defense robots by the 11-year-old engineering genius Efi Oladele. Blizzard had been teasing a new hero via the character of Efi, leading many fans to speculate that Overwatch's latest hero would indeed be one of the child prodigy's creations.

Check out the official Overwatch developer update below.

Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.

 

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