For the wildly popular Overwatch, the introduction of a new character is a big deal. Not only is it a new set of abilities to explore in the competitive shooter, but it also means that every other character has to adjust to the potential heroic abilities introduced by that hero. As such, the story of an eleven-year old robotic genius named Efi Oladele is definitely something that fans of the game should be watching.
Blizzard today released an enigmatic in-game story snippet on the Overwatch website, which you can read here in its entirety. The story is an interview with a young girl from Numbani named Efi Oladele, who has been granted a “genius grant” for her work in robotics and artificial intelligence.
Does this mean that Efi is our newest hero? Blizzard isn’t being explicit on the point, but there is some interesting info to digest. First, while Efi is only a child in this interview, there’s no indication that this interview happened in the same time-frame as the in-game world; it’s possible that she could be older in the game, which would be significant, because otherwise, the game has just introduced a child hero to be repeatedly killed in-game, which might rightfully rub many people the wrong way.
In addition, if Efi is the new hero, the interview suggests that her abilities might be tied to drones, as the girl regales the interviewer with how much she loves creating small robots to do tasks for her.
Of course, it’s also possible that Efi isn’t actually the hero being teased, and that the actual character has something to do with the artificial intelligence that she helped pioneer.
Overwatch just completed its third season of competitive play on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The last new playable character to be introduced was Sombra, who showed up in November.
Our Take
It’s a good bet that this isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing from Blizzard about the new character coming to Overwatch. We’ll be following the trail of breadcrumbs closely.