Overwatch teases big things on the Horizon

Blizzard’s massively successful multiplayer shooter Overwatch has a track record of teasing its players with small updates of lore that eventuate into gameplay changes. This can include new maps, new game modes, and what looks like a new character.

While the rest of the world has been enjoying the Overwatch Anniversary Event, game director Jeff Kaplan paid a visit to the PlayOverwatch twitch channel to answer some questions from fans. Jeff confirmed that the team is hard at work on lots of content behind the scenes and was quoted to say “there’s also some really cool hero news just on the horizon, so hopefully people will be excited by that”. This statement created an immediate buzz in the chat as fans clamoured for news on Doomfist, the current fan front-runner for new character.

However, fans of Overwatch lore were quick to point out that one of the game’s poster children, the loveable sapien scientist Winston, had originally found his evolutionary boost on the Horizon Lunar Colony. Winston abandoned the colony shortly after the other apes in captivity became violent and attacked the human scientist. Not leaving fans in the dark too long, the in-universe Atlas News released a story today about information being recovered from the long abandoned space colony.

Included in the article from the fictional news outlet was a map of the colony and emails between the scientists that spoke about the aggressive nature of the apes, a missing “smaller test subject” Hammond, noises in the air ducts, and a rather sudden emergency call for assistance from head scientist and our favourite ape’s namesake, Dr Winston, in the airlock.

Does this mean a new character in the form of Hammond? Perhaps we will be revisiting the ape overrun lunar colony? Is Hammond the new Doomfist? What ever it will be we most likely won’t be left waiting very long as the development team has learned not to draw out these announcements after the months long reveal of Sombra was met with a fair amount of criticism.

Do you have any exciting ideas about who Hammond might be?