Overwatch’s next hero might carry twin pistols and has a quick dash, but she’s no Tracer. Tomorrow, when Shion makes her debut, Overwatch will have a hero who fights like a Devil May Cry character.
In fact, the character action game series was so much of an inspiration that Blizzard originally gave Shion a Devil May Cry-esque style rank meter to measure your moves.
“We did have a style meter,” lead hero producer Kenny Hudson said in a recent group interview with PC Gamer. “We had this little style meter UI in the beginning and it would start at D or E and then move its way up to S, depending on how [many abilities] you could link together.”
Hudson said it “would’ve been cool,” but it was too stressful to manage in combat. The team also had troubles figuring out how to reward you for earning an S rank. “At one point we had it so she has super speed or she has double the run speed of other heroes in the game,” Hudson explained. “That was kind of wild, and we felt that the bike [was] going to be enough of a challenge.”
Even without the style ranks, Shion still has some Devil May Cry DNA in her kit. The motorcycle he mentioned isn’t just for racing around the map. Shion can take off with it into the air, hang for a beat, and then kick it towards enemies. Some characters have rocket launchers or grenades; Shion has an explosive bike—a core part of her design that everything else was built around.
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The rest of Shion’s abilities are made to be used interchangeably so you can combo them together based on what you need in the moment: Each pistol shoots a three-round burst before she swaps to the other, they can both be unloaded in an X pattern for a huge chunk of damage, and she can use her dash to move in or out of the fray.
I can already see several ways you can optimize Shion’s abilities for the different heroes you’ll face in a match, like forgoing the accuracy you gain from charging up her pistol volley when fighting a bulky tank hero. This flexibility extends to her ultimate ability, which gives her three charges of an AoE barrage that she can use in place or after a short dash. In the brief demo Hudson gave us, it looks like Shion will be particularly good at pouncing on weak targets before they can react, but will struggle to survive anyone prepared for her arrival.
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That also might mean Shion’s about to become the most banned hero in ranked. Erratic movement abilities can be as much of a pain as a hero with auto-aim. Hudson said a problem in early playtests was that it was nearly impossible to take her out while she was riding the bike because her hitbox became smaller than intended. That’s fixed now, but I still expect it’s going to take some practice to stop her before you’ve been turned into roadkill.
Shion will Akira slide into the hero roster tomorrow when Overwatch season 3 begins.
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