Overwatch fans may have found one of the abilities of Echo, an upcoming hero for the hero-based multiplayer shooter’s sequel, in a forum post made by one of the game’s developers nearly a year ago.
Echo was first seen in the animated short Reunion, which was released at BlizzCon 2018 featuring McCree and Ashe. She again appeared in the Overwatch 2 cinematic trailer at BlizzCon 2019.
Not much is known about Echo, aside from the fact that she will join the Overwatch 2 roster in the future. However, as first spotted by Redditor sniperq4010, one of her abilities may have already been revealed in the past by Overwatch developer Geoff Goodman.
In a March 2019 post on the Overwatch section of the official Blizzard forums, Goodman revealed that the development team had ability and weapon prototypes that were not yet in the game. One of these weapons was the Bomblet Gun, which he described as a gun that fired low-impact projectiles that will stick to enemies. Its alternate fire, however, will remotely detonate all of the little bombs left by the projectile to cause more damage.
Goodman said that it was fun to play around with the Bomblet Gun on Tracer, but apparently, she was not the right fit for the weapon. It looks like the ability will be put to good use though, as seen at the 5:14 mark of the Overwatch 2 cinematic trailer.
In the trailer, Echo swoops in and fires energy projectiles at the robot enemies. The glowing orbs stick for a brief moment, before exploding to take them out. Overwatch fans believe that this is the Bomblet Gun that Goodman previously described, with the weapon finding a home in Echo’s set of skills.
Without official confirmation, it remains to be seen if Echo will indeed have an ability that works similar to the Bomblet Gun, but it certainly looks like Echo’s weapon in the Overwatch 2 trailer matches Goodman’s description.
Overwatch 2 will feature Story missions and Hero missions, but all Overwatch and Overwatch 2 players will have access to the same multiplayer maps and characters. The game’s director, Jeff Kaplan, said that the plan is to eventually merge the clients of the two games to avoid “fragmenting the player base.”
