The Story Behind Overwatch’s Orisa

Orisa was a character that emerged from game design. We wanted to have what we called an anchor tank: an alternative to Reinhardt. On the art side, our assistant art director wanted to explore new things. He really wanted to push the boundaries of what an Overwatch hero could look like.

Overwatch Lead Writer Michael Chu

Blizzard didn’t want Orisa to look like Overwatch’s other robots. Her personality is something like a mix of Robocop and GlaDOS. Orisa was really complicated and that was a problem.

We needed a spark, and we were looking for it. The thing about Orisa is, in a lot of ways she was unconventional, and she was hard to come to terms with. She has four legs, she has horns, she’s a robot. She has a really big frame and animal locomotion. It was difficult to encapsulate her personality. There was a lot going on.

We needed something to pull it together, and for us, that was the character of Efi, who’s this child genius who believed that she could build a hero. We imagined that when she was working on Orisa and upgrading her, they had a little TV on in the lab, and they were watching the Overwatch Saturday morning cartoon. So what if we could perceive Orisa and the world around her through Efi’s eyes and, by association, learn more about the world that way? Orisa as we know her was born. We had this new character learning about her place in the world. She was learning how to be a hero.

Grounding the character in a perspective you could relate to helped us figure out this very high-concept character and relate to her..

Overwatch Lead Writer Michael Chu 

Make sure to share your thoughts on the newest robotic hero in the comments below.