The wait is finally over, obsessive Overwatch fans. At long last, Sombra has been officially confirmed as a playable character in Blizzard’s mega-popular first-person shooter. The highly anticipated announcement came as part of Friday’s BlizzCon 2016 opening ceremonies, which gave us our best look yet at the Mexican hacker and revealed that she will be playable on the Public Test Realm beginning next week.
In classically cheeky Blizzard fashion, Sombra herself hacked into a video showcase that was recapping everything that has happened since Overwatch‘s launch. What followed was the latest in Blizzard’s excellent series of animated shorts, which featured Sombra infiltrating the Volskaya Industries weapons facility in Russia alongside fellow agents of Talon, Reaper and Widowmaker. The short, in addition to making me curse the heavens for not giving us an animated Overwatch TV series, gives us a taste of Sombra’s abilities, which include advanced hacking, teleportation, and cloaking technology.
According to Blizzard’s website, Sombra is an offensive hero, who specializes in stealth and hacking. In addition to her trusty machine pistol, she uses her abilities to disrupt enemies weapons and disable health kits, go temporarily invisible, and even teleport across the map. With her ultimate ability, the EMP, she disables enemy barriers and shields across a large radius of effect, which should prove a devastating counter to enemy Reinhardts.
For months and months now, Sombra has been the singular obsession of Overwatch fans. The character, whose name means “shadow” in Spanish, has been a long teased addition to the first-person shooter’s ever-expanding roster. More importantly, though, is the way in which Blizzard teased her: an incredibly detailed, complex alternate reality game that has had the community decoding encrypted e-mails, uncovering in-game secrets, and putting on their most tin-foil-covered of hats. After weeks and weeks of datamoshing, decoding, and generally diving deep into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, it seems like the wait is over…at least until Sombra goes live on the PTR next week.
What do you think of Sombra so far? Which other Overwatch character needs an animated short? Let us know in the comments below!
Image: Blizzard
The very best cosplay of BlizzCon 2015
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
