Orisa’s in-game abilities look as fleshed out as the story of her creation.
Blizzard Entertainment is designing Overwatch’s new hero to take a lot of damage and give teams a character to anchor themselves around in battle. In Overwatch lore, however, the new hero, Orisa, was designed by an 11-year-old African girl.
You wouldn’t know it if you just play the game, as there’s no story-mode to speak of, but Overwatch actually has a very fleshed out universe. Every hero has an origin story and some even have animated videos to go along with them. The game’s newly announced character is no different. Orisa is a robotic character, built originally as part of an army of OR15 defense units that kept the African city of Numbani safe. Until they failed to live up to expectations, that is.
As the company that made the robots sold the remainder of the OR15 inventory, 11-year-old Efi Oladele bought one of the units using grant money from the Adawe Foundation’s “genius grant.”
Efi saw potential where no one else could and took to modifying the unit. “I rebuilt you, upgraded your programing and gave you a heart,” Efi said in Orisa’s origin story video.
Now Orisa is the city’s new protector, which means she doesn’t have a huge back story with proven heroics like some other characters. For many of the game’s characters, Overwatch takes place many years after they thought they had retired from being the hero, but for Orisa and Efi it’s very much a part of their origin story.
Orisa is currently available in the Overwatch Public Test Realm and when players can start playing as Orisa in-game has yet to be announced, but the character looks to add a lot to both the game and story of Overwatch.
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