As expected, the internet has been rife with endless speculation and heaps of theory crafting following Blizzard’s publication earlier this week of an in-game Overwatch story featuring a young girl from Numbani called Efi Oladele (pictured above). The fictional interview, which you can read in its entirety here, details the character’s genius intellect and the recognition of her contribution to the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Ever since then, fans have been poking around trying to find evidence to support Efi’s inclusion as the shooter’s next hero, but alas, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Not directly, at least. As per Polygon, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan was present at the DICE 2017 summit yesterday, where he went into great detail about the origins of the title and how it came to be the final product we have today. As part of the presentation, Kaplan exhibited an image that displayed, among familiar faces, a multi-legged character that appeared to be artificial in nature, leading many to speculate that this would be the game’s next playable character.
As it turns out, that’s certainly not the case, as Kaplan said during the presentation (via PCGamesN/IGN) that “the hero in the center is not the hero that you think it is,” seemingly putting to rest the idea that Efi created, or is piloting herself, the character depicted. Furthermore, Kaplan later confirmed to Polygon that, while Efi will have some form of connection with the next hero, she isn’t the one.
Well then, it looks like it’s time to go back to square one. While it was expected that Efi would have some ties with Overwatch‘s next roster addition, having confirmation from Kaplan himself that this is indeed some sort of build-up to the next character reveal is nice, at the very least.
One thing’s for sure, it’s going to be quite interesting to see where this tease leads over the coming weeks.