Blizzard on Overwatch 2 hero Kiriko’s origins as a ‘trickster’ ninja and ties to its future

polygon.com:

Overwatch’s newest character, the support hero Kiriko, is having a different style of rollout. She’s the first new hero to be included as part of Overwatch 2’s battle pass, meaning that while many players have access to Kiriko, others are still grinding away to unlock her. She’s also just been added to one of Overwatch2’s core modes, and her viability in competitive gameplay will be tested in the coming weeks and months.

Kiriko also had a somewhat unusual path into the game itself: She started as a piece of concept art intended for Overwatch 2’s PvE component, which Blizzard plans to deliver next year. Originally conceived as an enemy unit type, Kiriko graduated to full hero based on her strong visual design. She’s also been in the works in various incarnations for about four years, as Blizzard attempted to turn a drawing of a streetwear-sporting healer-ninja with a ghostly fox into a playable hero.

Senior hero designer Joshua Noh told Polygon in a recent interview that Kiriko went through “probably four support kits’ worth of abilities, just trying to find what’s fun and what works in the game, especially with the new five-versus-five paradigm for PvP.”

Kiriko “started as just a really cool art piece that [character art director] Arnold [Tsang] drew,” Noh recalled. “He drew a whole bunch of ninjas [that] could potentially be enemies. And we we’re like, Hey, this one looks super awesome. Let’s try and make it into a hero.” Noh said that Kiriko’s spirit fox was originally “sort of like a pet class in an MMO and follows you around” healing your teammates. But that idea proved too difficult to implement, and eventually evolved into Kiriko’s ultimate ability, Kitsune Rush, which presented technical challenges of its own.

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