Blizzard talks about the past and future of Overwatch 2’s new support character Kiriko in a deep dive on her design, story, and role in the Overwatch universe.
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 Overwatch 2’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.
“There’s a lot of stuff happening in the background there,” Noh said, explaining that Kiriko’s fox needs to navigate around in-game objects, gaps on the floor, and terrain. “Displaying such a big area as [a huge buff] is kind of a challenge in a game that’s already as visually noisy as Overwatch.”
Kiriko’s original design included a comically oversized shuriken that acted liked a yo-yo or boomerang — a weapon that was eventually repurposed for another hero, Junker Queen, who throws a knife that can be recalled.
“It was very fun to use,” Noh said of Kiriko’s shuriken. “But we ran into this problem where it created this very striking silhouette that looked very deadly, like a DPS player, and people kind of expected that weapon to really take people out.
