After the reveal of a new character, fans are deciphering clues that they believe hint at yet another character that could be coming to the Overwatch roster.
Overwatch fans have been teased for a while now about a new healer-sniper character named Sombra. Yesterday, a new support sniper was revealed—Ana, who also happens to be Pharah’s mother. But the question still remains, what happened to the hints about Sombra? Could it be another character to be revealed soon?
After the reveal of Ana, fans are now hard at work piecing together new clues they hope lead to another character being added to Overwatch. There is undoubtedly a hero (or some other character in the Overwatch universe) named Sombra. Reaper has a voice line that mentions the name and the name can also be found on a file in the Dorado map.
Held within the “Origins” trailer for the new Ana hero, are two screens of code not discernible by the human eye at normal viewing speed. In two separate places between screen flashes in a transition between shots, a screen of code appears, the second of which looks like this:
Both images contain an anomaly of extra characters, which lead to the letters SOMB being extracted from the first image and RA taken from the second. When put together, they spell SOMBRA, the rumored hero in question.
When those images are taken further, a fan was able to use a XOR code to decipher the numbers to extract a repeated saying that appears in Spanish. When translated, that Spanish phrase says “She who has information, has power.” To further link the Spanish used in the code with the Sombra character, the name/word “sombra” means “shadow” when translated to English.
As an interesting clue, the XOR code was deciphered using the number 23. There are currently 22 heroes in the game and Sombra, if she does exist, would be the 23rd hero on the Overwatch roster.
Going down the rabbit hole even further, there is a screenshot in the Ana Origins trailer showing the original Overwatch team of heroes. Almost all of the heroes in this picture are in the game already (Reaper, Ana, Pharah, Soldier: 76, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Mercy, and McCree), but the characters on the far left and far right are not. Some fans suspect Sombra will be the woman on the far right side of the picture.
Fans were expecting a hero reveal at San Diego Comic-Con next week, with many assuming that reveal was Ana, but it came early. However, perhaps Blizzard does have another hero reveal for Comic-Con, which could be Sombra.
Overwatch is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One