Please Blizzard, People are dying.
For weeks, perhaps even months now, the Overwatch community has been slowly whipping themselves into a frenzy after they discovered a trail of breadcrumbs that very likely will reveal the next character. At first it was a simple assumption that a range of clues, left within the games maps, hinted at a character named ‘Sombra’ – who would possibly be a hacker of some kind. This was assumed based off the name that appeared on monitors in some places (‘Sombra’) and a folder containing names and a picture that appeared to Be Sombra herself.
‘Sombra’ as she appeared in Overwatch’s Maps
Then, the first post-release Overwatch character – Ana – was announced. After her release it was revealed that one of her skins was actually the suspected ‘Sombra’ character, which threw a lot of the speculators for a loop – If Ana was Ana, was she also Sombra? Or was Sombra someone else?
The skin that put the Overwatch world into a spin
Now people were curious. Some slightly clever people noticed that within the release trailer for Ana there appeared to be clues that might suggest something more to either Ana, or the Sombra character as a whole. In my opinion, this all came to a head when people reached out to Blizzard through whichever means they could, and basically just asked outright. Blizzards reply? “Quién es Sombra?” (Who is Sombra?)
This is where things get nutty. The ARG started to hit full stride and an incredible amount of effort was put into part by the games community, scrutinising every possible clue or germ of a clue they could find. Codes were found in the Summer Games trailer, allowing people to decipher all manner of other hidden messages hidden within images on the Overwatch website, the Achievement manager. You name it, someone has managed to add something to this steaming pile of conspiracy based off whatever micro-organism of a hint they could possibly muster.
As an outsider, and more importantly, as a rational human being, the entire thing has been bewildering to comprehend. I have seen ARG’ish marketing done by many companies in the past, but this is truly the first time I have developed a deep sense of concern. If you wish to observe what has happened so far from the sidelines, safely away from the tinfoil hats and mad gibberings of those who have long lost their senses, there is a particularly robust Reddit thread that someone has so far collected all of the craziness. It’s worth a read, if only to be grateful that there are people out there who will happily obsess over things on your behalf. Someone turned a weird sky blob from a map into a song for god sake.
Now, here comes the truly fun bit. On this day, Something a great deal more obvious has turned up on the Battle.Net forum to hopefully reveal the identity of ‘Sombra’ and maybe end this speculation fair. A post that appears as such:
An unassuming post, in Spanish that translates to She who has the information, has the power. The avatar, is an image that was uncovered earlier in the ARG, and the name is a dig at those who went off the deep end with one of the red herrings encountered during it.
The really interesting part, however… if you leave the page open for a few moments, the entire page will appear to glitch out, and displays the following:
So the ARG people have put their brainpower to the test.
And they have revealed it’s a countdown. And within 24 hours, it will be revealed.
NOW the hype is real, everything before was just speculation. Get ready kids – this is either going to go out with a deafening bang, or a pathetic wheeze.
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW
