Blizzard has released an Overwatch 2 blog post detailing the development of their latest support character, Illari – detailing some of the iteration that helped developed her sunlight-based kit of abilities.
And thank the stars, because at one point the mad lads were going to give her the very first flashbang-style ability to actually blind players; but mercifully chucked that in the bin where it belongs. Take a squiz below, where Overwatch Cavalry has mirrored the video:
Illari originally had a Blind Ability in #Overwatch2 ☀️
— Overwatch Cavalry (@OWCavalry) September 28, 2023
The team opted to remove it due to its limited effectiveness and how annoying it could be for enemies. They believed that a full-screen blind disrupted the flow of the game.
📽️ Check out early development footage: pic.twitter.com/V9ZcBKi6AX
It’s a really neat little article that goes into some intensely granular depth on the character design process, even going so far as to reveal the internal codename for Illari, ‘Solar’.
The idea to blind enemies was an early concept, one clearly born from the common human association of Sun → Light → Eyes go burny. Initial thrown like a grenade, it really was as flashbang-esque as you would imagine – though I will openly admit that the basketball graphic betrays it’s inertia; that thing should have bounced A LOT more.
The blind was eventually nixed for a sane reason – the impact of play was far too heavily stacked on the victims of such an ability. A single button press from one character would likely be too devastating to really formulate as use-case that felt fair in moment-to-moment gameplay – a lot like how Cassidy would eventually lose his micro-stun grenade.
The other cool detail contained within the piece are some concepts for how her healing would work, particularly the use of DRONES. Our sun-lass was concepted to try throwing out healing grenades that would fold out into drones and target an ally to heal them. The graphic and use was super cool, but in testing it proved to require a ton of management to really feel rewarding; which can be draining and frustrating when playing a support. Ideally you should be able to weave a little utility, damage and healing together to feel impactful during gameplay – and the pseudo pet-control for your little robo buddies may have come across as just too high of a ceiling to reach.
There was even a time where the healing component of her ‘sun rifle’ would fire like a railgun (rail-sun?), charging and blasting out in a wave. While cool, I can see why they binned it – imagine missing such an impactful shot, and having the slow recharge before you can try again. You’d have some devastating support moments.
There is also some details on how her ultimate shifted around, but really that seemd to have coalesced in a way that is less dramatic than the other abilities. I am definitely glad it wasn’t a deployable healing zone though, we have enough of that kind of thing in the game already.
It’s a credit to the killer crew who make up ‘Team 4’ at Blizzard, and seeing this kind of development transparency is super rad. I genuinely look forward to more ripper posts like this one in future.
What do you think of ‘Solar’ and her journey to become Illari? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
