Overwatch - Sombra Revealed?

For some time now, Overwatch fans have been chomping at the bit with news of an upcoming hero. Known only as "Sombra", Blizzard has slowly built up hype with a scant few details, ideas and suggestions of just who she might be, leaving the fandom going mad with guesswork. Well, today brought about a first possible look at the character.

Leaked onto multiple message boards and websites, a screenshot of a monitor showed a purple clad woman and a few details of an upcoming event -

The text, while fragmented, reads as follows -

[...](p)rotect the castle doors from the Zomnics and Dr. Junkenstein’s evil allies.”[...]

[...](t)ry your hand at three different difficulties – the harder the difficulty, the more points you can earn!

Hero: Sombra (she will be hacking her way into the build later tonight)

[...](Som)bra is one of the world’s best and most notorious hackers. As a child she lost everything during the Omnic Cris(is)[...]

[...]ies with computers to survive. She worked with the Los Muertos gang in Mexico, executing increasingly more h[...]

[...]s until she attracted to much unwanted attention and had to go underground. During that time, she upgraded h[...]


[...](i)nentations and was recruited by the mysterious Talon organization. While Sombra seems content to work with[...]

All of this certainly sounds genuine thus far, as we have been hearing for some time that there would be a few major events in the pipeline. Plus, given their love of new skins, Halloween is too big an even to merely overlook. What also supports the credibility of this image is the level of detail which has been put into the character, the fact it fits in perfectly with a cyberpunk hacker aesthetic without breaking Overwatch's designs, and her load-out. We have yet to see a full on uzi in the game, and what looks to be a kind of hacking claw would fit in with the game's usual fast paced style of gameplay.

However, you might want to take this reveal with a fist full of salt. Many ideas and points do align with this being Sombra and fit in well, but there are quite a few notable discrepancies. For starters, the hacker's famous skull sigil is completely missing from the front of her oufit, and this design does conflict with past hints which players were given. Prior designs depicted a dark, cloaked figure more akin to Reaper than anyone else, and lack the brighter or more overt elements of this character design. Each could be accomplished or added one way or the other of course, or it could simply be out of sight, but these are factors worth considering.

As exciting as this reveal is, it would be best to maintain a tempered and skeptical approach to any news. There have also been a number of high profile hoaxes akin to this in the past - including the ancient but infamous Mewthree from Pokemon's early years - and one more would not be surprising to the gaming community. Even if it required an incredible level of effort as seen here, such things are far from unheard of.

We'll just have to wait until later on this month to learn whether or not this leak is correct or not.