Sombra's real name has finally been revealed.
In the video game, Sombra is a fictional character.In the game's narrative, she is an exceptional black bag operation hacker from Mexico that joined a criminal organization.In the game, Sombra has stealth-based abilities to move around the battlefield, and is able to hack any opposing character to temporarily prevent them from using their special abilities.
After launch, Sombra was the second new character to be added to the game.She had been designed and tested before the game's launch, and there was an alternate reality game that teased her character.The long campaign taxed players' attention and limited new character promotions to a few weeks ahead of their formal announcements.
The concept of Sombra, one of the original characters in the game, was not compatible with the other heroes they had at that time.According to the lead character designer, she started off as a hero character with a hacking ability.In the testing, they found that hacking-only skills were not as good as they could have been, so they started to consider adding the hacking aspect to the character's abilities.Genji had an ability to stealth move behind enemies, stun them, and then kill their foes with another skill, but they found this only useful to deal with opponents that were separated from their team members, making the stealth aspect not fun.They gave similar stealth abilities to Sombra, but in combination with the hacking skills as to be a more effective contribution to the team regardless of their opponents' style.Goodman noted that they were initially hesitant about incorporating skill debuffs into the game, knowing that players would likely react negatively to having skills stripped even for a short period of time.They were encouraged by the successful playtesting of Ana and her sleep-inducing ability which they were able to modify quickly in response to feedback, and they believed they could manage Sombra's hacking skills the same way.[3]
They wanted to bring more villain-like characters to the game.Sombra is considered to be "evil in the sense that she's kind of only out for herself", but will stay loyal to her employer and further her own agendas.A long-term alternate reality game was planned for Sombra as early as the open alpha period for Overwatch.The goal was to have players get an idea of who she is and a little bit of her personality before we even unveiled her.[5]
Prior to her launch, casting was done for Sombra.Carolina was part of a casting call.Even though they were looking for Mexican actors with a Mexico City accent, Ravassa developed a northern Mexican accent and used it during the casting call to get the role.In order to tune the accent to where they wanted it, the voice casting director and the dialect expert worked together.The Sombra's dialog was written by Chu with help from members of the team in Mexico.[2]
The ARG concluded with the official reveal of Sombra on November 4, 2016 at BlizzCon.She was introduced through an animated short played during the convention's opening ceremony and made available for play by attendees on the show floor.She would be introduced to the game's public testing region on PC in the following week.On November 15, 2016 Sombra was released for all users.[8]
On October 7, an image of an Xbox Games Store listing for Halloween-themed loot boxes, an in-game reward item obtainable via microtransaction, contained a reference to Sombra.An image of a developer website was posted to several websites on October 8.There is a character model of Sombra, a partial biography of the character, and a description of a Halloween-themed mode involving Junkrat as Dr. Junkenstein.There was a simultaneous leak of a Halloween comic.There is a Junkenstein.The Halloween event, including a game mode, went live on October 11.On November 1, a store listing was accidentally released and removed.The character depicted in the image was similar to the leaked character model, named Sombra, and bore the signature of a concept artist.There are 14 and 15 words.
Sombra is classified as a "Damage" role.She has a machine pistol for short-range combat.Her abilities allow her to hack enemies and their turrets, which prevents them from using their special or ultimate abilities or picking up health packs, though they may still use primary skills.Information about the opponent's health and ultimate ability status can be passed on to her teammates if they are within line-of- sight.Her hacks can be applied to health packs, allowing them to use three times their normal speed, while also disabling their use for enemies.Her hacks on health packs can last for a minute if they are hacked again before the minute runs out.Sombra can turn invisible for an infinite amount of time and gain a burst of speed to hide behind enemy lines to perform her hacks.She has the ability to hack enemy's and deal 10k damage to all enemy barriers and shields.[20]
The biography of Sombra is provided through more than one media.In the "Searching" online comic, her real name is revealed.She is a native speaker of Spanish and was born in the fictional city of Dorado, Mexico, the year that the organization was founded.She was an orphan after losing everything from the Omnic Crisis.She joined the fictional Los Muertos gang in Dorado after recognizing her talents in hacking and value of information.She was recruited by the Talon organization.She used the name Sombra, Spanish for "shadow", and avoided her birth name as a hacker.17 and 16 were the days.
There were clues placed into the game's map about Sombra.Players assumed the hints were meant for Sombra when they were placed into the Temple of Anubis map at the same time.Speculation that Sombra is Ana persisted until Ana's release as a character.[3][26]
A video about Ana Amari's origins has been uploaded to YouTube.The video contained a Spanish message.A developer update video about Ana was posted on July 19 and contained static.In four hours, players ran the static through seven forms of decryption to find a Spanish voice message suggesting future puzzles will be more difficult.[28][29]
On August 2, a video detailing the game's Summer Games event contained a code in Base64 cipher that required a key for further decoding.There are clues in the video arranging nine heroes into cardinal and ordinal directions.Players struggled to make progress for days when previous puzzles were solved in hours.[29]
Jeffrey Kaplan commented on the sky of the map on August 4.A musical piece was created after a sky code pattern was found and later found to be a visual artifact.There was a message in Spanish in the image of Dorado that was found on August 8.The clue from the Summer Games video led players to a cipher in the games' achievements, which was used to decode another Spanish message and an art sugar skull.During an animation for Sombra, the song created from the sky code was incorporated into the game.
On August 24, a user "Skycoder" posted to the Battle.net forum in Spanish, referencing the sky code, and then posted a glitched image of Reaper and a sequence of characters.The players discovered that the thread had a time limit.A message was revealed when the sequence was turned into a skull.There is an email address for the A Moment in Crime tips line.The reply to the email was directly mentioning Sombra.[22]
Eight weeks after the counter was discovered, it reached 100%.There is a hidden message on the website that suggests an upcoming version number of the game.The build number matching the clue was updated a day later.There is a reference to Sombra on the map in the new build.The morse code translated the beeps into a website for a fictional company.The players were told to wait for further instructions after decoding a message from Sombra urging them to expose corruption within Luméri Co.There are 33 and 34 words.