Sombra (Overwatch)

The concept of Sombra had been one of the original characters in Overwatch's cast, but as they developed the game, they found her skill kit did not fit in with the other heroes they had at that time.[2] She was originally designed as a Japanese woman named Omniblade with an affinity for street fashion and equipped with throwing daggers.[3] The blades each produced different effects, with one revealing enemy locations on the map.[3] Some of Omniblade's abilities were later worked into Hanzo and Genji's skill-sets, while Omniblade was temporarily set aside during development.[3]

With developers admitting she was a "tricky" character to balance,[4] she started off as a hero character with a hacking ability as to keep opponents debuffed, according to lead character designer Geoff Goodman.[5] When being initially developed, the developers had her designed as a support character.[4] Goodman noted that they found in gameplay testing that hacking-only skills were not "super great" and started to consider building the character around stealth, incorporating the hacking aspect as part of the character's abilities. They had previously tried a stealth character with Genji, having had given him an ability to invisibly move behind enemies, stun them, and then kill their foes with another skill, but found this only useful to deal with opponents that were separated from their team members, making the stealth aspect not fun to play.[5] Using this past criticism, 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.[5] Sombra's initial base form saw her invisibility as a constant, passive ability in which she could break her stealth at a certain radius as she approached closer to other players.[4]

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. However, they were emboldened by the successful playtesting of Ana and her sleep-inducing ability which they were able to tweak quickly in response to feedback, and believed they would be able to manage Sombra's hacking skills in the same manner.[5]

In terms of Overwatch's characters, they wanted to bring more villain-like characters to the game, according to Goodman.[5] Goodman considers Sombra to be "evil in the sense that she's kind of only out for herself", but will stay loyal to her employer, Talon, as well as the situation continues to work out for her and further her own agendas.[5] Blizzard had planned a long-term alternate reality game (ARG) for Sombra as early as the open beta period for Overwatch.[6] According to Goodman, who had planned out the initial stages of the ARG, 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", and playing off her nature as a hacking character.[7]

Casting for Sombra was done prior to her launch. Carolina Ravassa was part of one of those casting calls. Though Blizzard was looking for Mexican actors specifically with a Mexico City accent, Ravassa, who is originally from Colombia, had developed a northern Mexican accent, and used it during the casting call, gaining the role.[2] Voice casting director Andrea Toyia then worked with Ravassa to tune the accent to where they wanted it.[2] Sombra's dialog was written by Chu with help from members of Blizzard's localization team in Mexico to include local references.[2]

In October, leaked images containing references to Sombra were posted onto Reddit.[8] One such image claimed to show a character model of Sombra and a partial biography of the character.[9][10] On November 1, a Blizzard store listing was accidentally released and immediately removed. The image featured a character resembling the leaked character model, named Sombra in its filename, and bore the signature of a Blizzard concept artist.[11][12][13]

As planned from its start, the ARG concluded during BlizzCon on November 4, 2016, with the official reveal of Sombra.[14] She was introduced through an animated short played during the convention's opening ceremony, and she was made available for play by attendees on the show floor. It was announced that she would be introduced to the game's public testing region on PC in the following week.[15][16] Sombra was released for all users on November 15, 2016.[17]

Shortly following her release, Kaplan noted changes would be made to her gameplay as she was deemed too "situational".[18] Once in the game's playable roster, Kaplan found that Sombra became prone to over-buffing due to her unique abilities.[19] Even after efforts were made to tweak Sombra's gameplay design, Kaplan admitted that the character was "not 100% where [she needed] to be".[19]

As with other characters, Sombra underwent considerable redesigning for her appearance in Overwatch 2. In 2021, Blizzard received fan backlash for announcements related to changes made to Sombra for the sequel, which were largely buffs to her character including being able to "reveal hacked targets through walls and [having] her hacks no longer remove [her] stealth."[20] Video game media also noted how her playstyle makes her a challenge to balance in-game.[21] Soon after the sequel's October 2022 release into early access, players noted a bug involving Sombra being able to contest the objective on payload maps in a manner which kept her safe from enemy detection.[22]

Sombra's biography is provided through additional Overwatch media including the Overwatch digital comics. Her real name is Olivia Colomar, revealed in the Searching issues, released in September 2017.[23] She was born within the fictional city of Dorado, Mexico, the same year that the Overwatch organization was established, and is a native speaker of Spanish.[24] While young, she lost everything from the Omnic Crisis, and became an orphan. She recognized her talents in hacking and the value of information, and later joined the fictional Los Muertos gang in Dorado. Eventually, she was recruited by Talon, an antagonist organization that includes Reaper and Widowmaker.[9][10][25] As a hacker, she employed the name Sombra, Spanish for "shadow", and eschewed her birth name.[13][26][27]

Though Sombra's tease through an ARG received a mixed response from fans, Allegra Frank of Polygon wrote that "Overwatch players feel like Sombra was worth the wait."[31] Upon Sombra's addition to the playable roster, many video game writers praised her gameplay as fun, albeit when she is the player character; when playing against her, critics noted Sombra as frustrating or annoying.[18][32][33] Writers also noted that Sombra's "vast and versatile" kit was "complex" and even a bit "overwhelming".[32][34]

Brendan Caldwell of Rock Paper Shotgun called her a "wonderful" character with a "generally well-rounded design."[18] The publication's Natalie Flores discussed Sombra's Latina depiction, voicing disappointment that Sombra did not inspire a wave of diverse Hispanic and Latina representation in video games, but instead "served as the blueprint this industry refuses to discard." Flores opined that Valorant and Apex Legends would later portray their Latina characters with similar characterizations to that of Sombra.[35]

Writing about Sombra's characterization, Nathan Grayson of Kotaku called her "basically the Overwatch version of the DDOS script kiddies who bring down services like Steam and PSN. She takes shit you rely on, she breaks it, and then she disappears. In the right hands, I think she's gonna be devastating."[32]

• Official character profile
• Infiltration animated short on YouTube
• "Sombra Origin Story" on YouTube