Overwatch 2 teases a new tank hero in its season 13 trailer and his name could be 'Spiker'
Overwatch 2 has another mystery for players to solve. At the end of the trailer for its upcoming witch-themed season, called Spellbinder, a new voice cuts in as the camera pans over a vandalized spawn room of an existing map teasing a new hero.
"It's looking like a revolution," the voice, which the YouTube captions attribute to "Scottish man", says as we get a look at graffiti left in the spawn room of the Oasis map. You can see it says "Fight Back" and "Phreaks" on the walls and what looks like an explosion of purple crystal shards.
The shards look like the kind of thing an Overwatch hero would shoot, if you ask me. When I spoke to a former Overwatch developer last year, they told me the next hero's name was "Spiker", but I suspect that's an internal codename, much like how Juno's was "Space Ranger" before she was revealed. I would guess that the shards are core to whoever this new tank will be.
Players have already dug up an old image of a mohawked hero named "Phreak" who was originally designed for the cancelled MMO Titan before it was reworked into Overwatch. And way back in the original 2014 cinematic trailer, there's a trio of characters shown, one of whom has what looks like "Phreaks" written on the back of their leather jacket. Maybe the hero name was changed to be the name of this anarchist group.
If you squinted at the footage shown during last year's BlizzCon, you could just barely make out a tank hero icon with bright green, spiky hair, which matches the hair of one of the characters in the cinematic trailer and fits with the color of the graffiti in the new trailer.
Not much else is known about the new hero other than that he will be a tank and won't be released until season 14. However, Blizzard will probably let everyone play him early for a few days at some point in season 13 like it's done for Juno and Venture.
There's plenty to distract you until then in season 13 though. In addition to a bunch of fun looking witch skins, including a customizable mythic Widowmaker skin, there will be a new PvP mode with "talent cards" that alter hero abilities. In the trailer, Reinhardt sets off an explosion when he charges an enemy, Moira flings out three of her life-draining orbs at once, and Reaper can pick up health orbs after each kill like it was 2016 again.
Overwatch season 13 begins on October 15.