'Overwatch': Ana Was Basically Bane At One Point

Yesterday, we reported on how Overwatch's Bastion was originally designed with the power of flight. However, everyone's favorite turret wasn't the only character to radically change from the time of concept to release: post-launch hero, Ana, also was quite different at one point.

Speaking to Gamerant, assistant art director, Arnold Tsang revealed that the support sniper was originally a lot like Batman villain Bane. Not only did Ana once resemble Bane in traits, but also apparently in looks. That's right, at one point Blizzard wasn't sure whether or not the character would be male or female.

According to Tsang, Ana's initial design -- which was created by Geoff Goodman -- had her as an alchemist character.

The character's unique hoody, almost-shady rogue ex-soldier look, apparently didn't come until later. Ana originally wore a hazamat suit decked out with vials and tubes, to the point that Gamerant notes that the character had a "Bane-like chemical feel."

As you will know, the alchemist idea didn't make it into the final game, but the team carried over the chemical feel of the character via her biotic weaponry.

During the development of the character, Blizzard was working on backstories for both Soldier 76 and Pharah, and then at one point the team decided to make Ana Pharah's mother, and set her in Egypt.

After removing the hazmat design, Blizzard gave the character a wasteland survivor-type look, but again, didn't stick with this. However, her wasteland skin was based off this temporary look.

Hopefully one day we will see Ana's hazmat suit in some capacity. With lore in mind, it likely won't ever come to the game, but even some concept art would be awesome to see, and elucidate just how much a character can change from concept to implementation.

Overwatch is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. At the moment, there's no word of a Nintendo Switch release, though Blizzard has teased that it may look into the idea of a Switch port, though, the game's hardware demands likely would make such a port pretty difficult.

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