With Season 3 of Overwatch’s 2026 campaign, we have seen the largest influx of new heroes into the game’s roster since its beginning a decade ago. This week, that continues when Shion is added to the Overwatch hero roster. She is a new flanker DPS, who holds significant lore placement amongst the Japanese playable characters, most notably Mizuki, who was also added earlier this year.
I got the chance to attend a roundtable interview with Blizzard senior game producer Kenny Hudson and narrative designer Miranda Moyer to discuss Shion’s place in the Overwatch roster from a gameplay and narrative point of view.
Wait Till You See Her on Her Bike
Every time Blizzard begins designing a new hero, they begin with a singular idea and try to build on top of it from there. Hudson explained to us that the Shion starting building block in Overwatch was her motorcycle ability, Joyride. With this, she spawns in a bike, rides it forward for a short time, and can crash it into enemies. The bike, and her style in general, were highly inspired by action movies like John Wick.
Hudson: “We knew in our heads that we wanted to do something along the lines of John Wick hard-boiled. We asked ourselves, what does a cheesy action movie look like in the Overwatch universe, and in a kit? First thing that came up was we really want to throw a motorcycle, [plus use] the dual pistols.
‘What would John Wick do?’ was a question we asked ourselves a bunch, and then how do we weave that into a flanker-style DPS? We took a lot of inspiration from different action movies and things when it comes to like the [reloading] animations, how she fires her pistol, how she walks, how she carries herself. It all kind of comes from that core idea of combos and action.”
Moyer says that Shion has even more inspirations that led to her creation on the narrative side.
Moyer: “What I remember of the actual formation of her character is that there is a lot of old Yakuza-type stuff that we referenced, and I think one of my favorite references from the casting doc that we put out for Shion was from Kill Bill. I don’t remember her name, but I think it’s Lucy Liu’s character in Kill Bill, but she was like this really, really cool and strong character who had that same sort of like chip on her shoulder about her past and wanting to make sure that it was very clear to everyone who was under her command that that was something that’s not to be questioned.
I feel like that really, really spoke to Shion and her sort of view on leadership. I don’t know that there was necessarily one single point of influence that helped develop this character, but just the idea that we took inspiration from a lot of different places. And I think it resulted in a really strong character.”
Later on, Hudson added that Shion’s red bike was inspired by Akira and that there is a whole reel that the animation team has of comparing Shion’s facial movements to those of various action movies.
When it comes to cut content, Shion almost brought a well-renowned fighting style to Overwatch. At one time, she featured a style meter heavily inspired by Devil May Cry. It would start at E, and the more you could combo hits together, the higher your style would go until it reached an S rank. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t find a suitable payoff for reaching that S rank that didn’t feel completely broken, with one idea being that she would have double the movement speed of other heroes.
Overwatch’s Growing Confidence in Hero Making
After ten years, and the Overwatch roster now sitting at 52 heroes after Shion and growing, Hudson was asked about the team’s bold choice to go forward with making a character that uses a motorcycle in gameplay shortly after creating someone like Jetpack Cat.
Hudson: “Our team is getting better at making heroes than ever before. We’ve refined our processes. We have some really great engineers that have familiarized themselves with the engine in a really good way and are now kind of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
And I think, too, with our push to go for a hero per season, it gives us a lot more room to experiment and try and do new fun things, and we’re finding the fun in those new things, and the more our hero pit erupts in laughter when we do something, but realize that, ‘Oh, we didn’t burn the game down when we did that,’ the more we want players to experience that alongside us.”
According to Moyer, some of this growing confidence in the team’s hero creation processes may be a result of the new seasonal structure that Overwatch took on this year.
Moyer: “I think tying the heroes to the ongoing narrative arc and specifically, the season story for them has been a very, very primary goal of our larger exploration of narrative this year, and I think Shion is definitely a very strong example.”
“I think a lot of people are very, very fond of her, the way that she is so closely tied to all of these different beats that we’ve set up over the past decade, right? She’s someone who’s very well integrated into all of these different elements of the story we want to make sure that we’re hitting over the course of the year. The way that Sierra was very tied to her season, the way that some of our upcoming heroes are going to be tied to their seasons as well. I think there’s definitely a much more significant push to incorporate narrative into the broader season story and the narrative at large.”
She said that Shion is an example of the Overwatch team getting back to making heroes with a unique archetype connected with their background.
Moyer: “If you think of adventurous archaeologists, you’re going to think of Indiana Jones. You wouldn’t think of our beautiful Venture, necessarily.”
“But the fact that they’ve been created as this very new depiction of their archetype, I think, is something that we really like to celebrate. So I feel like Shion being this Yakuza boss, being a woman, being an Omnic, these are all things that to us stood out as very cool and interesting subversions of what you would immediately expect.”
When asked how he would respond to the online crowd that offers criticism that Shion’s design is oversexualized, Hudson said:
Hudson: “This hero is one of the most integrated into the story that I’ve seen, and the art and the narrative have been weaved together in a very deep and meaningful way that was super awesome to work on and see take shape. I can say that it wasn’t just a we’re gonna throw something out there for the sake of throwing something out there.”
Shion’s Place in the Overwatch World
While a lot of our questions directed towards the Shion Overwatch lore were pushed back with a “more will be released soon on that,” we were able to learn a bit about the character’s design.
Shion is an omnic, and she might have quite a unique view of humans when compared to characters like Zenyatta or Ramattra (who we were told should have some interesting choices of words for her in upcoming dialogue). When you look at her, you definitely see the most humanoid-looking omnic. According to Moyer, this is a case of her essentially masking who she really is, maybe even being a bit envious of humans.
Moyer: “[Shion] is someone who is very, very heavily modified to have the appearance of a human. We really, really like what we did with her face in particular. The fact that it resembles this mask, I think, speaks to her character, and the fact that she’s kind of putting on this performance of what it means to be a human as an omnic in this very human-heavy world.”
“[Season 3 is] about finding out the truth of who you are underneath all of these expectations from others. I think Shion is an example of that taken to its very negative extreme, and Mizuki, as someone who was raised under the Hashimoto, sort of was brought up to believe that putting on that mask and showcasing yourself as the most extreme and lethal version of yourself is what you need to do. But I think his time with the Yokai has taught him a little bit more about being open and true to who he is, so I feel like it really resonates well with the themes of the season.”
In some ways, Shion could maybe be seen as a mirror of Sojourn, who is a human who is highly augmentized with cyborg parts. Moyer said that she really loved the new hero trailer, which had the two fighting each other, showing “a really, really cool contrast.”
Extra Tidbits of Shion in Overwatch
We got a bit of a hint that Vendetta’s growing alliances with all these various organizations may one day end up blowing up in her face.
Moyer: “I think one of the big things about Vendetta that is probably becoming more and more apparent throughout the course of the year is that one of her difficulties is, it seems like almost creating these strong bonds and this loyalty between the people that she’s working with, her ’empire,’ is becoming very large, very quickly.”
“A lot of these points will come up later, but I feel like the fact that Vendetta can see a lot of herself in Shion doesn’t necessarily mean that she would put her own interests behind that of this new ally, and I feel like that’s something that Shion probably feels quite the same way in the opposite direction about with Vendetta, like [they’re] using each other to their own ends.
So I think that’s something that will definitely come into play later in the story, the idea that Overwatch is obviously a very strong, very loyal group who want to take care of each other as much as they can, but Talon and Talon’s connections may not have that same sense of loyalty.”
We asked about the potential for a future spin-off Arcade mode in Overwatch involving Shion racing with the bike. As of now, it looks like all racing modes are being left for players to create in the Forge.
Hudson: “Nothing that we’ve planned per se. We’ve done our own bikes. Like, if you turn on God Mode in debug builds, it’ll just last forever, and we’ve definitely raced each other around waiting for playtests to start.
I’m actually super excited to see what players do with it and come up with because probably week two, after jumping into [Competitive], I’m probably going to head over to Custom Games and then we’ll see what happens from there.”
