DEVELOPER UPDATE KIRIKO
Hey, everyone. My name is Qiu Fang
and I'm the Lead Character Concept Artist on Overwatch 2.
Hi, everyone. My name is Kyungseo Min
and I'm an Associate Narrative Designer on Overwatch 2.
And today we are here to talk about Kiriko,
the newest support hero joining our roster.
Kiriko grew up in Kanezaka,
and she was raised by her mother and grandmother.
Her family has ancestral ties to the Kanezaka shrine,
which worships the fox spirit.
Her grandmother taught Kiriko
the responsibilities of taking care of the shrine,
the importance of traditions, rituals, and community.
Her mother, on the other hand, is a fierce ninja,
and believed in taking action, standing up for yourself,
and fighting for what's right.
We can see in Kiriko that she bridges these two sensibilities together,
the traditional and the modern, the fighting and the healing.
Kiriko is a strong, badass woman.
She will do anything to protect her family and her community,
even if that means she has to bend a few rules.
She's a trickster, like the fox spirit.
Kiriko grew up alongside Hanzo and Genji.
Her mother actually trained the Shimadas
and she was especially close to Genji,
since they're both on the mischievous kind of side.
Yeah, he would take her to the arcade on Hanamura
and they were definitely up to no good in and out of the Shimada castle.
[Kiriko] Carried on the wind!
Kiriko witnessed the fall of the Shimadas when she was young.
The assassination of the Shimada clan head left a power vacuum within the community.
A rival clan of the Hashimoto took advantage of that and took over.
They terrorized the community
and Kiriko saw all these injustices first-hand,
and they took her father as hostage.
To stop them, she joined a ragtag group of young women and men called the Yokai.
Coming from all walks of life,
they fight the Hashimoto and protect community members.
They're a small group, but with Kiriko's cunning personality,
they show that the youth of Kanezaka should not be underestimated.
So, Kiriko was developed really with 5v5 in mind.
She's high mobility. She's a single target hybrid healer.
She is fast.
She can get to your little skirmishes, which happens a lot more often in 5v5 now.
So, she's super effective.
Yeah, and she's very much like another battle healer.
She's in the action, jumps in and out,
not the kind of sit-back-and-heal type of hero.
[Kiriko] Shouldn't have put your head there!
I think a lot of experienced players will have fun with her,
and I think a lot of DPS players will love her.
[Kiriko] Underestimated me, ne?
From day one, really, her fox was there in the design.
It felt right.
It fit the character visually
and the fox was based on the Japanese Inari,
which is the fox spirit,
and it's a guardian protector kind of spirit.
In Japanese folklore, foxes are also known to represent cunning and smarts,
which matches Kiriko's personality.
[Kiriko] Now I'm having fun!
Kiriko actually started as an ecology boss unit
that was part of the ninja ecology.
Her hairband and bandana
come from classic depictions of ninjas in pop culture
and it's got a symbol on the top
that's basically the Kanji for kitsune, for fox,
turned diagonally, which is really cool.
The original design had a giant shuriken with ball bearings in it,
inspired by fidget spinners at the time,
but... we tried to maintain that as she became a support hero.
However, learning from past mistakes
when we tried to force a design and a concept together,
we ended up just retooling her to look more like a support hero.
[Kiriko] Some of the old, some of the new.
So, Kiriko's primary ability is this healing Ofuda.
Ofudas are these paper talismans believed to be imbued with powers.
When you do this ability,
you see these Ofuda paper slips firing in twos and they home in on allies.
They're a little slow, but you can use your ally teleport ability to offset that,
or you can use the slowness to your advantage
and you can preemptively shoot them
if you foresee that a teammate will need healing.
Her secondary fire is she throws out a Kunai,
and these are actually very fast, in contrast to the Ofuda.
There's low overall damage, but in crits it's a ton of damage.
Very, very powerful in the hands of an accurate player.
And the idea here was to split her abilities thematically
having half of her abilities being supportive with the healing Ofuda
and the other half is more about the offensive damage with Kunai.
And this honors the narrative elements
of her mother and grandmother at the same time.
Also, the first iteration of Genji had the Kunai,
so the team's really happy that we're bringing it back.
[Kiriko] Come on, Shimada.
[Kyungseo Min] One of her abilities is the Ally Teleport.
She can teleport directly to an ally. She can even teleport through walls.
And the distance is pretty generous.
So, you can travel across maps pretty far and pretty quickly.
This makes her a great support
because she can get to her teammates quickly
and provide the healing power that the team needs.
Her second ability is called the Protection Suzu.
Suzu are small bells and Kiriko throws them out
and it makes allies invulnerable briefly and they also cleanse debuffs.
This is great to combo with her teleport ability
to quickly get in there and support a teammate.
You can also throw it on yourself if you're in a sticky situation
and it kind of saves your hair.
But it does have a long cooldown, so it requires good judgement and timing.
[Qiu Fang] It's a good counter to sleep dart.
[Kyungseo Min] Yes, and Junker Queen's anti-heal.
[Kiriko in Japanese] I'll protect you!
[Kyungseo Min] Her passive ability is the wall climb.
She can scale walls like Genji and Hanzo.
Because they trained together, we just felt it was appropriate.
So, finally, Kiriko's ultimate is called the Kitsune Rush.
It's a huge buff that gives you a ton of movement speed, attack speed,
reload speed, and also cooldown reduction on your abilities
on all allies affected.
Very, very powerful. It's great for initiating an attack on an objective.
And actually, originally it was just going to be a fox,
but we found it hard to track where the fox was going,
so the Torii gates were more done out of just giving you a target
and seeing where the fox is going.
But it just ended up also looking absolutely beautiful.
[Kiriko] Let the Kitsune guide you!
Kiriko is voiced by Sally Amaki.
Sally did an amazing job bringing a cool girl energy to Kiriko.
Her voice is cool and wry,
and she has a wicked sense of humor that is dry as a desert.
She really sounds like the lone wolf, cool girl
that everyone at school respects.
And I'm really looking forward
to looking at the player's response at all of her digs,
because she will take a dig at anyone,
and especially the Genji and Hanzo conversations.
Keep an ear out for those because there's a lot inside jokes,
history, and humor there.
And that about wraps it up for Kiriko.
We can't wait for all of you to get a chance to play her.
See you next time!
[epic music]
[Kiriko] You can't change the world by following all the rules!