The Best Designed Overwatch Hero
Overwatch is Blizzard’s quirky and eccentric character-driven first-person shooter.
Released in 2016, Overwatch took the world of Esports by storm, quickly rising to the upper tiers of Twitch viewership. The game resulted in the birth of a massive array of fandoms, and a culture all of its own.
The success of the game can, in part, be attributed to the beautiful and bubbly array of heroes available for players to select.
Each is unique, with different abilities and personalities that define them and their place in the meta. Each also has very distinct stylization. It is this unique character design that resulted in the cult of personalities popping up around various heroes, which is what lead to the exponential growth of the fanbase.
In this article, we are discussing who is, in my opinion, the best-designed character. Keep in mind; this is purely physical character design, abilities, and gameplay elements are not considered here.
Remember, this is just my opinion. Art is subjective, so chances are we disagree, and that’s okay.
Pharah
Yep, sorry to disappoint any of you who don’t agree, but Pharah’s character design is just badass. Blending an Egyptian queen look with a Neo Tokyo mech suit is nothing short of genius.
On the topic of her mech suit, it’s one of the coolest I’ve ever seen.
Typically with mechs in modern culture, you get giant weapons of mass destruction that are piloted by a driver. Pharah, on the other hand, has a much more personal approach. She’s not driving the WMD; she is the WMD.
The suit sports an interesting blue and gold color palette. I’ll admit, that’s not a combination I would typically reach for when thinking about mech design, but the team at Blizzard have made it work brilliantly. It balances Pharah’s Egyptian heritage with the modern feel of a mech suit perfectly.
She also comes equipped with wing-like extensions. These serve as her jetpack and influence her ability to fly. Needless to say, being able to fly makes her infinitely cooler.
To top off the badass factor, her suit is full of missiles.
Pharah’s primary function is as a damage dealer. Does she deal this damage like other characters with bullets? No, she blows stuff up instead.
Her ultimate highlights this exceptionally well. Pharah effectively rains death upon her enemies with it.
When used and sky-born, missiles fly out of her suit at a rapid pace, painting the battlefield bellow. Opponents caught in this onslaught hold no chance of survival. It is this image that cements Pharah as the best designed Overwatch hero for me.
If you need some more convincing, she is essentially a living Jericho Missile.
Now that’s just my opinion. Of course, all of the Overwatch characters are superbly designed. In fact, Pharah isn’t even my favorite, Mei is.
Blizzard is bound to release more heroes for us to play with, and Overwatch 2 is on the way, so I don’t doubt that Pharah can be knocked off of this throne eventually by a young upstart.