Overwatch 2’s next hero is doing something no other hero does. Vendetta, the 45th playable hero coming to Blizzard’s team-based hero shooter, is Overwatch 2’s first melee-only Damage-class character. She fulfills a unique, oft-requested role in the game, according to her creators, and introduces a “high-octane” play style that will force Overwatch players to rethink certain matchups and strategies.
Vendetta will join the Overwatch 2 roster in season 20, which launches in December. But players will get a sneak preview of her abilities from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, during a limited-time play trial.
Blizzard has been teasing Vendetta’s arrival for months now. Her silhouette and primary weapon — a sword — were hinted at in the Stadium Control map Arena Victoriae. But that teaser undersells her weapon: a giant, hardlight-powered greatsword called Palatine Fang that would make Cloud Strife jealous.
Ahead of Vendetta’s gameplay reveal, Overwatch 2 associate game director Alec Dawson and senior character artist Bryan Bedford revealed details about the Italian hero’s abilities and how they created the game’s first melee-only hero. (In reality, Vendetta does have projectile attacks, but she’s still extremely sword-focused.)
Vendetta’s Palatine Fang is at the heart of all her abilities, which include big slashes and whirlwind area-of-effects attacks. Her primary attack is a three-hit combo, which Dawson describes as two horizontal slashes and followed by an overhead slash. “That overhead, it’s a little bit harder to land, it’s a little bit skinnier, but goes a little bit further, [and also deals] critical damage,” Dawson said.
“A lot of times what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get the two hits and then really line up that overhead to kind of finish off the kill,” he said.
Dawson said that players who have already gotten their hands on Vendetta are surprised at “just how high-octane she is.” Part of that is probably due to her passive ability, Onslaught, which increases her movement and attack speed as she strikes enemies. “She’s ferocious,” Dawson explained. “She gets in people’s faces.”
“When creating a melee DPS hero, you [have to] give them a lot of mobility,” Dawson said. “You have to make sure that she can actually be in the correct positions to capitalize on her abilities and actually chase people down. Vendetta, not only is she quite deadly, she’s also quite mobile.”
Two of her abilities help her in that regard: Whirlwind Slash, which sees her rush forward and spin around, doing a “big old whirlwind slash” AOE attack; and Soaring Slice, with which she’ll throw her sword and then fly to it. Upon grabbing her sword after Soaring Slice, she can quickly come down with an overhead slash.
“While making her, we wanted to make sure that she had ways to chase down enemies as they might be running away from her,” Dawson said.
Her other abilities include Warding Stance, a block move that reduces damage from the front and blocks enemy melee attacks. Warding Stance is resource based, and as Vendetta blocks damage, that energy drains. Alternatively, she can expend a large amount of that resource to fire a wide projectile using the ability Projected Edge.
Vendetta’s Ultimate ability, Sundering Blade, is a three stage charge-up attack that unleashes a big area of effect attack that cleaves through enemy defenses. “It will go right through armor, eliminate overhealth, and you can’t block it with a barrier,” Dawson warned.
“Vendetta is a hero that can get to a lot of different positions,” he said. “She’s pretty high skill, she’s pretty hard to master, but in the right hands she can be ferocious. She can be in your face and she can be pretty hard to get off of you at any time.” In other words, welcome to the future hero ban list, Vendetta.
That said, Vendetta does have some weaknesses, Dawson said. Players will need to be “very cognizant” of cooldown management with her. “You can get into positions where, [you realize] Oh, I don’t actually have a lot to do besides attack at this moment. So you have to sort of weave in between both of those mobility options [Whirlwind Slash and Soaring Slice]. While there’s a lot of mobility, there’s gaps in that mobility as well. It’s not like she’s flying around the entire time.”
“She is high risk, high reward personified,” said Bedford, “more than I’d say for a lot of our cast. Once she’s in the enemy backline, if she gets stopped or stalled for any reason, she’s not a tank.”
Added Bedford, “She’s the ultimate dive hero. If you want to get into a backline and cause chaos, she is the character for you.”
Speaking on Vendetta’s design, Bedford said that “the gigantic anime-inspired sword was our guiding light from the very beginning” of ideating hero 45.
“[She] was always going to be ‘big lady — or I guess medium-sized lady — big sword that’s bigger than the character itself.’ That was always the archetype that we had in mind,” Bedford said. “One of my favorite aspects of new hero development is kind of the blue-sky phase where we just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what resonates, and this is before some of the narrative stuff is decided on. Early concept art ideation can be pretty out there too because some of that when you try a bunch of stuff, it can help inform both narrative and design as well. One concept even touched on her being a hypermobile thief or burglar archetype, but it ended up being pretty counterintuitive — because who brings the gigantic sword to a heist? Once we landed on the gladiator concept, everything fell into place.”
Even from a color perspective, Vendetta is quite different from other heroes, with her weapon and abilities leaning into the colors of Talon — red, white, and black — that ties into her lore. But her most obvious design inspiration comes from Roman gladiators.
“She’s from the Colosseo gladiatorial games, and we really wanted to lean into that fantasy of the Roman gladiator from antiquity,” Bedford said. “I’m a huge historical costume designer nerd, so I absolutely loved working with the concept team to come up with how that gladiator look would appear in the Overwatch world.”
“Most gladiators from antiquity weren’t particularly heavily armored because the gladiatorial games are mostly for show. It’s a spectacle,” Bedford continued. “So we wanted to really push her in that direction. She forgoes most of her heavy armor to aid in that kind of storytelling, but again, being a historical costume nerd, I wanted to work in and slip in a few historical references. She’s got the manica armored gauntlet on one side — she doesn’t use a shield, so she actually uses that as her defense. The little wolf pads on her shoes are evocative of the Roman caligae, which is a studded combat footwear. The sword is obviously reminiscent of the gladius.
“The second element I would say is the wolf motif. The Roman she-wolf has particular significance to Roman mythology and it was something we picked up on early to reinforce throughout her entire look, her costume, her UI elements, her iconography, even her nickname, the Wolf, the La Lupa, it all ties back into this celebrity persona of this feral champion who’s kind of looking to rebuild her own empire.”
Vendetta’s journey of revenge and rebuilding will start soon, but for now, here’s a closer look at her in game.
