Summary
- Lifeweaver is the newest Overwatch hero, a support class with abilities that help his team with both healing and movement.
- We exclusively unveiled his Origin trailer and spoke to Lead Narrative Designer Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie to learn more about the story of this new character.
- You can play as Lifeweaver starting April 11th, and it will be available for free for a limited time.
Xbox can exclusively reveal the Origin trailer for Lifeweaver, Overwatch 2’s newest hero. Arriving as part of Season 4 on April 11th, this new support hero will bring some very new options to players who want to support their team – and a brand – a new Overwatch story thread.
Niran ‘Bua’ PruksaManee is a Thai scientist who combines nature and technology to create new ways to heal, move and damage, both for himself and his team. Like all Overwatch heroes, he has a rich backstory, which you can check out in the new trailer below:
All of Lifeweaver’s abilities stem from his background as a naturalist. Raised affluently in the sheltered world of Chiang Mai, Lifeweaver began to love the outdoors, but as he left home he saw the devastation being wreaked on the environment outside his home. He developed a new technology, bio-light, that takes advantage of the harsh light used by Symmetra peers like Symmetra, but fuses it with living plants. Refusing to let his parents or the Vishkar Corporation use his technology for nefarious purposes, he fled home, determined to use his creation only for good.
To learn more about the creation of this unique new hero, we spoke to Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie, Overwatch 2’s Lead Narrative Designer. He explains that like all Overwatch heroes, Lifeweaver began as a set of gameplay ideas that needed a story built around them:
“He was design first and the story evolved from there. What really impressed the narrative team was that we knew we were going to make a plant hero, and then we had to figure out how that person wielded plant powers. Then we saw the early prototypes and realized that it doesn’t look like plants but more like hard light, which led to his story being developed. It really shows how the Overwatch team makes heroes, it’s very collaborative.”
The solution was to come up with the idea of the bio-light, a new iteration of Overwatch’s existing hard-light technology – already deployed by the likes of Symmetra and Lúcio. Lifeweaver created it to heal wounds and damaged plants and wanted it to be free to use worldwide – but its invention was claimed by Vishkar Corporation, a company most closely associated with Symmetra among existing heroes.
This means that Lifeweaver’s story offers a way to learn more about Symmetra through association. “She was pretty much the only person in school who understood him and who understood him,” says Jurgens-Fyhrie, “and there’s a lot to discover there. We can’t say too much about what’s to come, but Vishkar is an important part of the story, especially for Symmetra and Lifeweaver.”
At the time of its introduction, Lifeweaver isn’t part of the universal Overwatch team, but Jurgens-Fyhrie says he knew them when he was living as a fugitive and is “loosely connected” to them, just as Torbjörn is. Jurgens-Fyhrie won’t say if his story will become part of the upcoming PvE story for the game, but we do know that “at the time of this announcement, Lifeweaver lives in the Atlantic Arcology and is trying to find a way to cure diseases and the.” heal the world.”
You can play as Lifeweaver for free for a limited time starting April 11, and an in-game event celebrating his inclusion on the list will run through April 24. The event, which also celebrates the Thai New Year, will add an arcade mode, BOB and Weave (allowing players to play as Lifeweaver only), and by participating you can earn the Lifeweaver Cassia skin (based on the national flower of Thailand, the Ratchaphruek).
