Overwatch developers break down Shion, their John Wick-inspired motorcycle assassin

Whenever Blizzard reveals a new Overwatch hero, there's usually a crucial hook. For Genji, it was the cybernetic ninja fantasy. For Wrecking Ball, it was the hamster driving a mech. For Shion, it's what if John Wick drove a motorcycle through a team fight and then threw it at you? That comparison is not mine; it's Blizzard's.

“We knew in our heads that we wanted to do something like John Wick, Hard Boiled,” lead hero producer Kenny Hudson tells me during a press call. “We asked ourselves, 'What does a maybe cheesy action movie look like in the Overwatch universe and in a kit?'”

A John Wick fantasy set in the Overwatch universe

The answer is Shion, a DPS hero who comes as part of Overwatch's ongoing Tokyo story. She's a dual-gun flanker with an explosive motorcycle, an assassin's attitude, and enough swagger to make even the Reaper seem underrated.

According to Hudson, the team started with a surprisingly simple fantasy. “What would John Wick do?” he says. “That was a question we asked ourselves a bunch.”

The result is a hero built around chaining together abilities like action movies. Her semi-automatic pistols exchange fire in rhythmic bursts. Her movement ability, Evade, allows her to dash sideways while gaining survivability. Her motorcycle ability, Joyride, can be used to engage, escape, or launch the bike directly at enemies. Each part of her kit is designed to flow into the next. “We wanted players to be able to build their own dynamic combos,” says Hudson.

During the roundtables, I ask why now felt like the right time to explore another heavily augmented, or possibly omnic, character. Overwatch lead story designer Miranda Moyer immediately clears up the mystery. “Shion is actually an omnic.” That fact is central to who she is. “She kind of puts this notion of what it means to be human as an omnic in this very human-heavy world,” says Moyer.

It's an intriguing wrinkle for a character whose entire visual identity revolves around projection. Shion wears tailored suits and rides a motorcycle. She presents herself with absolute confidence, but beneath the polished exterior is a character struggling with identity in a world that often judges omnics differently than humans.

Moyer describes the season's broader theme as “finding out the truth about who you are underneath all these expectations from others.” Shion represents the darker side of that idea.

The team repeatedly hints that much more of her background is secret, but they clearly see her as one of the most narratively integrated heroes they've created to date. “She's someone who, despite her very clear position of power, has a lot of baggage,” says Moyer. That baggage has turned her into a survivor and eventually a crime boss.

Blizzard cites everything from Yakuza to Kill Bill as Shion's inspirations. Moyer specifically cites Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii as an influence, describing a character who carries “the same kind of chip on her shoulder about her past.”

Although Shion avoids becoming a simple tribute. Overwatch has always enjoyed twisting familiar archetypes into something unexpected, and the team deliberately approached Shion in the same way. “If you hear John Wick, you're like, 'Oh, there's a cool guy in a suit, and he's got his two guns,'” says Moyer. “Shion being a woman, being an omnic in this world where omnics are seen a certain way, gave us a lot to dig into with her character.”

Style meets game

Even seemingly small details, like her flashy reload animation, were first built around personality. “The reload is one of the coolest things we've seen in the game,” says Hudson. “And that came directly from her personality traits.”

The animation team, Moyer adds, is famously obsessed with character detail. “The fact that they are so reflective of the personalities that they have in their lines and stories is always really impressive to me.”

Of course, none of that matters if the hero isn't funny. Fortunately, Shion looks absurd. A killer on a motorcycle already sounds like a fever dream for custom gaming. The fact that Blizzard actually made it work, and apparently had to invent new hitbox technology to get it to work correctly, is almost as impressive as the hero himself.

Hudson repeatedly returns to the same idea throughout the interview: action. “Acrobatics is fun, riding a motorcycle is fun, firing twin guns is fun,” he says. That might be the simplest explanation for Shion's existence.

Overwatch has spent the last decade creating heroes that embody specific fantasies: ninjas, cowboys, scientists, monks, cats. Now it has a fancy omnic crime boss who rides a motorcycle into battle and explodes it in your face. Or, as Blizzard might put it, it finally has its John Wick. Just don't expect her to be as human as she looks.