Zarya

Today at PAX East, Blizzard revealed two new playable characters for its upcoming FPS game Overwatch, announced last November at BlizzCon. You can see a video of the entire presentation  here.

The two heroes announced are a futuristic outlaw gunslinger called McCree, and a Russian “tank” soldier called Zarya. Game director for Overwatch Jeff Kaplan introduced them, speaking with obvious enthusiasm and affection.

“There’s a hero out there for everyone, and we all have different fantasies,” said Kaplan as he
introduced the new characters. “Our goal with Overwatch heroes is that there’s fantasy fulfillment for as many players as possible, to really deliver on that promise of a very diverse heroic experience.”

With that, he announced the game’s first female tank character, Aleksansdra Zaryanova, AKA Zarya:

She is a dedicated and loyal hero. Her goal in life was to become a championship weightlifter, and she was right on the cusp of fulfilling that fantasy . . . then strife broke out in her village, and she put all of that aside to defend her homeland. . . She’s lawful good; she’s who you wanna be when you grow up. But there’s some other stuff to talk about, too. We’ve been hearing a lot of discussion amongst players about the need for more diversity in video games. And that means a lot of things. They want to see gender diversity. They want to see racial diversity. They want to see diversity along the lines of what country people are from. But there’s also talk about diversity in different body types, and not everybody wants to have the exact same body type always represented. And we just want you to know that we’re listening, and we’re trying hard, and we hope Zarya is a step in the right direction to show you that we’re paying attention. 

Kaplan obviously had some notes to which he was referring in this presentation, but it didn’t appear to be scripted.

I’m honestly shocked to see such a frank acknowledgment that the desire for greater diversity in playable characters has made an impact on design decisions for this game– and not just “diversity,” but body diversity. In a game about futuristic heroes which features robots, a genetically manipulated gorilla, and more cyborg-esque augmentation than you could shake a stick at.

I think most character designers for video games might take pause at the idea of constructing
characters with special consideration to cosplay, but here are a couple of basic facts about cosplay:

• It’s an integral element of geek public life, omnipresent at cons, the foundation of many a livelihood, and the basis in which some practitioners find their best creative outlet, and also
• There is a relentless and entirely understandable urge for cosplayers to have characters which look somewhat like themselves to use as inspiration. 

Zarya would make for some really fun cosplay. It’s kind of funny how she’s no less an example of physical perfection and beauty than any of the other female characters, but yet she’s sexy and powerful and not bizarrely dressed for her role– she looks like a futuristic soldier.

See? It’s absolutely possible.

Props to you, Blizzard. We’re watching, and appreciate it.