Yesterday it was confirmed that the Horizon Lunar Colony Overwatch map would go live on Tuesday, June 20, but according to some fans, that’s not all that will be dropping. The speculation began in one of Jeff Kaplan’s Developer updates where he told the Overwatch community that there was new hero news “on the horizon.” Just a figure of speech? Perhaps. But more than likely, he was literally referring to the Horizon Lunar colony, and since its been live on the PTR, the Overwatch crew has been dropping hint after hint. The first hint was in a map of the colony tweeted out by the Overwatch official twitter page. The map showed a list of names and numbers of the various test subjects on the base, all of which were accounted for except for two. The first of these is Winston, everyone’s favorite monkey scientist tank. The second however is an unfamiliar name: Hammond. According emails posted to Atlas News, the fictional news outlet that Blizzard uses to introduce lore and drop hints of future content, Hammond may still be on the base. Of the emails published, there are two that strike me as relevant to our new hero. The first’s subject line reads “Ventilation System Inspection” and refers to strange sounds coming from the ventilation shafts. The second has a subject line that reads “Have You Seen Me?” Sent by Dr. Zhang, this email mentions that Hammond was gone from his cage and seemingly no one knew where he went. There are two details that can be gleamed from the second email. The first is that Hammond went missing at least a week before the apes went nuts and killed the scientists. The second, and most important detail is that he is smaller than a gorilla. In the second have of the email, Dr. Zhang laments about having a smaller test subject than the rest of the gorillas. So we’re left to speculate what Hammond may be. The most obvious and logical answer is that Hammond is a chimp. It would make sense for scientists testing gene therapies to use chimps as well as gorillas in their experiments. A chimp would also be considerably smaller than a gorilla. Perhaps even small enough to fit in ventilation shafts without much trouble. My personal hope is a little bit stranger. In a recent AMA on reddit, Jeff Kaplan was asked about heroes that were drafted but didn’t quite make it into the game. In his response he mentions a cat with a jetpack that the team ultimately decided was too “out there” for the game. Now, I for one would love a jetpack cat, and I wouldn’t see it as any stranger than a hyper-intelligent gorilla or a robotic monk, but I digress. As much as I hope for the rise of Jetpack Cat, Hammond is more than likely a chimp. A chimp that, if a recent 4chan leak is accurate, will serve as a utility based support with the ability to erect various shaped barriers by deploying anchor points around the map. We won’t know for sure until he launches, but if Jeff’s hint is any indicator, I imagine that at the very least we’ll get an official announcement, if not a PTR launch next Tuesday.
Overwatch May be Dropping a New Hero Next Week
