If you cast your mind back to Blizzcon 2018 you will remember that the team behind Overwatch teased us with 2 new characters, one was the Lawless Lass herself Ashe the second was Echo. Not much was known about this character, but Overwatch fans have only grown more and more curious ever since her first appearance. The team at Overwatch would go for quite a while and then suddenly during the Zero Hour trailer she reappeared being a total badass, but yet they told us nothing about who or what Echo is.

With Overwatch finally announcing that Echo will be hero 32 the fans where finally treated to this heroes origin. Echo was created by Mina Liao. So who is Mina Liao?

Dr Mina Liao was one of Overwatch’s six founding members. Not only that but Liao was a former employee at Omnica Corporation who helped in the creation of the omnics. Once the Omnic Crisis began, she was recruited by Jack Morrison, and together with Gabriel Reyes, Ana Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, and Torbjörn Lindholm, they founded Overwatch. Though unlike the rest of the team she was not there to explicitly destroy Artifical Life, her wants lay in preserving all life.

Player of course are famailar with one of Liao’s other creations Athena. And before her death she would go on to create Echo. Dubbling her so because she would act as Liao’s echo to this world. The last bit of good she could create. In some ways maybe she hoped Echo could bridge the gap between Man and Machine. (This seems likely because we know that Blizzard have big plans for the character.)

Why can’t we see that artificial life is still foundamentally life? Instead, we’re going the opposite direction. Violence against omnics is on the rise, and even more governments are cracking down on their rights and freedoms. I can only hope that this project can change the conversation: that people can understand that the potential of artificial life is so much greater than whatever we have to gain by treating them as our property, or our servants. Dr Liao

Currently in game we know that Echo was the original payload on Route 66 and is now an active member of Overwatch, being one of the few to respond to Winston’s call for help.

If you have been following Overwatch for a while you will know that Echo has been there since day 1. As you can see she was one of the original members of Prometheus before it became Overwatch. We have waited a long time for this and I for one am glad that she has finally arrived.