Incoming Overwatch 2 tank Ramattra can get real big. The Blizzard FPS game’s thirty-sixth hero was unveiled during the Overwatch League grand finals, which saw the Dallas Fuel bring home their first championship title in a seven-match thriller against two-time champions the San Francisco Shock that marked the close to the esports league’s debut Overwatch 2 season. Now several members of the multiplayer game’s development team have talked about Ramattra’s design ahead of his release alongside Overwatch 2 season two on December 6.
GamerBraves spoke with Overwatch 2 lead hero designer Alec Dawson, art director Dion Rogers, and lead narrative designer Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie about what decisions went into making the Omnic juggernaut. Ramattra transitions between two forms – his standard Omnic form, where he fights with a staff that shoots a stream of projectiles and a barrier, and a Nemesis form. Rogers explains that the Nemesis form was created by Ramattra himself, and describes it as him getting “pretty hulked out.”
With an enlarged frame and a twist to his voice in Nemesis mode, Ramattra looks to close down his opponents using punches that will pierce through barriers. Dawson notes that “While in Omnic form, he’s not too large, he looks pretty normal-sized like a tank would. But when he transforms, you’re really going to see that visual change and his growth there – his whole silhouette just takes a different shape.” Rogers adds that “in his Nemesis form, there’s such a great change – it’s probably one of the biggest models we’ve made and there’s a distance we cannot go beyond because of the world.”
The team also talks about how this double silhouette factors into designing Ramattra skins, as it’s important to be able to recognise his current form at a glance. “It’s a really fun challenge to dig into and I think we’ve come up with some really fun and thematic skins that fit,” says Rogers. “He still needs to remain as Ramattra, even in that Nemesis form. We cannot lose his identity when we visually try to build that next skin for him.”
As mentioned, Ramattra is an engineer himself, and was responsible for the creation of his Nemesis form. Jurgens-Fyhrie expands on this: “It always strikes me as interesting because he was created to fight humanity and he decided he wasn’t deadly enough.” As the leader of Null Sector, Ramattra justifies “any means necessary to defend his fellow Omnics.” Rogers said during the hero reveal that Ramattra is “the beginning of us moving the overall lore of Overwatch forward,” explaining how Omnics are finite and more can’t be made.
It certainly seems like Ramattra is set to bring plenty of impact to the world of Overwatch – both on the battlefield and off it. You can read the full interview with Blizzard’s Alec Dawson, Dion Rogers, and Gavin Jurgens-Fyhrie over at GamerBraves.
We’ll be watching closely to see where Ramattra slots into our Overwatch 2 tier list, and whether he’ll end up slotting in as one of the best Overwatch 2 tanks. While you wait for season two and its corresponding Overwatch 2 battle pass to arrive, take a look at how to customise the best Overwatch 2 crosshair settings for perfect aiming, and how to set up the best Overwatch 2 settings to ensure your game runs optimally.