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Echo is Overwatch’s last new hero until Overwatch 2

Blizzard has said it won't be adding any more new heroes to the roster until Overwatch 2 launches

This week, we met Overwatch’s newest hero, Echo – she’s an Omnic damage dealer who can duplicate enemy heroes with her ultimate ability. She’s Overwatch’s 32nd hero, and she’ll be the last new addition to the roster before Overwatch 2 ships – whenever that may be.

In an interview with IGN Nordic, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said the team doesn’t plan on adding any more new heroes before the launch of Overwatch 2, which is a kind of ‘good news, bad news’ statement.

“Currently Echo is the last hero coming to standard Overwatch,” he said, explaining that the focus on the next heroes will be for Overwatch 2.

Sure, it’s a bit of a bummer that Blizzard doesn’t have any current plans to expand the roster beyond the 32 heroes now present in Overwatch (remember, you can play Echo right now on the Overwatch PTR). But Kaplan’s statement also underscores how close we are to Overwatch 2. There’s already good reason to believe that Overwatch 2 is coming some time in 2020, and the usual cadence for new hero releases has been approximately every four months.

That of course doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing Overwatch 2 in four months’ time. It’s unclear how many new heroes will be arriving along with the sequel, for one thing. But it makes sense to think that if Blizzard is saving the rest of the heroes in the pipeline for Overwatch 2, then the team probably expects to have it ready to play in some form before the end of the year. Keeping players excited about new content has been part of what’s fueled Overwatch, after all.

However, everything is still guesswork here – Blizzard hasn’t said when the Overwatch 2 release date is yet, and indeed the team itself may not have a date nailed down just yet. We’ll see it when we see it.

In the meantime, if you want to get a jump on learning the ins and outs of Echo, have a look at our guide to Echo’s abilities.