Ever since Overwatch released in 2016, Blizzard has actively supported the growing roster of heroes with balance updates, additional lore, and new skins. Blizzard typically has a working prototype for each new hero about 3 months before the hero's official release, and the conceptual design phase usually starts 3 months ahead of that. As in any large-scale production, many changes happen during these early days, and it turns out that Overwatch's Ana is no exception to the general rule of thumb.

At the Toronto Fan Expo, we sat down with the assistant art director of Overwatch, Arnold Tsang, to discuss how certain Overwatch heroes evolved from the conceptual stages to the finished image. He revealed that when the support sniper was in the conceptual stages, it was more than her gender that was in the air: the conceptual character almost ended up giving off some strong Bane vibes in both look and function.

To start from the beginning, the initial Ana concept was created by Geoff Goodman and had her as an alchemist. This design evolved into something that's a far cry from the hoodie-wearing sniper that eventually graced the game: Tsang reveals that Ana was originally designed to wear a hazmat suit with plenty of vials and tubes, giving an almost Bane-like chemical feel to the character. The oldschool alchemist idea was eventually dropped, though the chemical theme remained via biotic weaponry.

Overwatch Ana Wasteland Skin

Blizzard was working on the backstory for Soldier 76 and Pharah at the same time, and decided to go in a completely different direction for Ana to make her blend in with the lore. When it was decided that Pharah would be Ana's daughter, the studio set Ana in Egypt. Blizzard then merged the idea of having her be a sniper with the idea of chemicals, removing the hazmat suit and initially giving her an apocalyptic wasteland-survivor look. While this design didn't make it to be her main skin, it's what her wasteland skin was eventually based on - though the full hazmat suit will probably never see the light of day.

Arnold Tsang had several more interesting nuggets of information about the conceptual stages of several Overwatch characters that gamers have come to know and enjoy, and those will be touched on soon as well. Ana may not longer don a hazmat suit full of vials and tubes - or be a traditional alchemist, for that matter - but the sniper with biotic weaponry has still managed to be a hit with fans, while achieving Blizzard's goal of expanding the lore in a logical manner.

Overwatch is available now for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.