Overwatch's Shion story owes a lot to John Wick and Kill Bill, says Blizzard

Blizzard's hoping to put a new twist on the familiar action hero trope

When you think “badass action hero,” you might think of someone like John Wick or Rambo, or maybe James Bond. The number of male characters in the genre far exceeds the number of female characters (and most of the latter are cast as villains, anyway) and even in the Marvelverse, there's roughly twice as many men among the roster of superfolk as there are women. That male-centric archetype is one Overwatch's narrative team wants to flip on its head with Shion in the game's upcoming season 3.

Shion, revealed on June 9, is Overwatch’s 52nd hero and the game’s 24th damage hero. She's a vicious crime boss brought to life by a mix of classic yakuza stories, John Wick, and a bit of Kill Bill, but one whose darker side the Overwatch narrative team hopes can still resonate with players.

"Shion's someone who just thrives on the idea of excess," Overwatch narrative lead Miranda Moyer told Polygon in a digital roundtable interview this month. "She's also someone who, despite her very clear position of power, has a lot of baggage, and she had to go through a lot to get to where she is today."

A renewed emphasis on storytelling is a load-bearing pillar of the revamped Overwatch, as Blizzard carries the game's story forward through in-game comics and cinematics during each season. Moyer avoided going into much detail about Shion's story ahead of season 3's new scenes, but said the narrative team pored over classic yakuza stories for material about the Hashimoto boss' worldview. There was one other major influence as well: Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill.

In the film, Liu's character watches a crime boss murder her parents and goes through horrendous ordeals — until she reaches a point where she can exact vengeance on the man responsible and create a hierarchy with herself at the top, so she's never at anyone else's mercy again. It was the perfect reference for Shion and ended up in the casting document Blizzard sent out to potential auditionees. Vengeance is important for Shion, but Moyer hopes people connect with other parts of her story as well.

"Whether or not — and hopefully not — people can see themselves in the fact that Shion wants to kill pretty much everyone around her, there's a lot to relate to with her experience of having struggled and what she put herself through to overcome those struggles… and become someone very clearly at the top of her game," Moyer said.

It's an intentional inversion of Overwatch's generally more optimistic tales of personal triumph. Moyer pointed to Mizuki, another Hashimoto character introduced in season 1, as an example. He sacrificed much to escape the Hashimoto and built a happier new life for himself, one where he can help others and find peace.

Shion has no peace, and even if she feels like sacrificing her true self wasn't worth it in the end, as Moyer suggested, she certainly has fun along the way. There's a Wolf of Wall Street-style streak of hedonism running through her. She has only the best clothes, does whatever she wants, hurts whoever gets in her way — nothing is off-limits. The gameplay team even built some of that into her kit. One of Shion's abilities sees her summon her favorite kind of motorcycle, which she then launches into an enemy as she detonates it.

"By the end of a season, I can only imagine she's gone through millions of bikes," Moyer jokes.

The power fantasy of no boundaries was essential for bringing the rest of Shion's kit together.

"'What would John Wick do?' is a question we asked ourselves a bunch," senior game producer Kenny Hudson said.

Which is how Shion ended up with her bike in the first place and then a lethal execution combo, a perk that grants her all the sub-role passives from other damage heroes, and, of course, her ultra-stylish semi-automatic pistols. The animation team particularly enjoyed figuring out how someone like Shion would use those and came up with one of Overwatch's slickest reload animations. Shion points both pistols inward and uses the edge of each clip as leverage for shoving the other clip in.

Shion debuts in Overwatch season 3, Into the Tiger's Den, which goes live on June 16.