Overwatch's Echo Almost Looked Way Different

Echo is the newest addition to Overwatch's roster of heroes, and it turns out she was one of the OG crew ... in a sense. Echo is actually an echo of one of Overwatch's founding members, Dr. Mina Liao. She was a genius scientist who helped put together the ultra-intelligent, ultra-powerful omnics that later rose up during the bloody Omnic Crisis that warranted the creation of Overwatch.

While Echo is an omnic, she's a very different one. She has a sleek, white-and-blue design that looks like it was pulled from an Apple Store. She also comes with an incredibly advanced learning AI that allows her to adapt to the world around her ... kind of like she's human. While she might have delicate, feminine features now and a soft-spoken voice, Echo almost looked very different.

The original iterations of this advanced omnic were more focused on her robotic parts than her artificial humanity. Some early designs for this hero were shared on Twitter, and while that modern white-and-blue aesthetic remains, you see a very different kind of hero detailed in the original concept art.

Echo's abilities are pretty powerful as they are now, but the development team at Blizzard were imagining even more devastating attacks at the start. From energy boomerangs to face lasers, Echo was kind of scary for a support character. She was initially meant to play the role of support, but her powers proved, well, too powerful for that role. Instead, she focuses on damage.

What's perhaps most striking about the concept art for Echo is that it seemed like the development team wasn't sure whether or not she should have a face. Some of the art looks very similar to a character called "Iris" that served as her very first iteration. Back then, Echo just had a particle cannon of sorts in the center of where her face would be.

Echo has already divided the Overwatch community, a trend set to continue with several players expressing they preferred her original design concepts over the model that made it into the game.