‘Overwatch 2’ beta drops a cryptic fox reference to hint towards the next hero

The second beta for Overwatch 2 has ended and given players a cryptic clue towards the game’s next hero.

In the most recent beta for Overwatch 2, which releases on October 4, Blizzard has seemingly teased the next arrival to the roster in the form of a code to decipher, similar to that of Sombra’s announcement in 2016.

The alternate reality game (ARG) was comprised of clues and references to Sombra, and was found in various developer updates and animations including a series of hexadecimal values. When converted to ASCII and put through a Cipher, players received a message in Spanish which, when translated into English, read, “She who has the information, has the power…”

Oh my god the text we got this time when the beta ended was this… Kenezaka fox here we come next beta! pic.twitter.com/sLKuVAiGe1

— Hazelet (@Hayzelet) July 19, 2022

Players then discovered a second set of values that gave the same message but with the letters “ra” at the beginning of the message. Those letters were combined with “somb” from the first cipher to create the name Sombra. Blizzard then led fans through a series of clues and hidden messages before officially announcing the new character.

This time, at the end of the Overwatch 2 beta, fans were presented with a long, nonsensical string of characters: “V2hhdCBkb2VzIHRoZSBmb3ggc2F5Pw==”. Twitter user Hayzelet was among the first to decode the cryptic message from Base64 format, which showed that it translated to “What does the fox say.”

This could be a simple reminder of the viral Ylvis song from 2013, but fans of the series think this could be referring to a mysterious fox that was briefly shown during the Overwatch 2 segment of June’s Xbox and Bethesda showcase.

Further reinforcing this theory is the status message that showed in the lower left-hand corner: “Sombra: Initiating shutdown. ~~boop~~” with Sombra being the only other character on Overwatch’s roster that was introduced via a series of complicated clues and hidden messages. Fans believe this could be further evidence that a new character is about to be introduced, unofficially known as Kanezaka Fox Girl.

Lore released by Blizzard following the clip of the nine-tailed fox featuring on the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase gives more context to the Shimada clan, which resides in Hanamura. The lore contained a letter from Asa, a woman whose husband was imprisoned by a rival clan, and mentions the couple’s daughter as well as a fox spirit and shrine. This further led fans to believe that a fox-themed hero or a hero with a fox spirit pet could be the next Overwatch 2 hero to be added to the roster.

Overwatch 2 will be released on October 4 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X|S.

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