Overwatch 2 fans are confused by the continued absence of one potential hero

Hero diversity is a cog of Overwatch 2’s roster. With 37 heroes that span more than 20 nationalities, Blizzard has consistently gone out of its way to make the game a melting pot of origin stories and backgrounds.

But some fans recently noticed there’s something missing from the Overwatch 2 hero roster—an Italian.

Not every prominent European country has OW2 representation in the form of a playable hero, but as one user on Reddit noted last night, the absence of an Italian hero comes across as especially perplexing because of where the game takes place.

Along with OW2 having a wide variety of heroes, it also has maps that span the globe, and even outer space. Out of the 24 standard gameplay maps, two take place on Italian soil. The Escort map Rialto and Push map Colosseo are in Italy. Meanwhile, a deathmatch map, Malevento, is also in Italy. That pushes us to the game having three Italian maps with no hero originating from the area.

While not every map in Overwatch has a hero that hails from the same area, there are certainly a lot of trends and connections between various characters and maps. In fact, outside of Italy, only two countries, the U.S. and Nepal, have more than one map.

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The U.S. is the most highly represented country on the Overwatch 2 roster with numerous heroes including Reaper, Soldier: 76, Cassidy, and Ashe. Meanwhile, Nepal is the home of the Shambali Monastery, where the classic monk support hero Zenyatta comes from.

One explanation for why there are so many Italian maps is likely related to Talon. The terrorist organization, which is run by Reaper, Doomfist, Moira, and others, is based in Rome, as was disclosed in the What You Left Behind short story about Baptiste in 2019. But one might expect that with so much action happening in Italy, Overwatch or Talon might have recruited some local assistance by now. 

While the next Overwatch 2 hero is almost assuredly going to have Peru as its country of origin based on teasers and Easter eggs Blizzard has laid out for players, it certainly seems like there’s some potential for an Italian character to be added to the roster at some point.