Jeff Kaplan, Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment and lead designer of Overwatch, cheekily stated that the new hero is 'on the horizon’ before the map was officially announced…
As details of the Horizon Lunar Colony map were teased, we made the reasonable prediction that the new hero was Hammond, a missing monkey from the colony.
However, the new map preview trailer for the Horizon Lunar Colony reveals an unknown character in the background.
The design of this unknown hero looks nothing like a monkey or anyone else from the Overwatch cast. The silhouette also seems to be too different to be an upcoming skin, as it would drastically change the hero’s hitboxes.
The character sports a blue and gold colour scheme (similar to X-O Manowar) with a giant Iron Man looking arc-reactor on the chest (maybe that comes into play with the hero’s ultimate?). The shade of blue is similar to that of the Overwatch uniform, which tells us that the character could be someone from Overwatch's rich lore…
Almost all of Overwatch’s founders are in the game, apart from Liao, who we know almost nothing about. Could this be Liao, wearing his uniform from Overwatch’s glory days?
On the other hand, the silhouette also looks inhuman, suggesting that the character could be another Omnic, or maybe a new armoured hero, like Reinhardt, or, perhaps, the long awaited, Doomfist.