Unleashing Vendetta in Overwatch 2: Exclusive interview with Aaron Keller and Jude Stacey

Overwatch 2’s next damage hero is none other than Vendetta. While players recently got to duke it out as her during a limited-time hero trial, the 2025 Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) World Finals put her in the spotlight once again with a special showmatch. While this was happening, esports.gg sat down with Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller and senior narrative designer Jude Stacey at DreamHack Stockholm for an exclusive interview on Vendetta’s story, design, and mechanics.

In their interview with esports.gg, Keller and Stacey revealed that the Overwatch 2 team feels thrilled with the positive response to Vendetta. Based on the excitement from players and a wave of fanart, Keller noted how fans quickly fell in love with her character.

"It's been so cool to see that reaction. There's so much fanart already online, and it's pretty incredible," Keller said. "So it feels like people have really taken to her and fallen in love with her, which I love to see because she's a bit of a villain, too. I think sometimes, people love to hate the bad guy."

In Vendetta's hero trailer, we learned that she's unapologetic as she rises to fame in the arena. She earns the title of “La Lupa,” or “The Wolf,” and embraces her role as the arena’s villain. Her father’s teachings helped her use fear as a weapon and turn her enemies’ strengths into weaknesses.

The trailer also revealed that Vendetta’s father, Antonio Bartalotti of Talon, was killed by Gabriel Reyes of Blackwatch during the Retribution mission. Blackwatch, Overwatch’s covert ops division, included Gabriel, Cole Cassidy, Genji Shimada, and Moira O'Deorain. Gabriel later became Reaper.

During Vendetta's hero trial, we noticed several intentional voice lines and interactions. For example, when we eliminated Vendetta as Cassidy, the former Blackwatch member sighed and said, "All these years, still cleaning up after Reyes." Keller explained that while there are no plans to revisit Retribution in the game anytime soon, Vendetta's lore highlights these connections, showing how she integrates with the existing world and advances the narrative.

"We don't have a plan to go back to Retribution or have something like that in the game anytime soon," Keller said. "But I love the callback to that mission, too, because there is that connection to Vendetta. And that's one of the things that I'm personally most excited about for this hero -- is how connected to the rest of the world she is and the lore. Because it's not just her father, it was the Blackwatch heroes that were on that mission."

He continued, "It's now the rest of Talon that she's connected with. So I think it was really fun to develop a hero that was that connected. And Jude obviously did a lot of work there. And when I look to the future, I think that this is probably something that we'd like to be doing more of -- is as we introduce new heroes to the game -- to have them connected to either the world and the existing lore we have or using them to push it forward in new directions."

In terms of whether or not Vendetta knows that Reaper used to be Gabriel, Stacey explained that those conversations in the spawn room will be revealed with her official launch. Therefore, on Dec. 9, players will be able to listen in on even more hero interactions.

"We hold our hero conversations until launch, so none of the back and forth stuff in the spawn room happens quite yet. But for sure there's going to be interactions with those Blackwatch heroes. That part of her lore has not gone forgotten by us, and we're really excited for players to sort of discover more of that," Stacey said.

"We're really excited to show more of those relationships on her launch in Season 20," she said.

When creating any new hero, the Overwatch 2 team considers how they would interact with existing characters based on their history and faction alignment. As noted, Vendetta has many connections to the Blackwatch crew, even allowing older heroes like Genji and Cassidy to reflect on past events.

"It was exciting to not just have a new character that called on that lore, but it also gave us a moment to have those older characters reflect, right? Genji and Cassidy will have an opportunity to talk about it. Things like that. She stirs up a lot of old memories for everybody on the cast, and in that sense, it helps move the story forward for everybody, which is something I think we're really excited about."

Recently, the Overwatch 2 team revealed in an official post that Vendetta’s design evolved from different prototypes, including a long-range hitscan and a midrange assassin hero. The team then opted for the close-range melee damage playstyle. In the interview with esports.gg, Keller revealed that developing Vendetta's melee mechanics, in particular, took time due to first-person perspective challenges like balancing the range of her sword and her skill-based combos.

"[As] another example, there is the overhand attack that she has," he continued. "We want it to feel like Vendetta is stringing together combos. And she does have this three-hit combo, but the last swing of the three-hit combo is an overhead strike, and it's a bit of a skill shot. It can even crit in the game, but you have to line it up really precisely. And so we didn't want her to feel like she can just go in and button spam. We still wanted it to feel like there's some precision for a melee hero, and there's a higher skill ceiling in order for you to be really effective with her."

Vendetta also introduced Sunder as an entirely new mechanic in Overwatch 2. When we asked about the impact of it on future heroes or adjustments to existing kits, Keller had the following to say.

"It's a totally new mechanic for the game. It's a pretty big and exciting mechanic, too, because of all of the different interactions that it can have with the rest of the cast like even going through [Lucio's] overhealth or through bubbles or barriers. It does have special interactions -- even with a Zaria bubble as well," he said. "So there's a lot to it, and I think because of that, I'm not saying we wouldn't use this mechanic again, but we do have to be careful with where we use a mechanic like this. I don't think that something like Sunder gets to be something that is like a very small ability. We need to be saving something like this for some of the larger abilities or interactions that characters have like an ult for Vendetta."

As for Vendetta's weapon, the Palatine Fang, Stacey told esports.gg that its black and red design reflects her villainous persona and dramatic style. These colors show off her confident and theatrical presence rather than the usual blue aesthetic of Hard Light. Stacey also explained that Hard Light can take many forms.

"There were gameplay things that went into it, but in-universe? Absolutely style and flair," Stacey said. "She knows she's a villain in the Colosseo, and blue isn't especially villainous in its color. I think her whole outfit exudes that confidence and air of drama that she projects. So the blade, of course, has to match. As far as why Hard Light is red for her, we say that her blade is like a supercharged version of Hard Light. But I think Hard Light can be so much. It doesn't just have to be blue. And when you have enough money and power, anything can look the way you want it to."

Speaking of Vendetta's design, the team incorporated many Roman Empire references into her appearance and abilities. Her Palatine Fang is inspired by the Roman Gladius, and her sandals feature paw prints. This wolf theme extends to her Onslaught passive, which features glowing red eyes upon activation. Her recolored skins are named after Roman building materials, and she even speaks some Latin in the game.

"I'm a little bit of a history buff, so I do like all of the connections that are the authentic pieces of Vendetta," Keller said. "So anything from the way we designed her sandals to the reference to the wolf, which raised Romulus and Remus in Rome, to her sword based off of the Roman Gladius, which was one of their imperial swords that was common in the legion. So I think all of that is really cool, and it's something that we do for all of our heroes."

"I think everybody on the team just really jumped behind that fantasy of The Wolf of Retribution," Stacey added. "That was a huge thing. That's how most of the community knew her for a really long time. Also playing into that, her recolored skins on launch are all named after building materials in the Roman Empire. There's just a lot of really cool details and Easter eggs and thoughts there. Something cool about Veneto that people might not realize right away is she doesn't just speak Italian. She speaks Latin, too. So there's some cool Latin phrases from ancient Rome in there."

As for parting words, Keller said that Vendetta is the perfect capstone to Overwatch 2's 2025 releases. She pushes the game forward while connecting deeply to the existing story and hinting at potential future developments. Stacey agreed, adding that she's really proud of the entire Overwatch 2 team.

"I'm so proud of the whole team is what I will say for what they have done with Vendetta," she said. "Everybody has really come together and made something amazing."

That's all for now. Vendetta's release date is Dec. 9! Stick around on esports.gg for more Overwatch 2 news, interviews, and updates.