In this Developer Update, our favourite Game Director Jeff Kaplan introduces the actual 27th hero, Zelda, provides insight to her backstory, abilities and creation process and gives new information about what the Overwatch team is currently working on. Zelda is currently available for testing on the PTR. Happy March 32nd!

Behind the scenes: https://youtu.be/q7gpcimo81w

Zelda’s stats: 200 HP, Support Primary Fire: Bow of Light (75 damage per shot, 1 shot per second, penetrates players) Alternate Fire: Summon and control a Phantom (1 s cast time, 8 s cooldown after destruction) E: Summon a healing fairy (5 m radius, healing rate starts at 15 HP/s, up to 40 HP/s, enemies receive 30% less healing, max. 3 charges, max. 3 summoned, 6 s cooldown, effects don’t stack) Shift: Switch positions with your Phantom (4 s cooldown) Ultimate Ability: Nayru’s Love (30% of received damage is reflected to the enemy, 30 m radius, 8 s duration) Passive Ability: Dying Wish (upon death heals allies within 20 m by 50 HP) Melee: Rapier Other: All spells will immediately be cancelled upon death

Phantom’s stats: 300 HP (50 HP + 250 Shields) Attack: Sword (50 damage per swing, 1 swing per second, 3 m range) Defence: Shield (blocks all damage from the front upon hit for 1 second, 6 s cooldown) Other: Cannot be healed, received damage does not give the enemy ult charge (treated like building damage), per 50 dealt damage the fairies’ healing rate is increased by 2.5 HP/s

How long it took to make this video: 208.5 hours

Special thanks to the talented actors in the ingame scenes who I’m not paying for their acting ability: Amarizo lindles https://www.twitch.tv/lindles14 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFhq6vj54r_e-B_ir1smhlg Seetrooper TaeKookJin Brokenhand Thijn1101

Programmes used: Magix Video Deluxe Plus Source Filmmaker Paint.NET Shadowplay Audacity FL Studio Notepad++

Once again I planned things I’ve never done before and I had no idea if I were capable of doing for this video. Some of the improvements compared to last year’s April Fools’ video that I wanted to make are: Creating an actual backstory for the character that is a mixture of Overwatch’s and The Legend of Zelda’s stories, showing every ability in Overwatch with Source Filmmaker animations, making Jeff talk about more than just the character like the creation process (which was actually how I created Zelda’s design), future changes, perfectly animating and recreating the intro and outro scene with the hero and increasing the overall length and quality. Unfortunately, I was running out of time and couldn’t refine the SFM animations to the extent I wanted to, for example, I planned to make a summoning animation that would be used in the intro scene and in first person to actually summon fairies and the Phantom, to add a lot to the intro scene like the fairy flying around Zelda before hovering next to her, the Phantom awakening and putting its shield and sword up and to have Zelda and the Phantom actually walk around in some cases instead of just standing around in the same spot. I thought 1 month would be enough for the video but a lot of time was lost due to sleep problems, PC problems and my family visiting me. Nonetheless, creating this video was fun and I’ve learnt a lot, especially about SFM. Nothing beats the feeling of having the finished product in front of me after weeks of hard work and doubts whether I could accomplish what I had in my mind. But this feeling is always mixed with seeing every single frame and pixel I’m not entirely happy with. In addition, I’ve heard and watched every single frame so many times that I’m kind of tired of them.

I had to render the video 4 times because every time it had mistakes by me and render errors. Each rendering took about 4 hours and 20 minutes. In the final version I still noticed a mistake by me, can you find it?

As I’m writing this the video is finally uploading. Unfortunately in my time zone it’s already April 2nd, sorry for the late upload. Also, I haven’t slept last night and only a couple of hours the 3 nights before that to get the video done in time, so my writing skills might not be on point. What is sleep? Good question, 10 points for Gryffindor. When it’s about the order of the Cossack Tails of the integration of the Cossack Tails into the order I can’t take a joke.

Music: TLoZ – Overworld Theme TLoZ TP – Hidden Skill Training TLoZ OoT – Hyrule Castle Town TLoZ OoT – Temple of Time TLoZ TP – Ilia’s Theme