Overwatch 2 Kiriko’s Animated Short Focuses On Mother-Daughter Relationship, Kinda

Every new Overwatch hero comes with animated shorts, and the tradition continues with Overwatch 2’s Kiriko. Released during TwitchCon’s keynote presentation, Kiriko’s 10-minute-long introductory video presents the ninja healer as someone who is bubbly but has her own share of mundane troubles–in the form of an overbearing but well-meaning mother.

Kiriko also is friends with her apartment complex’s maintenance guy and his deaf granddaughter. Kiriko uses sign language to communicate with the girl, and later when bad guys burst on the scene, demonstrates her healing abilities by healing the grandpa when he gets shot by one of the villains.

Her mom, witnessing the whole thing, realizes Kiriko has grown up so much. The two then embrace, with each making compromises to strengthen their relationship. Kiriko says she’ll go home more often, and Kiriko’s mom says something along the lines of promising to nag as much anymore.

Kiriko is one of the first very new heroes in Overwatch 2, the successor and replacement of Overwatch. While she’s immediately free to anybody with an original Overwatch account, players with an entirely new Overwatch 2 account will either have to grind for her or skip the grind and purchase the battle pass directly to get her.

Overwatch 2’s launch has undergone a bumpy launch, with server congestion keeping players in queue for hours and a phone registration requirement excluding certain prepaid phone plans making players unhappy. Blizzard has made changes to its phone registration requirement. Any players that have ever played Overwatch on PC do not need to meet the SMS protection requirements, and those on consoles who have played Overwatch since June 2021 are also exempt.

You can check out our other Overwatch 2 coverage for more info: