Meet Efi Oladele

[Mister36]

https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20580087

Already one of the world's foremost centers of scientific discovery and exploration, Numbani has a brilliant new mind to add to its ranks: Efi Oladele. In the last year, she's built a resume of impressive achievements in robotics and artificial intelligence, but perhaps most remarkably is that she's done all of this by the age of eleven. Last month, she became the most recent recipient of the Adawe Foundation's prestigious "genius grant," in recognition of her many accomplishments. She is undoubtedly someone whose career will be watched with great interest.

For this week's "Spotlight on Numbani," we had the opportunity to catch up with Efi to learn more about her and her plans for the future.

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I'd like to start off by congratulating you, Efi. This is a tremendous, well-deserved honor. How do you feel?

Amazing! I wasn't expecting it at all, so it was a big surprise. At first, I thought it was a joke—like one of my friends playing a trick on me. It's been a week now and it still doesn't seem real, but I'm very happy about it. Much better than winning the science fair.

How did you get into robots and artificial intelligence?

Well, I've always been interested. After my mom and dad got me my first robotics kit, I became obsessed with putting together little drones. When I started to get good at it, I tried to build robots to do my chores and help around the house. My parents think it's cheating… It's no fair! (laughs)

I want to create things that make our lives better. And someday, my dream is to build something that can keep us safe, like the new OR15s! I think that would be great.

It's amazing what you've been able to accomplish at your age! How do you do it?

I'm not sure how to answer that. I just do it! I guess I'm very lucky that my parents put up with it. Robots can be messy, you know. And expensive.

Speaking of which, do you have any plans for what you're going to do with your grant? New computer? College tuition?

Oh… I have an idea…

No hint?

It's a secret for now… but my parents are taking me on a trip to celebrate! It'll be my first time flying, so I can't wait.

 

[Satan]

same

 

[Jolt387]

several deductions I've made (All speculation~):

• She is the new doomfist carrier.
• New game mode to "test robotics".
• Blizzard surprises us with new AI for the bot players.
• New hero all together.

Doofist Carrier: She discovered either a sister gauntlet or creates one. Could also have discovered inner workings and details on the gauntlet, allowing her and the gauntlet to speak to each other. This allows the gauntlet to grant her full, controlled power while speaking/acting through her.

Game Mode: Helping her test out new robotic safety models, leading to either a wave scenario or general Players vs bots type game. *see also new hero for additional mode*

New AI: self explanatory.

New Hero: hear me out on this one, its a bit far. I know they probably wouldn't put an 11 yr old into the game as playable, yet alone as an overwatch member. In her image she seems to be holding a piece of a power plug. This could be key to her ability set in either draining energy from enemies or giving it to allies. She may eventually create a machine that rips space time (possibly working with Winston) and causes her to age. This could also be a "collect the pieces/defend the objective" type of game mode to kind of introduce an omnic hero. It could also be a mode that dives deeper into Sombra, Efi, and the god programs via "Junkenstein Revenge" as a sort of "don't let them enable this construct" or "power and engage the construct". These events could lead to a community goal to release a hero.

I hope at least something here is right...I have yet to be wrong with these OW speculations and I'd hate for a minimalist article to be what dooms my prediction ability..../cry

 

[Johnny]

New Doomfist will probably be a robot she built with Terry Cruz's voice.

 

[Jolt387]

New Doomfist will probably be a robot she built with Terry Cruz's voice.

Or, she wears it and because of it, Terry's voice comes out ;D lmao

 

[Johnny]

Or, she wears it and because of it, Terry's voice comes out ;D lmao

[emoji24]

 

[Mr. Lemming]

New Doomfist will probably be a robot she built with Terry Cruz's voice.

That's one of the vibes I got from reading it over a few times as well. The fact that she stated (and I quote) "And someday, my dream is to build something that can keep us safe, like the new OR15s!" gives me the vibe that she's going to build a version (or a new one altogether) of the OR15.

 

[Mister36]

There is hefty speculation that there will be some sort of omnic tank that this person is very involved in.

 

[Jolt387]

With increased production by Volskaya, and Efi's advancement in robotics, I'm also sure some sort of omnic will come before Doomfist does. It won't be the Anchora spider-mech that most people are assuming though because honestly, they've been around since the 1st omnic crisis so it would have to be some sort of new mech we've maybe only seen once or twice and only if we looked super hard at a pixel somewhere in the shorts or comics they've done.

There were, however, a few images of concept art that showed a couple spider-like units standing amongst the overwatch members. Who knows~ Talon or Sombra might have their hands in this soon enough.

Edit: I was browsing through info that I've got and noticed that the description of Numbani includes: "Doomfist threatening the peace." and another source: "It is currently under threat by Doomfist." These imply that there is already currently a Doomfist in this time, so Efi could very well be trying to make a security omnic to help handle the threat of Doomfist in Numbani. We'll see what happens with that soon, I'm sure.

 

[Foxy]

So... Still looking for the source to link, but I read that one of the overwatch peeps shot down the idea of Efi directly being a new hero, instead that they would be involved in the backstory. I noticed that in the article, they never mention omnics, nor does there seem to be any overtone of fear involving robots. Maybe she created the first omnic?

 

[Mister36]

So... Still looking for the source to link, but I read that one of the overwatch peeps shot down the idea of Efi directly being a new hero, instead that they would be involved in the backstory. I noticed that in the article, they never mention omnics, nor does there seem to be any overtone of fear involving robots. Maybe she created the first omnic?

Yes, someone did say that she would not be a direct hero (afterall she is an 11-year old kid), but regarding her creating the omnics, it was confirmed by the lead writer Michael Chu that the interview was in the "Present Day" of the OW timeline.

 

[Mister36]

From the Overwatch Twitter:

[BREAKING] OR15 defense units destroyed in confrontation with unidentified assailant at Numbani airport. No civilian casualties reported.

 

[Johnny]

Okay so Doomfist destroyed the bots and I think we might have a peak at his ultimate ability. It sends the first person hit flying and probably knocks everyone else to the side or something.

 

[Johnny]

Okay so here is my Doomfist theory. Keep in mind I haven't been keeping up with official posts on twitter or Blizzard pages. Just from you guys!

This is the Numbani flag.

This is a still picture I found on the Doomfist Wikipedia page of the Sombra origin video.

If you notice in the still video there appears to be a spiderweb of conspiracy theories. Well, we can see the Numbani flag symbol and notice that it appears to then draw a line to a bot and then to the Doomfist gauntlet. Not sure if that bot is one of the ones that got destroyed.

I think the next news we hear will probably be a video teaser of Doomfist.

 

[Jade]

I think this is the post Foxy was referring to.

Source: http://overwatch.metabomb.net/news/overwatch-efi-oladele-revealed-by-blizzard

A new post has just gone live on the official Overwatch site, one which introduces a young girl name Efi Oladele to the game's storyline. It's one of those nice little bits of flavour the Overwatch team like to add to the Overwatch universe every now and then.

Before we head into rampant speculation about what this might mean for Overwatch's next hero though (you know, the one game director Jeff Kaplan teased might not actually be Doomfist after all, and which may in fact be Greek), here's the basics of the post:

• Efi Oladele is an 11 year-old Numbani Resident.
• The news piece reports her as being the recipient of the Adawe Foundation's prestigious “genius grant”.
• She enjoyed building drones and robots to help do chores.
• She dreams of building something that can keep the world safe.
• She has “an idea...” of what to do with the grant, but it's a secret for now.

It is highly unlikely that Oladele herself is an upcoming hero for the game, due to her age. It's hard to imagine that Blizzard would even contemplate letting players kill a child in a competitive game, given their historical outlook on such things - not to mention the negative publicity it would inevitably invite.

Instead, we have a few thoughts on what this might mean for the game - assuming it's not just random story filler, which seems very unlikely given that Blizzard know what this sort of thing does to the game's fans.

Some possibilities:

• Efi Oladele is somehow involved with the return of Doomfist, who's famed gauntlet resides in the Numbani payload.
• She may be related to Doomfist in some way, and is simply part of this hero's backstory before he arrives in the game.
• She could be the creator of a completely new hero, presumably one that's more Omnic than human.
• The mention of drones suggests she could still be a part of the in-game experience but as a remote controller of the actual hero "avatar" (avoiding age issues in the process).
• The article is published in-universe by Atlas News on today, 21st February. Given that Overwatch is set in the future, it's not impossible that she'd eventually be old enough to be a playable character in the game.

 

[Mister36]

A couple of other things though:

- Jeff Kaplan has stated that "24 is not who you think it is" - Basically everyone was assuming Doomfist was next before this point.
- They release the interview with Efi. This is the first anyone has heard about this character.
- Jeff also stated they took the reaction to the Sombra ARG to heart, so release of next hero is probably more along the lines of how it was done with Ana.
- A leak a while back (which correctly predicted Year of the Rooster event) stating that the next hero was a tank named Anchora, which is probably that one in the picture Johnny linked.
- A lot of people thought it was that spider character in early concept art, but Jeff said at DICE summit that it was not. That was probably early art for Zarya.
- Efi reportedly means "Born on a Friday." Today is Friday the 24th. Also, a few Overwatch YT Channels had playlists updated today.
- Maybe none of this is true and the next character is coming out in 2018 and it's a tree guy modeled after an Ent.

 

[Mister36]

Also they could release more than one character:

24 - Efi's bot
25 - You though it was Doomfist, but it was me, Dio!
26 - Doomfist

 

[Jade]

#TerryForDoomFistOrRiot

 

[Mister36]

They have updated Numbani on the PTR

 

[Pzycho]

https://dotesports.com/overwatch/doomfist-gauntlet-missing-on-numbani-4920?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialp&utm_campaign=owmfb

This is an article about the PTR update