Genji (Overwatch)
fictional character in the 2016 video game Overwatch
Genji Shimada ( ) appears as a playable character in the first-person shooter video game Overwatch, developed in 2016 by Blizzard Entertainment. Genji also appears in Overwatch-related media, including animated shorts, as well as a playable character in the crossover multiplayer online battle arena game Heroes of the Storm.
As the brother to the playable character Hanzo, Genji was the youngest son of the Shimada ninja clan's master. In Genji's backstory, the brothers lived a life of luxury, but Genji's arrogance drove Hanzo to rage. Hanzo was ordered by the clan's elders to kill Genji, and he was believed to have succeeded. However, Genji clung to life, and Mercy, a doctor from the Overwatch organization, rebuilt his body. Within the Overwatch game, Genji was classified as an offense character with a hard difficulty rating. He is an advanced cyborg ninja, who uses his shuriken to attack, as well as his katana to deflect incoming projectiles, to swiftly strike through enemies, and to summon his Dragonblade ultimate.
Conception and development
While working on a massive multiplayer online game concept for Blizzard Entertainment, developer Geoff Goodman suggested the idea of a large number of character classes for players to select, but with class specialization for each. Fellow developer Jeff Kaplan took this idea to heart, salvaging character concepts from Titan—a then-recently cancelled Blizzard project—and character artwork by artist Arnold Tsang for that project.
The public source identifies “Genji (Overwatch)” as fictional character in the 2016 video game Overwatch. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Genji, Overwatch and fictional.
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This entry incorporates text from “Genji (Overwatch)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.