Reinhardt (Overwatch)

Reinhardt Wilhelm is a character who first appeared in the 2016 video game Overwatch, a Blizzard Entertainment–developed first-person hero shooter, and the resulting franchise. Conceived from a desire to include a fighter in a mech suit, the concept originated from the cancelled game Titan, and went through several iterations through development. Voiced by Darin De Paul, Reinhardt is an aging German soldier who fought during a robot uprising known as the Omnic Crisis. Forced into retirement due to his age, he returns to help after a second uprising occurs from the group Null Sector.

Reinhardt was well received, praised for both his personality and the anachronism of being a knight figure armed with a large hammer in an age of firearms and tactical gear, and how his character has matured over the course of the game's lore. He has also been the study of academic analysis into character design, observing how his appearance, movement, and hypermasculine aspects play into his character's overall presentation and make him endearing to players.

Conception and creation

While working on a massively multiplayer online game concept for Blizzard Entertainment, developer Geoff Goodman suggested the idea of a large number of character classes for players to select, 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. Kaplan created an eight-page pitch for a first person shooter concept to propose the idea which included a series of proposed characters, among them a character called "Juggernaut" clad in white heavy armor and armed with a flamethrower and flail. They knew they wanted to have a physically imposing character in a mech suit, but were unsure how to handle the design, resulting in several early drafts.