Sombra ARG
| Sombra ARG | |
|---|---|
| The Sombra ARG - an ARG involving an unreleased Overwatch hero. | |
| Type | [[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]] |
| Creator | Blizzard |
| Discovered | 06-12-2016 |
The Sombra ARG is an ARG involving Overwatch, a game made by Blizzard. Sombra is the name of an unreleased Overwatch hero that has been hinted at by Blizzard as being an upcoming playable character. Clues and ciphers referencing Sombra were found in various dev updates and short animations released by Blizzard, and this ARG is comprised of those clues.
Ana Origin Video
On July 12, 2016, a video for a new Overwatch hero named Ana was released. By pausing the video at the 2:11 time mark, a bunch of hexadecimal numbers were discovered:
65 76 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E D4 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E
From Hex to ASCII this decoded to:
ev...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
When passed through an XOR Cipher with constant 23, this returned:
ra... la que tiene la información; tiene el poder... la que tiene la información; tiene el poder... la que tiene la información; tiene el poder... la que tiene la información; tiene el poder...
In Spanish, this means
Whoever has the information; has the power...
A second frame of hexadecimal numbers was discovered at the 1:16 time mark of the video:
When put through the same process, the same string was discovered, but at the end, the letters SOMB appeared. The two were combined to create SOMBRA, the name of an unreleased hero that has been hinted at by Blizzard in the past. This led us to believe that this ARG had to do with Sombra, and the ARG was named accordingly.
Dev Update Video
At the end of this video, a series of vertical barcodes were discovered. The barcodes were solved to be binary, a dump of which is available here, credit of redditor /u/zapu.
Discord user Crauss turned the ones and zeroes into black and white pixels, which formed a QR code:
Scanning this QR code yielded the following message:
Estuvo eso facilito? Ahora que tengo su atencion, dejenme se las pongo mas dificil
And translated from Sombra's native language of Spanish into English:
Was that easy? Well, now that I have your attenion, allow me to make things much more difficult
