Confusing Overwatch bug swaps Reinhardt’s voice for Echo’s in-game

Reinhardt has been practicing his omnic accent apparently, as a new bug discovered in Overwatch has swapped his regular voice lines over for some of Echo’s, leaving players confused as to which armored juggernaut is friend or foe.

The release of Echo has plenty of Overwatch players watching their backs. The new DPS hero can duplicate into an enemy of their choosing, getting access to all their abilities as part of her ultimate.

However, because she absorbs everything about each hero ⁠— from movement and abilities, down to their voice lines ⁠— it’s led to some confusion. Some heroes have had their voice lines replaced by Echo’s in a new Overwatch bug, and it’s got pretty drastic consequences.

The bug, shared by Korean Overwatch pro Ryu ‘Kaiser’ Sang-hoon, applies to Reinhardt, but the issue could be more widespread.

Friendly Reinhardts will use the Echo voice lines on certain abilities, including Charge. While this doesn’t sound major, given Overwatch’s heavy reliance on sound cues, this could have a huge impact.

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If you see a Reinhardt charging, but not with the default voice line, you might be looking to run away instead of backing up your ally in a fight.

This can apply for any number of abilities, from a friendly Ana nanoboost to an Echo-charged one, to Dragon Blades ⁠— if even one ability has a different audio cue than normal, it completely changes the way players approach the game.

Blizzard is aware of the problem, replying to Kaiser’s tweet saying that Team 4 are aware of the issue, and a fix should be on its way.

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“The Overwatch team may already be aware of this from the PTR reports, but we will pass it over just in case,” said a Blizzard support representative.

The bug, for now, seems isolated to Korean localized voices, so if you use English or another language you shouldn’t be affected.

However, you should keep an ear out — and maybe an extra eye too ⁠— in case it does happen.