Overwatch April Fools’ joke helps players channel their inner Reinhardt

This year’s Overwatch April Fools’ joke helps you get into character as one of the game’s most popular tanks, Reinhardt.

Reinhardt has long been among the more prominent and popular characters in Overwatch. Not only has he often had a place at the center of the prevailing meta, but he’s also endeared many players with his optimistic and exuberant attitude, while the “Honor and Glory” that takes a more solemn look at his past and motivations is considered by many to be some of Blizzard’s best story work.

For a short time at the start of April, Overwatch players will have another reason to play Reinhardt, as he’s the subject of Blizzard’s April Fools’ joke for 2019.

• Read more: xQc gloats after teaching Overwatch stream sniper a lesson

When playing Reinhardt, all messages you type through in-game chat will be automatically capitalized to reflect the invariably loud and enthusiastic manner of Reinhardt, as well as having added exclamation marks and ending every sentence with one of his voice lines, such as “Precision German engineering!” and “Catchphrase!”.

Unfortunately, console players will miss out on this particular April Fools’ joke, due to the lack of text chat on their platforms.

Blizzard’s missing mischief

This isn’t the first year that this April Fools’ joke has appeared – in fact, it was first added in 2017. As far as anyone has noticed so far, however, Blizzard haven’t added anything new for this year’s iteration.

Historically, Blizzard has been one of the more active developers for April Fools’ day. Some of their false announcements in years past have included the supposed addition of “T.I.N.D.R.” for Garrison Followers or a Battle Dance System in World of Warcraft, for example, and Blizzard even keep an archive of their own jokes from 1999 to 2015.

In Overwatch, however, not much of Blizzard’s mischievous streak has ever manifested, so players will have to content themselves with uncontrollably shouting “CATCHPRASE!” when trying to communicate by text chat as Reinhardt.