Overwatch is a game whose fans love it for its bevy of secrets as much as for its characters and gameplay, but this latest Easter egg may be the most peculiar yet. Eichenwalde, a map that’s now playable in beta for Windows PC players, transports heroes to the castle-strewn olden days of Western Europe — a setting that is seemingly shared with, of all things, Dark Souls.
As seen in our embedded playthrough above (around the 1:30 mark), one of Dark Souls’ iconic bonfires shows up in Eichenwalde. In those games, the bonfire is a checkpoint, a place where players frequently find themselves after dying or in the hopes of survival. In Overwatch, the bonfire is ... just a bonfire. A pretty, blazing bonfire.
Players can’t interact with Overwatch’s incarnation of the Dark Souls item, and some may just take it to be a piece of set dressing. But the bonfire has become deeply associated with the Dark Souls series, now on its third entry, and the presence of a sword amidst the raging flames lends credence to the idea that this is a reference to those games.
How From Software's Dark Souls series' classic item ended up in Overwatch, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, is anyone’s guess. We’ve asked the developer for some straight answers — but knowing how the studio loves to tease its players, don’t expect this one to be explained away anytime soon.
