Pharah is the call sign of Fareeha Amari, a character who first appears in the 2016 video game Overwatch, a Blizzard Entertainment–developed first-person shooter, later appearing in related literary media and the game's sequel, Overwatch 2. An Egyptian woman trying to follow in her mother's footsteps, she enlists in a military unit and helps defend her local community, later joining the restored peace-keeping force Overwatch alongside her mother and childhood friend. In a 2023 short story by Blizzard, the character was revealed to be a lesbian.
She was one of the first characters added to Overwatch during its development, after complications arose when trying to implement a different character. Conceived by Geoff Goodman as a male character with a rocket launcher and a Jetpack, the character was originally named "Rocket Dude" and went through multiple iterations and names during development, before Blizzard decided to make the character female instead, utilizing a design by Justin Thavirat as a guide to develop her look.
Video game media and academic writers have mixed feelings on Pharah's characterization, with the portrayal of her various ethnic backgrounds and representation of women being considerably discussed. Depicted as half-Egyptian and half-Indigenous Canadian, some have viewed Pharah's portrayal through a white voice actress and Indigenous-themed skins in-game as unfavorable. Blizzard's lack of development in the way of Pharah's official narrative elements has also been lamented, while many fan-generated depictions of the character have meanwhile emerged and been discussed by various media outlets.
Conception and development
One of the original characters made for Overwatch earliest version, Overwatch project lead Geoff Goodman started with a gameplay concept of a character with a jetpack and a rocket launcher. At this point in development, the overall tone for the game and its characters were not fully defined. According to Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan in the earliest versions of Overwatch the character was originally named "Mercy". However playtesters were confused when told to switch to Mercy, instead selecting the angel-themed character "Angelica". To fix this issue, Angelica was renamed Mercy, while the other character's name was changed to "Rocket Dude". Originally the character was not included in the earliest builds, and the character Reinhardt was focused on instead. However, after running into difficulties with Reinhardt's melee-centric gameplay, Goodman offered his character, which at this point was just a male character model armed with a rocket launcher and a jetpack. The developers however found Rocket Dude incredibly fun to play, and development on them progressed.
While early on they defined a playstyle and Egyptian heritage as integral to the character, multitude of concepts were considered ranging from armored dragons, heavy armored mech suits, and stylized male fighter pilots. In particular the developers noted that the fighter pilots did not capture the "fantasy" the team was trying to display in Overwatch, while the heavy armor felt too "tank-like". Artist Justin Thavirat submitted a design consisting of black armor suit with a large mag fed rocket launcher that was well received by the development team, and even included in the original pitch meeting for the game. However Art Director Arnold Tsang felt the design was "a little too high concept" and they started over with the concept of a man with a rocket jetpack. Thavirat's design was later revisited however, and slowly congealed into the finalized look for her character.
Upon the decision to make the character female, their name was changed to "Rocket Queen", in reference to the Guns & Roses song of the same name. Rocket Queen persisted as her internal codename during development, even after her name was changed to Pharah, which itself was another much-earlier name for the game's angel-themed character. The character's personality also went through several concepts, before settling on her being altruistic with the developers joking that she has a "'Captain America' kind of vibe where she is all about justice and order and trying to make the world a better place and just kinda bring order to the chaos." Working on her Pharah assisted the development team with establishing the game's visual style, as well as providing a guide to the overall look for its future playable characters.