Created originally by lead writer Michael Chu as a backstory character, when the development team wanted to include a "skill-based support healer" into the game, she made playable to fill that role.

Taking design elements from a character concept of an alchemist, they gave her gameplay abilities that they felt would make her a good counter to the game's existing sniper, Widowmaker.

Alongside this, Blizzard ran the first of a mini-event, a two-week long "Ana's Bastet Challenge" that awarded players that won a number of games across any mode, or watched designated Twitch streams with cosmetics related to this story.

Her marksmanship and her critical decision-making skills led to her being recruited by Overwatch, and she served for many years as Jack Morrison's second-in-command during the conflict, while trying to be a mother to her daughter, Fareeha.

She was one of many former Overwatch agents to receive Winston's recall message to reestablish the organization, but refused to answer, believing her generation should step aside to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

In addition she praised how the franchise portrayed motherhood through her interactions with Pharah, describing it as complicated due to having both aspects of pride and regret, something she felt "should feel familiar to any mother of adult children."

Valens additionally praised Blizzard Entertainment for emphasizing Ana's beauty not through traditional means but "through her age, her wisdom, her elder femininity", and called the character one women young and old could equally look up to.

In addition she focused on the maternal aspect, a subject she felt Blizzard "historically" mishandled in previous titles in contrast to how fathers are often portrayed, with mothers either lacking entirely or simply "reproductive only, or feature some other lurking problems".

She found it a heavy contrast to how Middle Eastern and many other Arabic-speaking in other first-person genre titles are portrayed, often used as cannon fodder, and how it painted her as "an actual character given much love and focus".