Despite all the positive vibes for Overwatch with its massive changes coming during Season 1, the new character Anran has been met with backlash over how different the character looked from her initial appearance. After a rough initial launch back in 2023, Overwatch, or “Overwatch 2” as it was initially branded, has been slowly turning things around with players thanks to continued updates, new seasonal content, and impactful additions to the core experience like the well-received Stadium game mode.
In a surprising move, Blizzard is essentially overhauling the game on February 10, 2026. Dropping the “2” from the title, Overwatch is adding 5 heroes to its new season. Shaking up what it has done before, Blizzard is shaking things up for the franchise’s 10th anniversary year, placing a greater importance on narrative by introducing a storyline centered around the Rise of Talon that will run throughout the year with 10 heroes joining the roster in that same time frame. However, one of the newly introduced heroes has become a lightning rod for the community.
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Overwatch Is Redesigning Anran
The newest damage hero, Anran, was revealed as part of Overwatch‘s Season 1 announcement, the older syster of Wuyang and someone who’s able to bring fire-based attacks using twin war fans. However, one element that hasn’t seemingly sat well with the community after her reveal is her face, which changed significantly with a smaller nose, narrow face shape, and softer eyes, making her look very similar to other characters on the roster, like Brigette or Kiriko. In fact, Anran was originally revealed in Wuyang’s backstory when he was added to Overwatch 2 and had a more mature and more tomboyish look, better signifying that she was his older sister.
The fan backlash grew so loud that even Anran’s voice actor made a statement. Fareeha put out a video on social media regarding Anran’s design in an attempt to address the “elephant in the room” without stepping on the developer’s toes. Referring to the Elemental Kin comic, Fareeha mentioned there was an unspoken promise to challenge beauty standards, a precedent that ultimately left many feeling let down when that didn’t quite happen the way they expected. Calling it a “hill worth dying on,” it would appear that Fareeha and the community have achieved their goals as Overwatch director Aaron Keller confirmed that Anran would be getting a redesign.
In his post, Keller thanked fans for their reception to the Season 1 reveal, but wanted to take a moment to share that the Overwatch team is currently in discussions on how to make Anran look and feel more like the “fierce older sister that she was originally envisioned as.” Keller also mentioned that this change has been in place for a while and was almost shared last week at the reveal, but ultimately held off until they had confirmation on the exact changes. The change is tentatively scheduled to arrive in Season 1, but specifics on what will be changing weren’t revealed in Keller’s message.
Even before the launch of Season 1 and this new frontier for the game, Overwatch has seen a spike in player activity. Specifically, Steam’s player base has exploded as of late, with Overwatch seeing a 63% gain in players over the past 30 days alone and hitting a 24-hour peak of 69,881 players on February 7. It’s impressive due to the fact that Steam isn’t likely the #1 place for Overwatch as most PC players are likely on Battle.net, Blizzard’s own marketplace and game launcher. With Season 1 now here, it’ll be interesting to see what sort of momentum Overwatch can gain and how long it can hold onto it for.
- Released
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August 10, 2023
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Blood, Mild Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence
