Over the years Overwatch’s heroes, which once included characters of various ages and (sometimes) shapes and sizes, have largely started conforming to a particular trend. Nowadays, a lot of its heroes are what most people would consider conventionally attractive, young, and ripe for dressing up in crossover skins. Why is this? Well, some fans theorize that it’s for the obvious draw that comes with putting hot people in your game, but Blizzard says there’s actually a little more to it than that.
In an interview with GameSpot, Overwatch senior producer Kenny Hudson was asked about whether or not this trend has taken hold of the game’s hero roster, with even four of its five upcoming heroes seeming to fit the bill as the game heads into its revamp next week with a new Season One. According to him, it’s because such characters make designing skins easier, as opposed to doing so for characters like the robot-piloting hamster Wrecking Ball, which puts the team in “crisis” mode.
“Something that we kind of look into when we’re doing our heroes is how can we make them unique, but still give them a good platform, proportionally, height, scale proportion to not only build cosmetics for them and future-proof things, but to stop the technical hurdles of other things,” Hudson said. “So, one of the things that really helps with that is if you give longer limbs, taller legs, a bigger core, it actually makes it easier for our artists to physically put new geometry on those models. And so, that’s how it kind of turns out.”
Art director Dion Rogers gave us a similar answer when we asked why some characters get more skins than others, saying that some of the collaboration skins the team designed were just easier to put on characters like Mercy or Kiriko. However, the team is hoping that that will be changing in 2026 and it can get back to more “oddball” heroes.
“Now we’re in this realm where we can make more Jetpack Cats because we’ve learned all these lessons,” Hudson said.
After dropping the 2 from its name, Overwatch is getting a bit of a reboot next week on February 10, with a new season, story content, and five new heroes all dropping on day one.