News > Overwatch 2Dec 26, 2017 3:00 pm CT

Hanzo’s “Casual” skin updated on the Overwatch PTR after fan complaints

By Mitch

Back before Jeff from the Overwatch team was starring in the best Winter Veil present ever, he was providing us with teasers about the then-upcoming Winter Wonderland event in Overwatch. At the time, he mentioned we’d be seeing a Hanzo skin that would be familiar to fans of the comics — though he didn’t provide much more detail than that. When the “Casual Hanzo” skin was eventually revealed, however, some players weren’t too happy with it.

The skin, when compared to its Reflection appearance, seemed to have… aged Hanzo a bit. While I personally found the look kind of cool, many people apparently disagreed. The Reflections look is something people have wanted for close to a year, and to have it look even a little different than the comic version was a let-down. Because of this feedback, Blizzard has responded and decided to update Hanzo’s “Casual” skin.

We're working on some visual updates to the new Winter Wonderland "Casual" Hanzo skin for January! Here's a quick look at our work in progress.

More details 👉 https://t.co/vBuix3JMoN pic.twitter.com/GjKOxqjXjL

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) December 16, 2017

In addition to the above comparison, Blizzard went above and beyond and posted an explanation to the forums about the upcoming changes to the skin. The short version is that Blizzard agrees with the players, the skin change will happen in January, and it will be retroactive if you’ve acquired the skin during the Winter Wonderland event. Still no word on whether or not the unfortunately placed dragon on the back of his pants will be changed.

You can read the full post from Blizzard below:

Originally Posted by Josh Engen (Official Post)

Shortly after Overwatch’s Winter Wonderland released, we saw a lot of players sharing feedback about one of our new legendary skins, Casual Hanzo. The general consensus seems to be that you love the illustration that this skin is based off of, but aren’t super happy how it was translated to the game.

We actually agree with that sentiment, and our artists have already mocked up some changes they’d like to make to this skin in an upcoming patch. You can see those changes in a before/after side-by-side here. The goal is to bring the in-game skin more in line with how Hanzo looks in our “Reflections” comic from last year. We don’t have a solid ETA on when these changes will get patched in, but we know it won’t be until sometime in January. Whenever they are patched in, however, the changes will be retroactive—which means that anyone who unlocks Casual Hanzo during this year’s event will see the updates whenever they go live.

Thanks for always keeping us on our toes and helping us ensure that Overwatch is as awesome as it can be.

We hope you have a happy holidays, and a very Mei-rry new year!

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