Controversial Overwatch character to be redesigned after fan backlash
Fans often complain that game developers don’t listen, but Blizzard Entertainment couldn’t ignore the backlash over the character design of Anran in Overwatch. Players flooded social media, including Creative Bloq’s own Facebook page, with complaints about Anran’s alleged ‘same-face syndrome’.
In a video posted on social media, Overwatch game director Aaron Keller thanked players for the “incredible reception” to the launch of five new characters in the hero shooter and promised that the team was now looking into how it could make Anran “look and feel more like the fierce older sister that we all envision her to be.”
While he said the team was proud of the design, he added: “We agree that she can be even better if we get this aspect of her right in game.”
Overwatch Spotlight reception and an Anran update from Game Director Aaron Keller pic.twitter.com/mxh0C0IpIjFebruary 10, 2026
Why was Overwatch’s Anran character design so controversial?
Anran was released as a trial ahead of a drop of five new characters in Overwatch (formerly known as Overwatch 2). The fire-wielding hero is supposed to be the sister of water-manipulating Wuyang. But many fans thought her in-game design made her look younger than her brother and, even worse, that her face looked like a copy and paste of existing characters Kiriko and Juno with merely different hair and a different costume.
rhinoplasty, eye lift, jaw shave, botox, cheek filler, facial bone surgery, gastric bypass surgery, face lift, lip filler, buccal fat removal pic.twitter.com/f4OAgIquGgFebruary 4, 2026
Anran’s in-game design also looked very different to how the character had been portrayed in prior animations. These showed a character who looked older and less baby-faced. This led to suggestions that Overwatch was “cutsifying” all of its female characters to meet the beauty standards of certain markets.
Even Fareeha, the voice actress behind Anran, posted a video supporting calls for a redesign of the character. She gave a detailed explanation of why she believed Anran’s in-game look felt wrong.
“There was an unspoken promise that said ‘we’re going to challenge the beauty standards that are plaguing and ransacking media these days.’ Right? The Ozempic chic, the ‘contour your nose’, ‘you have no nose’, ‘the tiniest nose’. And I think because of that precedent, people feel understandably let down,” she said.
She added: “It’s a look that isn’t congruent with her personality, right? She looks like the younger sibling. She looks more docile somehow. As a fire hero, she looks more docile than the most docile peacekeeping support in the game.”
I’m the voice of Anran in Overwatch!!! 🧡I held off on posting about this because I wanted to make sure I could do this discussion justice. Here’s a shot at that! Let’s keep rooting for the version of her that could be. I hope you have so much fun playing her!! 🔥🪭 pic.twitter.com/jbFbKHPVpbFebruary 8, 2026
In the comments on our own Facebook post, a few fans suggested that the difference in appearance between the animation and the images of the in-game character were due to different angles, expressions, lighting. Others defended Blizzard’s design based on economic imperatives.
“[Marvel] Rivals proved people want sexy characters and skins and that no one buys microtransactions for characters like Venture. Welcome back to mainstream. It’s a shame the face isn’t a bit more diverse, sure, but give ’em time, they have to remember how to [do] art,” one person wrote.
Some suggested that in the end, faces are similar. “People act Iike there is soooo much variation in the human face that can still be considered visually appealing… there isn’t and it’s not that deep,” one person wrote.
Another defence was that the character needs to maintain coherence with the Overwatch art style.
“People seem to forget Overwatch’s style is basically Pixar,” one person wrote. “They had some more ‘rough’ looking comics and scenes before, but when it comes to the actual game, it’s always Pixar-y. Google all the princesses Pixar made: it’s like they have one standard face for the majority, and then occasionally change one (but it still looks kinda similar).”
Some players said they had no problem with Overwatch characters looking similar since it’s the impact of their abilities on gameplay that sets them apart and defines whether a player wants to use them or not.
However, most people seemed disappointed and bored by the lack of variation in the game’s character designs. “They took out some of the sharpness of her into a more ‘cute’ hero, similar to Kiriko,” one person wrote. “Her nose and chin shape got drastically altered to look more ‘cute’, but she lost a lot of what made her face unique,” another fan agreed.
“Overwatch just uses the same character model to save resources. It’s a shell of what it used to be,” one person complained, while someone else lamented that “really young-looking Asian girls in ‘cute’ outfits creepily seem to sell well.”
One person wrote: “I’m hoping were able to bully blizzard on this. We need less cutesy more diversity”.
It now seems this might be one case where the ‘bullying’ actually worked. Aaron said a change had been in discussion internally since last week, but that the team “wanted to wait until we had confirmation of exactly what we can do.” There’s no detail on what the redesign will look like or when it will go live, but Aaron said Blizzard hoped to be able to make the update sometime during Season 1.
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