Controversial new Overwatch character design has fans seeing double

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Some prefer the fan art and want Anran to be redesigned.

Anran in Overwatch
(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

A massive drop of five new characters is coming to Overwatch next week, and one of them is already causing controversy. Blizzard Entertainment might have dropped the '2' from the hero shooter's title, but fans are feeling a major sense of déjà vu .

One of the newcomers is Anran, who's been made available to play as an early trial character. The fire-wielding hero is supposed to be the sister of water-manipulating Wuyang. But is she a new character or just an existing one with new cosmetics?

Social media is full of posts saying the same thing: that Anran's face looks like a copy and paste of the existing Overwatch characters Kiriko and Juno. Many fans see her as a severe example of a trend that's been dubbed “same-face syndrome”.

It's not the first time Overwatch has faced such charges. There have been complaints that characters like Widowmaker, Ashe and Freja look similar in some skins. Even in the original Overwatch, some people said Brigitte looked like Mercy.

With Anran, the similarities are so blatant that some fans suggest she's more like a new Kiriko skin that a character in her own right, differing only in her hair style and costume. And if she's supposed to be Wuyang's older sister, why does she look so young?

Overwatch isn't the only video game to have been accused of same-face syndrome. Miary Zo in Tekken 8 was criticised for looking too similar to other female fighters.

In both of these examples, prior art showed much more distinct-looking characters. Concept art for Miary Zo showed her with darker skin, thicker eyebrows, fuller lips and wavy hair, making her look less East Asian and more Madagascan, like she was supposed to be.

Similarly, 2D art of Anran in animated trailers and comics showed a much more adult-looking woman with sharper features and a longer nose. The 3D model for the game has a rounder face and Kiriko and Juno's button nose, making her look more younger as well as more generic.

One fan has already taken it upon themselves to show what the 3D model could have looked like if it more closely resembled previous depictions of Anran (left image below). Judging by the comments on the post, a lot of people seem to prefer this fan-made redesign with its more distinctive angular features.

So what happened to Anran between the trailer and her game appearance?

Same-face syndrome can have technical causes. Game developers might reuse a default face mesh or rig for multiple characters. Facial rigs and expressions are expensive and time-consuming to design, while sticking to a template can ensure smooth animation across a large roster of characters (see our feature on where to get free game assets).

But if the explanation is technical, why does the phenomenon seem to affect female characters more than men?

It's been suggested that there are cultural biases at work. Some claim that developers feel forced to align with what they see as certain beauty standards, resulting in female characters getting made 'more cute', particularly for East Asian markets.

One fan describes such characters as “fetish content”. “It's because she's an Asian character. Instead of making her actually Asian they just make her have a baby face with big round eyes,” they claim.

Another consideration is art style. A certain amount of homogeneity is to be expected as developers want a game to have a uniform aesthetic. The Overwatch look is very stylised. All characters have clean, smooth skin and shapes, and some fans argue that you can find similarities between any of them if you look for them.

A very different character design might feel jarring and out of place in the Overwatch universe. However, there's a line between achieving a consistent art style and resorting to carbon-copy characters.

Visual design is a crucial part of games, and the distinctiveness of characters is a factor that keep players interested. When characters all start to look the same, it can appear like developers are running out of ideas and imagination. Aran's abilities alone may not be enough to make players value her as an addition to the game.

Joe Foley
Joe Foley
Freelance journalist and editor

Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.

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