Overwatch fans and voice actress call for a redesign of its newest hero: 'This concern is important, this is a hill worth dying on'

Blizzard has chopped the 2 off of Overwatch with what looks to be its biggest season ever, but what's really dominating the discourse is the design of its newest Chinese damage hero, Anran.

Overwatch's female hero designs have skewed young and conventionally attractive for a long time, but Anran's stood out because her in-game appearance looks dramatically different from how she looked when Blizzard introduced her in a recent animated short. And it doesn't help that she's the third Asian woman with a face that is almost interchangeable with the other Asian characters Kiriko and Juno.

Compared to the first version we saw of Anran, her nose has shrunk, her cheeks are fuller, and she just generally looks like she's 10 years younger than the character in the short. Fans pointed this out as soon as she was revealed to be an upcoming hero last week, prompting several people to offer up their own redesigns of her face on social media.

Discussion over her design and fans calling for a redesign have exploded on X and Reddit over the last week. In a response to the criticisms, Anran's English voice actress, Fareeha, encouraged fans to be civil, but supported the complaints. "This concern is important," and it's a "hill worth dying on," she said in a video on X.

"I want you to know that I shared all of this with the dev team," she said. "Not only that, but I was encouraged to be as open and honest as possible, to not hold anything back. And it's my hope that this isn't for naught, that they see it, they hear it, from you all too."

Blizzard hasn't made any official comment on the criticisms over Anran's design, but an Overwatch streamer—who recently attended an event at Blizzard HQ and is in a Discord server with developers—claims that the team has said it's "on their radar," and that a redesign could take months to finish. I've asked Blizzard if this is true and will update the post if I hear back.

Even if several of the recent female heroes haven't really escaped the 'same face' design that people bring up a lot with Overwatch, it's hard not to see why people think Anran looks particularly bland. The short coming out right before her release makes it even more obvious. And if Blizzard intends to start releasing heroes every single season as it kicks off a new era for the game, it would be nice to see more variety in the character designs.