With the Halloween holiday fast approaching, it was expected that Blizzard would unveil a Halloween-themed Overwatch update. Those expectations were fulfilled as today, the Overwatch: Halloween Terror patch was pushed to the Public Test Region for advance open testing. This patch will include Halloween-themed skins for many heroes, most of whom didn’t receive an Olympics-themed skin during the Overwatch Summer Games event. As well, there will be themed items, weapons, loot boxes (exploding candy pumpkins yay), and a Dr. Frankenstein-themed Brawl for the duration of the patch, October 11th to November 1st.
Overwatch Halloween skins (1) pic.twitter.com/7fWudyYAlY
— Nibel (@Nibellion) October 11, 2016
The heroes getting special skins are Mercy, Ana, Pharah, Symmetra, Reinhardt, Junkrat, Roadhog, Soldier: 76, Bastion, Hanzo, Reaper (duh), and Zenyatta. Notable are Mercy’s Witch skin (which many correctly guessed would be based off of her witch costume in the Overwatch: Recall trailer) and Soldier: 76’s costume, which bears a striking resemblance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller jacket.
Overwatch Halloween skins (2) pic.twitter.com/sC94bz6Qw3
— Nibel (@Nibellion) October 11, 2016
Overwatch Halloween skins (3) pic.twitter.com/4YuV0XuuFg
— Nibel (@Nibellion) October 11, 2016
The new brawl, themed after the story of Dr. Frankenstein (with Junkrat in the role of the good Doctor, of course), looks like a lot of fun. Players will play either Ana, Hanzo, McCree, or Soldier: 76 in a specially-themed map where they work together to “keep the castle doors from being destroyed,” according to the Brawl description.
Unique to this update (for now, at least) is the fact that apparently players can buy the skins. During the Summer Games promotion, players could only earn the special skins by either outright buying loot boxes or by playing the game to earn them for free. Each loot box carried a chance to unlock a skin, and much like life in general, nothing was guaranteed or made simple to acquire. So it goes with Blizzard games, really. But apparently they’ve learned from the backlash to that design decision and have made things a little easier to access.
That being said, you’ll probably want to hop on and play your heart out anyway. Once November 1st rolls around, the boxes (and the sweet, sweet loot they contain) will be gone–at least, until next year, I suppose.
What do you think of the new skins?
(via OverPwn)
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