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?
how do you have a team of artists and still end up with same face syndrome as bad as this . BROTHER. pic.twitter.com/8AK1m9I7D4February 4, 2026
how crazy is it that all of these new characters look like cosmetics for existing heroes 😭 overwatch’s prettygirl and prettyboy sameface syndrome has hit its logical conclusion where every character just looks boring as hell, even the damn cat https://t.co/58BbHomGefFebruary 4, 2026
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.
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
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.
just some changes i’d make going off how she looked in the animation https://t.co/cV61EIVvql pic.twitter.com/JpTyvcam2BFebruary 4, 2026
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).
Can someone explain to me why the Overwatch devs have such a hard time making unique female face models but not male ones? Freja looks like widow, Anran looks like juno/kiri. They don’t have this issue with male characters so why is it always the women? #Overwatch pic.twitter.com/MktF2pauGNFebruary 6, 2026
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.
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