Overwatch’s annual Winter Wonderland event begins today, but the only thing you need to know is Soldier: 76 finally has an unlockable ugly Christmas sweater skin for the first week.
As of this writing, Blizzard hasn’t officially unveiled the skin and the rest cosmetics that will be available, but the announcement video leaked on Twitter, revealing new skins for Reaper, Moira, Doomfist, Mercy, and the previously shown one for Sigma. Also seen were emotes for Sombra, and what appears to be a new highlight intro for Mei. But you can check out the full thing (albeit in French) right here:
Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2019 Skin Leak
오버워치 환상의 겨울나라 2019 스킨 유출! pic.twitter.com/3A9lTdciH3
— Naeri X 나에리 (@OverwatchNaeri) December 10, 2019
As most Overwatch events do, Winter Wonderland will bring its event modes, including Mei’s Snowball Offensive, which pits 12 Mei players against one another in a snowball fight.
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But back to the reason we’re all here. Soldier: 76’s skin will be unlocked after winning nine games of any mode during the first week of the Winter Wonderland event, which runs from today until January 2. Not only is the skin the type of festive, definitely not appropriate for a firefight nonsense Overwatch tends to lean into during these kinds of events, it’s actually delivering upon a long requested skin fans and critics have been asking for as far back as 2016.
Look at him! And the spray of him (probably) grimacing at it under the mask to throw down when you execute that perfect Tactical Visor Play of the Game.
The idea of putting Jack Morrison, the esteemed former leader of Overwatch, in an ugly Christmas sweater has become so widespread, it’s spawned a ton of fan art over the years.
Soldier: 76’s skins have leaned into his reputation as the game’s “dad” character before, like the Grillmaster: 76 skin that puts him in an apron complete with all the equipment he needs to grill a good steak, so this feels like a pretty great addition to his list of skins. Who knows, we might have to update our rankings of the Winter Wonderland skins to include it. As a Soldier main myself (despite role queue doing everything in its power to make me not), I’m gonna slap that thing on and won’t be taking it off for the entirety of the Winter Wonderland event. As fun as the skin is, Soldier: 76 has a few others that also hint at his past life in the military, like Formal: 76, which gets a little messy when viewed through the lens of the Overwatch lore.
This skin, like all the others in Overwatch, will be available in Overwatch 2 whenever Blizzard decides to put that game out into the world. According to the developers, all the sequel’s updates and competitive modes will be available to OG Overwatch players, with the story content and game-specific cosmetics being the main pulls for fans to upgrade.
