Overwatch: Year of the Rooster Legendary Skins Leak
By Dalton Cooper 19 January 2017
Four legendary skins leak for the upcoming Overwatch event Year of the Rooster, revealing new looks for the characters Winston, Roadhog, Zenyatta, and Reinhardt.
Blizzard is following up its successful Halloween and Christmas events with Year of the Rooster, which kicks off for Overwatch fans on January 24th. Blizzard has already revealed the event’s new skins for Mei and D.Va, but a Chinese player has discovered an ad for the event that seems to show off the four other legendary-tier skins fans can unlock beginning next week.
The Overwatch Year of the Rooster ad, which was posted on Reddit, features new skins for Winston, Roadhog, Reinhardt, and Zenyatta. The new skins appear to be based on characters from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, with Winston as Sun Wukong, Roadhog as Zhu Bajie, Reinhardt as Sha Heshang, and Zenyatta as Tang Sanzang. If these new skins are similar to past legendary skins, they will cost 3,000 in-game currency to purchase if fans fail to collect them from loot boxes.
After seeing how elaborate these four skins are, it has raised some questions about the previously revealed D.Va and Mei skins. Many assumed those two skins would bring the number to six legendary-tier skins, as has been the standard for past Overwatch events, but they just don’t have as much detail as the newly leaked skins. Blizzard came under fire during the Winter Wonderland event for ranking a Mei skin as legendary when some felt it shouldn’t have been, and they may run into the same complaints this time around as well, depending on the tiers of these new skins.
The Year of the Rooster event has potential to bring with it other controversies, namely in regards to different nerfs and buffs Blizzard has in store for some of the characters. These character balance tweaks have been tested in the PTR for the past few weeks, and will make drastic changes to Roadhog’s hook, Ana’s healing capabilities, and Sombra’s effectiveness. It hasn’t been explicitly stated that these character updates will come with the Year of the Rooster event, but if they do, it will be interesting to see if fans embrace or reject them.
It will also be interesting to see if the Year of the Rooster event features additional new content besides skins. While a new map like Oasis is not likely to be added with the event, perhaps a new game mode will debut. After all, all three previous Overwatch events featured a new game mode, including Lucio Ball, Junkenstein’s Revenge, and Mei’s Snowball Offensive, so it would make sense for Year of the Rooster to feature one as well.
With the Year of the Rooster event kicking off for Overwatch in less than a week’s time, fans don’t have to wait too much longer to find out exactly what it has in store. In the meantime, they can start saving coins for their favorite new legendary skins.
Overwatch is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
