The Return of Junkenstein - Overwatch 2017

This year fans of Overwatch wondered how Blizzard would return or if they would return previous events to the game. During this summer we got a first taste of it with the return of the Overwatch Summer Games, with new summer skins, old summer skins becoming normal priced, an updated Lucio Ball minigame, and a competitive version of that minigame. With that people enjoyed it and it got great praise. But now we come to the return of the first holiday event for Overwatch: Halloween, meaning the return of the dark and crazy Junkenstein!

Just like with the Summer Games of 2017, the old Halloween skins have had their prices lowered to normal skin prices in order to make way for the newer Halloween skins. The new legendary Halloween skins include: Corsair Ana, Van Helsing McCree, Dracula Reaper, Dragon Symmetra, Jiangshi Mei, Viking Torbjorn, Totally 80s Zarya, and Cultist Zenyatta (though I’d call it Cthulu Zenyatta). While we do have a ton of legendary Halloween skins, there are no new rare skins, though that could be because we have a lot of old, rare Halloween skins. Beyond this though, only one new emote for Roadhog, showing him doing a loud stepping and surprising the camera, and two emotes: First being Torbjorn throwing a ball of molten metal into the air and hitting it like a baseball, and second being Mei doing some hopping to imitate the monster her legendary skin is based on, the Jiang Shi or Chinese Hopping Vampire.

Another change for loot drops for this event is that the tombstones victory poses from the previous year are now no longer bound to Halloween loot boxes, meaning they can be freely obtained any time of the year. Now that is cool! For this event though, there are some characters with Pumpkin themed victory poses, including Tracer, Hanzo, Junkrat, Lucio, Sombra, and Orisa. All of these poses are clever, really showing off the character and their personality. I especially love Hanzo and Orisa’s versions, giving some great expressions of pose and faces to these two characters.

Beyond the loot drops, we also have the return of the Junkenstein’s Revenge arcade mode! Not much seems to have changed about it, other than that there are two versions of the mode: Normal and Endless. The endless mode, while including the original four playable characters (Ana, McCree, Soldier 76, and Hanzo) also has Genji, Torbjorn, Widowmaker, and and Zenyatta as playable characters. Now at first I was rather sad because I had a strong feeling they’re include all the characters in this mode, similar to the Uprising event earlier this year. The roster for this endless mode has no tanks to it, making me wonder how this mode will eventually play out. This though was before I played it. After the fight I still had that feeling, but the choice of characters was great for an endless wave mode. Not just that but the additional characters chosen for this mode fit with the theme of the event this year, with Torbjorn being a Viking, Genji being a swordsman, Widowmaker as a countess, and Zenyatta as a monk.

There were some small little tidbits I found while looking at the new content. The one I instantly noticed is McCree vs Reaper in their new Halloween skins. Reaper, like Dracula, lives an immortal, yet cursed life, able to absorb the life essence of others in order to survive. McCree, as Reaper’s former disciple, was made into the person he is by Reaper, similar to how the original Van Helsing became what he is by Dracula’s actions. This makes both these skins really fitting with their characters.

Another thing I noticed was how awesome and fitting Roadhog’s new highlight intro fits with not just him, but also his Halloween skin last year, Junkenstein’s Monster. A booming footsteps, slow camera view angling upwards, and lastly the sudden zoom in and scare are just beautiful. With Roadhog being one of the biggest characters in the game (both height and weight), having a monstrous introduction for a highlight intro works perfectly, especially since his role as the monster has returned in the Junkenstein’s Revenge arcade mode.

Lastly, from my small peak into this update, the new Halloween skins for Ana, McCree, and Torbjorn were first revealed in last year’s Halloween comic, when these three, along with Reinhardt, Jack Morrison (AKA Soldier 76), and Mercy all had a small little party to celebrate the holiday. People were really hoping to see these costume come to the game and most of them, with the exception of Reinhardt’s captain outfit, all have made it in. And all of them look fantastic! It’s hard to choose a favorite out of them all, but if I had to choose just one it would be Torbjorn’s Viking costume. The level of detail on displaying the patterns and elements that are associated with Swedish Vikings is stupendous!

So that’s a quick peak into Overwatch’s 2017 Halloween. I might update this article or add a new article if anything major on this during this event happens. Until then, go enjoy yourself, collect some of those new skins, and make sure not to indulge on too much candy.