I gotta say, it's been a good time to come back to Overwatch. Five new heroes, plus all of the ones I missed out on in the three or four years I haven't been playing. The Sanrio collaboration that actually had me contemplating playing Widowmaker for the first time in my life. A renewed drive to play the first multiplayer shooter I ever fell in love with. Something I am most definitely going to continue to do now that Blizzard just announced a freakin' Nier: Automata collaboration.
These are certainly two games I never expected to come together—despite the fact that Nier has somehow managed to show up in just about every damn videogame I enjoy at this point. It has a whole-ass 24-player raid series in Final Fantasy 14, was one of the first major collaborations in my beloved gacha game Nikke, and 2B was even a guest fighter in Soulcalibur 6. But I dunno, I certainly never expected her, 9S, and A2 to make an appearance in the funny cartoon hero shooter.
“A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself” ✨Get your first look at our next iconic collaboration and team up your favorite androids when Overwatch x Project YoRHa launches Mar 10 🦾 pic.twitter.com/BJH3cHa8t2March 4, 2026
Yet here we are, in the year of our lord 2026, and that is exactly what is happening. Despite the aforementioned Sanrio collaboration being very support-biased (four of the six skins were for support characters), that hasn't stopped Blizzard from doing the exact damn thing all over again.
As far as I can tell, this is what the collaboration looks like:
- Kiriko as 2B
- Vendetta as A2
- Wuyang as 9S
- Lifeweaver as Adam
- Mercy as Commander White
Listen, even as someone who's barely touched this game since Kiriko's debut I still know just how many damn skins this character gets. Do I love her as 2B? Not particularly—I saw a post pointing out that Illari would have been a fantastic choice, and I'm now mourning what could have been. I will admit that as a new Wuyang main I'm a little jazzed to see him as 9S, though he does seem to be Overwatch's collaboration poster boy at this point.
I do think that this collaboration could have been just a bit cooler though. Where is Emil? Imagine Zenyatta with an Emil head and matching orbs, or Wrecking Ball rolling around with that giant grinning Emil face. Bastion would have made a killer Pascal, and it feels criminal to see my most beloved robot fella missing from the pack.
At this point I'm convinced that support mains are the ones with the deepest pockets—and I say this as a support main. They're certainly highly favoured for these sorts of collaborations, and while I'm not too cut up about it, I do wish it had been a touch more creative.
Despite all my moaning, am I going to dump money on this when they land on March 10? I absolutely am. Spending my hard-earned money on Overwatch cosmetics? It truly is 2016 again, huh.
