Blizzard Entertainment’sOverwatch 2has enjoyed several collaborations with other IPs since its 2023 launch, including the likes of Transformers andStreet Fighter 6. The newest collab will be the upcoming crossover with thelong-running G.I. Joe franchise, which sees skins based on characters such as Snake Eyes and Scarlett making their way into the game.
Game Rant sat down with the game’s art director Dion Rogers and associate director of product management Aimee Dennett, to discuss theOverwatch 2andG.I. Joecrossover in more detail. They spoke about how the crossover was initially conceived, and how easy the whole process was. They also gave insight into some of the skins.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How the Overwatch 2 and G.I. Joe Collab Was Conceived
Q: What inspired the decision to collaborate with G.I. Joe, and how did the partnership come about?
AD:Dion and his team were the impetus here. Deon is abig G.I. Joe fan, and he had some ideas, and his team had some ideas for potential skins. We just so happened to have worked with Hasbro before, and we chatted with them, and they were all so excited too. The rest is history.
DR:Yeah, so myself and quite a few people on the team are pretty big fans of Joe. Obviously, a lot of us grew up watching the cartoons, and purchasing the action figures. It’s a big part of some of our people’s childhood. So it’s pretty cool to work with something that you kind of grew up enjoying, and getting to actually collaborate with them. So yeah, and I’m a huge fan of this project.
Q: When it came to deciding whichOverwatch 2characters would represent which G.I. Joe ones, how were those decisions made?
DR:I sent a PDF to Aimee, and that was pretty much it!
AD:Sometimes the internal collaboration phase takes a really long time. It can take weeks, and lots of ideations. This one was probably the quickest we’ve ever had though! Quite literally, Dion sent me a PDF. Then we were like, oh, this is a no-brainer. Let’s do it!
DR:And, you know,both G.I. Joe andOverwatchshare some parallels. It’s some fun, colorful characters with opposing ideas, and they have cool weapons!Overwatchhas cool weapons. There’s a lot of actual interest and overlap between the two worlds, and the optimistic vibe ofOverwatch. Also, G.I. Joe always has some sort of moral to the story, so it just feels like they match really well.
Adapting G.I Joe’s Retro Look for Overwatch 2
Q: Did you come across any challenges in adapting G.I. Joe’s designs to fit in withOverwatch 2’s art style and tone? Were there any sort of conflicts there?
DR:Yeah, with any collaboration, there’s some layer of challenge. We like to imagine our heroes are doing some very goodcosplay, right? They’re aware of the universe, and the characters have chosen to dress like them. So sure, G.I. Joe kind of has a retro feel to it. It was popularized in the 80s and beyond, obviously. But adapting the retro look, and adapting it toOverwatch 2, there was a bit of a challenge there. For example, Scarlett, who is Freja, one of our newest heroes. Scarlett doesn’t wear a cape, and she does not have a cape in G.I. Joe.
Hasbrohas an amazing document about all their characters and all their heroes that was actually really helpful to get the key details and the iconic parts that we needed to keep on the hero. So when we talked to them about Freja, we mentioned that the cape plays a big part in her silhouette, so it’s something we cannot eliminate. That being said, we really wanted to give the skin to her, because she looks fantastic with red hair, and she also fits with the crossbow that Scarlett uses. So we kind of came to a compromise. The cape is actually a little shorter than her base cape, the one you see in the base version of Freja. For the design of the cape, we used a lot of the elements that Hasbro shared with us that could connect it more to Scarlett. So she was one of the challenges.
Genji was another when he became Snake Eyes. Genji is mostly a cyborg, and Snake Eyes is obviously human. One of the best things aboutSnake Eyesis that there’s a human guy underneath this pretty cool suit. So this is probably one of the skins where Genji loses the most cybernetic parts of him in order to achieve the coolest aspects of Snake Eyes’ character. We still maintain some of the technical aspects of him, like his arms are still cybernetic, there are these game details we needed to hold on to. But what makes this one interesting is that he’s lost a lot of the cyborg parts of the base skin.
How Hasbro Influenced the Skins
Q: What sort of creative input did Hasbro have into the design of the skins and cosmetics? Were you given free rein to a degree, or were there certain things that they had more input in?
AD:It was iterative. So we would come up with the initial design. They’d say, this looks great. Maybe change this skill here. But there is no sort of prescriptive element to either. It’s really a nice iterative process, which is always easy when it happens in that way.
DR:And we have our previous relationship with them, which helped. I mentioned it before, but they have an amazing document about the entire franchise that’s really awesome and just incredibly helpful. For anyone trying to usethe G.I. Joe universeand apply it to something else, they have it covered.
Balancing Overwatch and G.I. Joe Fan Expectations
Q: From concept to completion with this crossover, how long did that whole process take?
AD:It’s been in the works for probably like nine months. But it was pretty smooth, because we’d alreadyworked with Hasbro. There weren’t any growing pains in terms of, who do we talk to for this or that? It was more like a family reunion of like, oh my gosh, we get to work with you again!
Q: Franchises like G.I. Joe usually have a very passionate fan base. How have you tried to balance fan expectations from theOverwatchside, and fan expectations from the G.I. Joe side?
DR:I think the skins are faithful to the G.I. Joe characters, while retaining enoughelements of theOverwatchheroes. There’s probably an audience that is not as familiar with G.I. Joe. Thankfully, I do think we made the skins cool enough that they work either way. That was one of the goals. Like we wanted to speak to the fans that are into G.I. Joe of course, but we also needed to make the skins as cool as possible, so that for anyone that may not be as familiar with G.I. Joe, they just see a dope skin they can apply to their favorite hero. With any collab, we attempt to balance these things. Since theOverwatchteam works so often with our own characters, it’s very natural for us to maintain thatOverwatchaesthetic.
Easter Eggs in Overwatch 2
Q: Are there any little hidden Easter eggs in there for G.I. Joe fans to look out for?
DR:Absolutely! The bar of success for a collaboration is, are the hardcore G.I. Joe fans seeing the Easter eggs and getting really excited about this? That’s when we know we’ve done well, as we’ve tried to put a little bit of that in there too. For example, one of the sprays is called Cold Slither, which is the band that Cobra Commander puts together in an episode of G.I. Joe.
AD:We love to put little references and stuff like that where we want to keep it accessible, where, if you don’t know it, you can still find it cool, but the fans who are familiar with the crossover should still look forward to seeing these little things.
DR:If you look at Doomfist, he has the MARS logo on his gauntlet. That’s a reference to the military organization he runs that basically makes all the weapons and stuff for COBRA. In this day and age, fans go crazy for that sort of stuff. They lovea good Easter egg!
AD:We also have plenty of fun voice lines.Especially for Reaper!
Q: Were there any characters or concepts from G.I. Joe that you initially wanted to include, but ultimately, for whatever reason you couldn’t?
DR:Not on this one thankfully. I literally sent Amy my suggestions, and that’s what we moved for. It was like, I wouldn’t put Baroness on anyone else. I wouldn’t put Snake Eyes on anyone else. These characters just thematically fitted perfectly. And a Reaper works well as a commander, right? These were the characters, and they’re some of my favorite heroes from G.I. Joe. So with this one, it was very fast.
Q: If there was one thing that you were most excited about for players to get their hands on with this crossover, what would you say it is?
AD:I think for me, the weapons on these skins look really great. I am especially a fan of the Snake Eyes weapons, likeGenji’s sword, which just looks super bad*ss. So I think players will be excited to see those once they’re actually in the game.
DR:G.I. Joe weapons are grounded in reality, so we needed to add fantasy to them a bit. The Cobra ones are fun because Cobra brands basically all his weapons and vehicles. So you’ll find, like, Widowmaker’s sniper rifle. It’s pretty cool because it’s branded like a Cobra one. It’s got Cobra insignia and modeling on the scope. So this was pretty fun to do, because that’s one of the funny parts about this show too. In the cartoon he brands all this equipment, like, there’s no doubt who this guy is! So that’s what we did with a lot of the Reaper shotguns and Widowmaker’s sniper rifle, or evenDoomfist’s gauntlet, which has Cobra icons on it.
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