Overwatch's Winter Wonderland Returns Soon With a Scary Mei Versus Winston Mode

It's the holiday season, and Overwatch is celebrating adequately. Just like last year, Overwatch is hosting another Winter Wonderland event. Skins from last year will return, as they have in past events, and new items will join them.

The starkest change is in the brawl that will be available in Arcade Mode this year. Just as the Halloween and Summer events both tweaked their existing limited time brawls, Winter Wonderland is introducing a new arcade mode entirely. That new event is called Mei's Yeti Event, which sounds morbid in theory. It's a six-player mode with five Meis pinned against a single Winston, who grows stronger the farther across the map he moves. Director Jeff Kaplan likens the mode to a boss fight, except one player plays Winston, not an AI. It's a race to see if the team of Meis wins, or the powerful Winston can smash them all. By default, Winston will be wearing the Yeti skin, so no worries if you haven't attained it.

The more familiar mode, Mei's Snowball Offense, will still be playable too, this time not just on Ecopoint: Antarctica, but in the Black Forest too. As for the characters getting new skins, in an Overwatch Developer's Update, Kaplan noted that Hanzo would be getting a special skin themed after an appearance from the comics. In addition, Junkrat and Roadhog are confirmed to be getting new legendary skins for the holiday season, but they're not alone.

The Overwatch: Winter Wonderland update hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on December 12th. In the meantime, new map Blizzard World is playable in the PTR and is expected for release in 2018, and latest hero Moira hit the roster about a month ago.