The new Overwatch Mei skin breaks her spine. Literally. With Blizzard unveiling a selection of new skins for the Overwatch Retribution Event, one of the highlights for the game’s fans has been Pajamei, a laid-back outfit for everyone’s favorite enemy-freezing research scientist. However, the Defense hero has been afflicted by what should be a debilitating condition, with her spine being brutally contorted to ensure that she retains the same pose despite the change of costume.
The tricky task for Blizzard when creating new skins is ensuring that they suit each character’s individual animations. This has been an issue for Mei in the past, with her Lunar New Year skins back in 2017 accidentally making her waist look smaller and the Overwatch hero look thinner in the process. Blizzard later fixed this in a patch, though the developer’s latest Mei skin is once again doing weird things to her character model, this time making it appear as though she has broken her back to wear her new pajamas.
From the front, the new Overwatch Retribution skin looks a little off, with there being a 90-degree gap of space between Mei’s hips and bust. However, when viewed from the side, it’s clear that there’s a definite problem with the curvature of Mei’s spine, with her back arched to the point where another Overwatch hero could use her lower back as a seat:
Here’s another angle of her spinal situation:
The skin also has other problems, such as her shirt clipping through her pajama bottoms, while the curious addition of oven mitts seems like a way for Blizzard to keep the character wearing gloves so that they don’t have to animate her hands. This is particularly strange considering that Mei’s Luna and Change’e skin both featured her glove-less, albeit with sizeable, metallic sleeves, so maybe this was a design choice. But if that’s the case, then who wears oven mitts to bed…?
Blizzard patched out Mei’s thinner waist previously, though this seems to be an issue with the character model in general. With this skin proving to be one of the more popular additions in the Overwatch Retribution event, Blizzard can hopefully rectify this and sort out Mei’s spine issues.
