Here’s Why Overwatch’s New Hero Sigma Has Bare Feet

Overwatch recently revealed its latest hero, Sigma, and while the character’s gravity-based powers and backstory certainly drew interest, another giant point of conversation since his full reveal this week has been… his bare feet. You see, Sigma has bare feet. They are strangely prominent in the character’s design as just about every other inch of him is covered in some kind of armor. People have been wondering: why, exactly, are his feet bare? Well, it looks like there’s a relatively simple, if contentious, answer.

Along with the full official reveal of Sigma’s abilities and gameplay, Qiu Fang, a concept artist on Overwatch, appears to have posted their work on the hero to ArtStation. In the comments on the uploaded artwork, Fang got into detail about some of the reasoning behind Sigma’s design choices. (It’s worth noting here that any sort of internal design like this is almost always a collaborative effort with many folks adding various touches, and that Qiu Fang alone isn’t responsible for all things Sigma.)

“We decided to keep the feet bare to sell the ‘asylum’ look a bit more; in many institutions, patients are not allowed to have shoes because they might cause harm with the laces,” Fang explained. “While Sigma isnt neccisarily in danger of that, we felt that having no shoes helped draw that connection. I also had iterations of him with shoes on, and it made him alot more generic, so in the end we decided to leave him barefeet. That’s just what the reasoning internally was though, I’m sure we’ll be making skins with shoes on him in the future!”

So, there you have it. His feet are bare due to his backstory, which is that he’d been institutionalized. This is sure to be received well by folks.

Here’s how Overwatch describes Sigma, who has both the Tank role and a three-star difficulty rating, on its website:

“Sigma is an eccentric astrophysicist and volatile tank who gained the power to control gravity in an orbital experiment gone wrong. Manipulated by Talon and deployed as a living weapon, Sigma’s presence on the battlefield cannot be ignored.”

Are you excited to play Sigma? What do you think of his bare feet, or do you try not to think about them at all? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

Overwatch is currently available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Sigma, its newest hero, is available on the game’s PTR. You can check out all of our extensive previous coverage of the title right here.

[H/T Rock Paper Shotgun]