Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop Collab Secrets Revealed by Art Director (Exclusive)
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop is available now in game.
Blizzard's latest Overwatch 2 collab is now available in game with Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop. The Overwatch 2 game shop has been updated with brand new Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop skins, plus victory poses, emotes, highlight intros, weapon charms, and name cards. Creating these skins and extra goodies for Overwatch 2 players has been something that the Overwatch 2 team has been planning for a while, one could argue years as it's been a favorite for decades. ComicBook.com spoke with Overwatch 2 art director Dion Rogers to break down each of the skins from thew Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab, and he offered a clue about how the team is planning around future collaborations as well.
As you might expect, the Overwatch 2 team are big fans of Cowboy Bebop, which checked the biggest box for getting a collab started. For much of the art team that works on the game it's something that they've been into as viewers and fans but also something they've studied to help sharpen their craft.
"This anime has been such an inspiration for a lot of our artists when they're in school training and in learning how to do art. This was one of the key anime that we would always point back to as artists," Rogers said. "Bebop, the characters feel alive. Like they have these stories and these things that just they feel like real people, despite being the stylized, cool art style, and I think there's some similarities when it comes to some of our heroes in Overwatch as well. For example, Spike being a former member of a crime syndicate and Cassidy is a former member of a crime syndicate. We started to see how closely our heroes kind of have a connection with the Cowboy Bebop characters. So that made it super cool."
It takes the team "a while" to completely build new skins for their characters so this collaboration has been in the works for quite some time. To make it even more exciting for fans of both properties, the Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard worked hand in hand with the Sunrise team that created Cowboy Bebop to make sure it all was just right. Rogers added, "It's really collaborative and just a nice partnership...It was in our heads for a long time."
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop makes one major change from the One Punch Man collab
When Overwatch 2's collab with One Punch Man was announced last year the team revealed that they were planning to handle it by treating the skins like the characters from Overwatch 2 were cosplaying as the characters from that series. With Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop however it's not that this rule has been lifted, but the designs themselves lean more into the looks of the characters from the anime, making it really feel like a crossover.
"I think part of it simply we're getting better at doing it," Rogers said of the change. "Our artists are really digging in to kind of emulate what's inspiring the character. But part of the goal is that our heroes are cosplaying as the characters from a different IP. And they just do it really well. Ash and them really love their cosplays so they look exactly like the character."
The One Punch Man collab taught the team a lot about how these collabs can work even better in the future, a big element of that with the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab being deciding which characters from Overwatch 2 would become the Cowboy Bebop characters. When it came to selecting which Overwatch 2 characters would be the main five Cowboy Bebop characters...it wasn't hard.
"I think we had a lot of fun with One Punch trying to figure out which heroes work well with different characters or heroes from the One Punch series with this one," Rogers said. "Bebop, the characters feel so much this type of anime they feel so real, they have such a great personality. We definitely dug a little harder to connect them with our heroes. Ed being the computer hacker from Cowboy Bebop makes sense that Sombra, our hacker, would be them. While One Punch is a little more lighthearted, we played around with the 'who fits what' more playfully, this one we wanted to really hone in on who really felt like that hero or that character from Cowboy Bebop."
prevnextHow to get Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop skins
Launching on Tuesday, March 12, and available now, four of the five Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop skins will be available for purchase in the game's shop. Skins that players will have to pay for, using Overwatch 2's in-game currency, include:
- Spike Spiegel/Cassidy Bundle – 2,500 Overwatch Coins – includes: Cassidy – Spike Spiegel skin, Revolver Twirl Highlight Intro, Finger gun Emote, Spike Spiegel Name Card, and Swordfish II Weapon Charm. 2,500 Overwatch Coins.
- Faye Valentine/Ashe Bundle – 2,500 Overwatch Coins – includes: Ashe – Faye Valentine Skin, Hip Shooter Highlight Intro, Coach Gun Victory Pose, Dynamic Duo Victory Pose, and Vaye Valentine Name Card.
- Jet Black/Mauga Bundle – 2,500 Overwatch Coins – includes: Mauga – Jet Black Skin, Jet Black name card, and Bonsai weapon charm.
- Ed/Sombra – 2,500 Overwatch Coins – includes: Sombra – Ed Skin, Ed's Saunter Emote, and Ed name card.
A "Cowboy Bebop Mega Bundle" is also available that includes everything from all of the above bundles combined into one, which runs 5,600 Overwatch Coins.
Just like with the One Punch Man collab, one skin will be available for free to all players. Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop will allow Overwatch 2 players to grab the Ein/Wreckingball skin for free just by completing in-game challenges over the course of the event.
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop - Spike Spiegel/Cassidy Skin
Overwatch 2's Cassidy takes on the role of Spike Spiegel in the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop crossover. It was an easy pick for a few reasons, not the least of which is that Cassidy is literally the cowboy on the Overwatch 2 roster. Players will immediately notice one major change that the Spike Spiegel/Cassidy skin has compared to all of his other skins...no cowboy hat, instead he has Spike Spiegel's trademark giant hair.
"We went back and forth on how to handle Cassidy's hat," Rogers said. "So you'll see this is what makes his skin even more unique than usual is he's not often wearing his hat. A lot of his emotes or animations that come along with it, he'll still do a hat thing. But generally 80% of the time he doesn't wear his hat, which is pretty Unique for Cassidy. So that was something that we went back and forth on how he would feel silhouette wise, there's a lot of gameplay choices when we remove something from a hero. But to really capture the spike and have that hero feel like they are them or cosplaying as them. We chose to remove his hat."
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop - Faye Valentine/Ashe
Alongside Cassidy as Spike Spiegel, the perfection of the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab carries on with his former partner in crime Ashe as Spike Spiegel's frequent collaborator Faye Valentine. One big difference in developing Ashe's skin for the Cowboy Bebop collab is the sheer amount of equipment in her kit compared to the other characters from the roster being used. Rogers tells us that deciding how to iterate all of these different items in a way that worked within the confines of Cowboy Bebop, but still felt like Ashe, took a lot of studying by the concept crew, plus input from the creators of Cowboy Bebop at Sunrise.
The biggest of these of course, literally, is her Ultimate ability, one of Overwatch 2's forgotten soldiers, B.O.B. For the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab, rather than turn B.O.B. into just another character, Blizzard decided to adapt Faye's ship from the series into his appearance.
"We tried a bunch of fun things," Rogers said of B.O.B.'s appeared in Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop. "But again, the concept team, they're just playing with ideas, they're writing sketches and someone just said 'What if B.O.B. was her MONO carrier?' And they squeezed it down into B.O.B. with all the right aesthetics; and it worked. It looked like 'Okay, that's what we need to do.' B.O.B. is always a challenge figuring out what he becomes."
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop - Jet Black/Mauga
Perhaps the most interesting choice in the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab is the use of the game's newest hero Mauga who takes on the part of Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop. Mauga was just introduced into Overwatch 2 during season 8 and debuted in November of 2023, meaning when his look was being finalized and designed for the Cowboy Bebop collab the character himself was still being finetuned. This proved to be a challenge that the Overwatch 2 concept team was capable of handling though.
"In this particular case, we basically drew the 2D as ultimately a blueprint of what the 3D guys would do when it was ready," Rogers said. "Our concept artists just really honed in on all the right details so that once Mauga was ready there was very little kind of discovery of what to do. You could look at that drawing, replicate it, and make it in the game. He was pretty tight. But generally, we start a hero pretty early. Heroes take us a while to make, but he was ready when the time was right to build."
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop - Ed/Sombra
In yet another perfect pairing for Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop, the game's hacker hero Sombra becomes the hacker from the anime, Ed. It's a pairing based on their place in their respective worlds mostly and less so personally. To pull it off that meant finding a balance
"This one we leaned pretty heavily on, it's our hacker," Rogers aid. "I wonder if the players were like, if we didn't do it, would it feel weird it it wasn't Sombra? She has some, I believe some fun voice lines that are somewhat unique for Sombra to be saying. But yeah, it just felt like we had no choice. Our hacker had to be their hacker despite the personality differences."
Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop - Ein/Wreckingball
When an Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop collab was first teased, players might have just assumed that Cowboy Bebop's famous Corgi character Ein would either just be absent or relegated to sprays available within the game, but that's not the case at all. Ein is a full skin that's available in the Overwatch 2 x Cowboy Bebop event (and he's free in-game, unlocked just by completing challenges while playing), and non other than lovable tank Wrecking Ball takes on the role.
"This might have been the first skin that we thought about," Rogers said with a laugh. "It's funny we really have a good time trying to figure out what in this this one it was such a funny combo, the genetically enhanced Corgi would be our genetically enhanced hamster. So it this one was it was almost like a running joke for a little bit but then it we started drawing and the concept team started drawing and it looked cool. It worked once we started to really hone in on the right details."
What It Takes for an Overwatch 2 Collab To Happen
This time last year brought Overwatch 2 players the One Punch Man collab and since then there have been collabs with K-Pop group LE SSERAFIM, fashion brand Gentle Monster, and now both Cowboy Bebop and Porsche, and they're just getting started. Rogers revealed that their intentions behind these collaborations have less to do with making sure they have them with more frequency and more about what feels authentic to the game and is fun for the artists and developers.
"It's just about what the team feels like is a cool connection with Overwatch," Rogers said. "We're into a lot of things on the team. So we're just trying out a bunch of ideas. And it's really fun to find these partners that want to work together. Porsche was really great. And again, it's surprising that they have amazing artists over at Porsche. And they were just talking and bouncing ideas back and forth. And it was such a fun thing. So I think you'll be surprised at some of the things that we will do with Overwatch over the year."
