The sash on Lucio’s new Overwatch skin changes color based on his aura

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Overwatch’s Lunar New Year celebrations just started, but they already have a designated DJ.

Lúcio is one of the heroes that received new cosmetics with the latest update yesterday. His Samul Nori skin, however, has a twist: part of it switches colors based on what aura he’s using. A player posted footage of the visual changes in action.

Lúcio’s Crossfade can alternate between two different auras that benefit his allies. He can increase their speed or regenerate their health. When boosting their speed, the aura takes a shade of light green and turns to yellow when healing. The new skin changes the color of Lúcio’s ribbon to reflect the hues of Crossfade.

Lúcio players won’t have many chances to see the visual change colors due to Overwatch’s first-person gameplay, but they can observe it through the replay system or through his in-game resting emotes.

Samul Nori, the name of Lúcio’s skin, is also a South Korean music genre born out of a musical experiment in the late 1970s, according to an interview with UCLA ethnomusicologist Katherine In-Young Lee. Its creators aimed to “recontextualize” and build upon the traditional genre of p’ungmul, which had a significant social role in South Korea’s agrarian, pre-industrialization days. Both genres place a heavy focus on percussive instruments, and according to Lee, its fans describe it as “visceral, heart-pounding, dynamic, and spellbinding.”

The new skin isn’t the first of Lúcio’s visuals to change colors. His hair also alternates between green and yellow when using the Pacific skin, which was specially designed for the Overwatch League’s 2019 All-Star Game. The skin was only released for a limited time and can’t be reacquired, but players who already have it can see it in action.

Overwatch kicked off its Lunar New Year yesterday with new skins, the return of the Capture the Flag game mode, and the debut of a new Arcade mode, Capture the Flag Blitz. Players will also be able to unlock new cosmetics through a series of limited-time weekly challenges, as seen in 2019’s Halloween Terror and Winter Wonderland. The update also made balancing changes to heroes like Mei, Baptiste, and Orisa.