Doomfist Is A Love Letter To Fighting Games And Why A Blizzard Brawler Isn’t Impossible

Doomfist is the newest character to arrive on Overwatch and his playstyle and backstory have lent themselves to many comparisons to the fighting game genre, something that the developers intended.

Of course, Overwatch is a first-person shooter, but many of the visuals and characters are seemingly influenced by other genres of games. With Doomfist, the love for fighting games is ever apparent.

In an after-panel discussion with the Overwatch development team at San Diego Comic-Con, the topic of the inspiration behind the character came up. Geoff Goodman, principal game designer, pointed out that the team are big fans of fighting games.

“We just looked at each other and we said, ‘this is it, this is the moment,’” Renaud Galand, lead character designer, told Player.One at a roundtable regarding the creation of Doomfist. “We’re making that love letter.”

Doomfist’s moves are all homages to past brawlers, from the dashing fist to his uppercut that suspiciously looks like a Shoryuken from Street Fighter.

Even one of the Doomfist skins shown at during the SDCC panel looked a lot like Jack from the Tekken series.

But it’s not just Doomfist, the entire game has a ton of nods to the genre that many on the team grew up with at arcades.

“Overwatch as a game is heavily influenced by fighting games, not just Doomfist,” Arnold Tsang, assistant art director, said. “Look at the character select screen, the art style, the visual fx, the animations even the highlight intros are very reminiscent of win poses from fighting games.”

Goodman and Galand joked about how they are doing “everything short” of a fighting game, something that even in the character’s backstory shows.

“We get closer and closer [to being a fighting game] and with Doomfist we’re almost there,” Michael Chu, lead writer on Overwatch, said jokingly. “I tried to work even a little bit of [fighting game inspiration] into his backstory, he’s got a complicated backstory. He’s the heir to a prosthetics company but he’s also a fighter. It’s definitely in his DNA.”

The possibility of a fighting game from Blizzard, related to Overwatch or not, may not be immediate. But the company has moved into different game genres in the past; it’s almost become the company's MO.

“For a while I remember working on World of Warcraft and before WoW was shipped, I remember getting questions back then like, “you guys are a RTS company, how are you making an MMO?” And then when Overwatch was coming out we got ‘you guys are an MMO company how are you going to do a first-person shooter?,’” Goodman said. “It’s sort of funny, and it shows that we can do other genres. We play the games so much and love them so much that who knows, maybe someday. That’d be sweet.”

Doomfist is available on Overwatch now for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Are you enjoying Doomfist in Overwatch ? Would you enjoy an Overwatch fighting game or just a fighting game from Blizzard? Let us know in the comments section below.