Overwatch Developer Update: 6 Doomfist Facts You Definitely Don't Know

On July 27, Doomfist will finally come out of testing and into Overwatch. They called me Chicken Little when I said the sky was falling, and Doomfist would actually be a hero in Overwatch . Now that he’s been on the PTR for a few weeks and our levels of hype and excitement have died down, it’s time for the man with the shotgun hand to finally be released onto the live servers.

A new developer update gives a new insight into what went into making Doomfist and some of the challenges that went into creating the ultimate bad guy.

What’s In A Name?- For starters, Doomfist is the only hero to come from a name. According to the developers, they were all throwing around names for villains and someone mentioned Doomfist. The badass moniker caught everyone's attention, so they made the gauntlet and put it into the original Overwatch cinematic. “The name was just used in the movie, without realizing who the villain even was,” Jeff Kaplan, game director and meme lord, said.

From Fighting Games To Overwatch- Doomfist, at his core, is a love letter to the fighting game genre. Blizzard developers grew up in arcades, shoveling quarters into games like Street Fighter II . With inspiration from the 2D side-scrollers, his abilities were built to “feel impactful and powerful.” Unlock a lot of the heroes in Overwatch that want to shoot from afar, Doomfist wants to be in your face, executing brutal combos on squishy targets. Reinhardt might be a melee fighter, but you still need a team standing behind you to do anything impactful.

Early Playtests- “It’s hard in a first-person shooter game to have a character do a lot of melee abilities and have it feel good,” Kaplan said. A lot of Doomfists’ early concepts focused around combos, like punching an enemy into the air then into a wall then down to earth. A lot of that has stayed with his final concept, punching is still the most important part of his kit.

Powerful Is Doomfist’s Buzzword- Throughout the video, developers keep describing Doomfist as powerful, especially the way he looks. He’s a big, bad escaped convict who wants to punch his way to victory. While some of Overwatch’s villains are zany, like Junkrat, Doomfist is just an angry S.O.B. who wants to take down the world with Talon’s help. The red and gold was supposed to imbue him with a “regal presence” while also keeping his gauntlet badass.

Half Genji/ Half Badass- “His whole arms has been augmented with cybernetics so that he can actually receive the gauntlet,” an Overwatch developer said in the update. He’s got a ton of upgraded body parts, from a hand that can shoot shrapnel to an upper body that can wield a pneumatic piston punching arm. Like Genji, most of his body is covered in robot parts, but that’s where the similarities stop.

With Great Power, Doesn’t Always Come Responsibility- “Doomfist in his own mind is not a villain, he cares about perpetuating strength and honor,” Kaplan said. “Other people around him see him as an absolute terror.” His moves are calculated, never impulsive. He reminds me of The Batman villain The Penguin, who focuses on getting the job done well and efficiently, instead of just running in guns ablaze.