Blizzard made waves ahead of the weekend by revealing the next hero to join the ever-expanding roster of Overwatch. To say that fans have been waiting for Doomfist would be an understatement; since his gauntlet was a plot point in the announcement trailer, anticipation for him has nearly rivaled that of Sombra.
After a tease earlier in the week about his escape from prison, the long-awaited Doomfist will soon be available for the masses to get their hands on. He’s sadly not voiced by Terry Crews like the actor had hoped, but hey, take the good with the bad, right?
Doomfist is the first genuine villain that we’ve been introduced to in this universe.
Doomfist, real name Akande Ogundimu, is actually the third person to have the moniker — on the Numbani map, the banner for him simply labels him as “the Successor,” and his backstory doesn’t have any trouble painting him as a villain. Originally the heir to a prosthetic-technology company based in Nigeria, Akande alternated between expanding his family’s company for the future and being a competitive martial artist. When the Omnic Crisis came and he lost his right arm, his continued devotion to the company and his replacement prosthetic caught the attention of one Akinjide Adeyemi, the second Doomfist. It wasn’t long before Adeyemi took him under his wing as a member of Talon, and soon, Akande wound up killing his teacher and taking the famous gauntlet for himself. In that time, he became one of the leaders of Talon, the organization that Reaper, Widowmaker, and Sombra currently find themselves members of.
He is without a doubt the first genuine villain that we’ve been introduced to in this universe. While Overwatch has no shortage of its morally ambiguous characters, none of them are that repulsive kind of bad. They’re all tragic figures in their own way — Widowmaker was brainwashed, for instance — and the circumstances that led them down their current path makes you want to just roll them into a sweater and hug them. Even Junkrat and Roadhog, who are very much criminals, have some amount of sympathy — Roadhog only turned to his life of crime because he was screwed out of his home by the government, and Junkrat’s mind was warped by the radiation of Australia’s destroyed omnium core.
True to the Doomfist moniker, he’s definitely not one of those baddies that you’ll find sympathy for. It’s something that the game needs, honestly. Everyone in Overwatch is different degrees of likeable, but not many of them are straight up hateable in terms of lore. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for characters like Reaper or Sombra, but Doomfist is someone that we’re free to hate and want to see fail in his goals.
His arrival will potentially give us more insight into the inner workings of Talon.
Overwatch is a game where characters going against each other tell stories that fit the fiction and the gameplay, and Doomfist is sure to be no different. As the lore for the game has shown us, he likely won’t get along with quite a few non-Talon associated members of the roster; Winston likely still hates him for destroying Tracer’s Chronal Accelerator, and Genji can’t be a fan, either. Efi Oladele probably still has a bone to pick with him as well, since his actions in Numbani were the inspiration for her creating Orisa. Players that are big on the universe’s fiction are likely going to take advantage of that fight we saw in his cutscene to get some payback for their main, and artists and fanfic writers will have a ball with this as well.
The arrival of Doomfist into Overwatch doesn’t just mean that we’ve got a villain in the ranks, it also means that we potentially have more insight into the inner workings of Talon as an organization, which we still know very little about. As a high-ranking member of Talon and sharing in their belief that humanity will grow stronger through conflict, he’s obviously got a lot of pull in that organization. Through him and dialogue with characters such as Reaper or Sombra, we’ll be able to glean even more insight into how they work and operate within the world that Blizzard has set up, and even his skins will contribute to this in some capacity.
If Overwatch is the Justice League or Avengers, they needed a Legion of Doom or Masters of Evil to go up against.
This also gives us the potential to get some other out-and-out villains to become a part of the roster as well. Kaplan had previously stated that old characters could eventually be swapped out in the roster for newer ones, so if that holds true, that would be a good way to get those Talon members in there alongside their superior.
If Overwatch is the equivalent of the Justice League or Avengers in their own world, then that means they need a Legion of Doom or Masters of Evil to go up against. That appears to be what we’re getting via Talon, and if that’s the case, Doomfist certainly seems like a formidable baddie to lead the villains. He’s got the ideology and devotion to his cause down pat, and combined with his fearsome strength, Blizzard is gearing players up for something. Does that mean we could get an event where the present members of Overwatch and whoever Talon brings out of the shadows go head to head? Possibly, but either way, the new Scourge of Numbani is certainly going to be a game changer for Overwatch going forward.
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