Doomfist (Updated 2/18)

Doomfist is a title held by three individuals who are known as the Savior, the Scourge, and the Successor. Each Doomfist used a powerful gauntlet to cause devastating damage.

2/18 Update: 

• Added link to Spider Tank

Table of Contents

• Concept Art
• Cinematic Trailer
• In-Game Clues
• Numbani Unity Day Threats
• Sombra's Conspiracy
• Developer Comments
• Datamined Content
• Notes and Speculation

Concept Art

See an album of Doomfist gauntlet concept art here.

Cinematic Trailer

Doomfist was first mentioned by the younger brother in the Cinematic Trailer.

Timmy: Woah. That's Doomfist's gauntlet. Oh man. They said he could level a skyscraper. And remember? He was all fighting and Winston beat him and, and was, like, "Primal punch!"

The gauntlet itself was the source of the trailer's main conflict. Reaper and Widowmaker intended to steal the gauntlet for unknown reasons. Winston and Tracer, with help from the brothers, were able to stop them.

The gauntlet in the cinematic. Note the silhouette in the bottom right.

In-Game Clues

Doomfist gauntlet in the payload.

The payload of the Numbani map contains the Doomfist gauntlet. Continuing from what happened in the trailer, the gauntlet was moved from the Overwatch museum to the Numbani Heritage Museum. The goal of the attacking team is to move the gauntlet to the museum in time for the Doomfist exhibit.

Left image is from the beta (source), center image is from a screenshot taken on 8/8/16, right image is from a screenshot taken  1/6/17

All over the city are advertisements for the Doomfist exhibit. The signs say "Opening Soon" though at some point some of them said "Coming Soon" as well (source). They've been in the map since beta.

The Savior, The Scourge, The Successor.

In the museum there are large posters with pictures of each Doomfist with their names and titles. The first is "The Savior" Adhabu Ngumi, "The Scourge" Akinjide Adeyemi, and "The Successor". The Successor's name is unreadable as it appears to be in the Omnic written language, which hasn't been translated yet.

The Successor's unreadable name.

Announcements for the Doomfist exhibit can be heard in the museum if you idle there for a bit. One of them gives a little bit of information about it:

Announcer: Coming soon, the Numbani Heritage Museum will be the proud home of the Doomfist itself. Once wielded by the infamous Scourge of Numbani, it will be the centerpiece of an expansion of the exhibit focusing on the men who bore the name Doomfist.

Numbani Unity Day Threats

Before the reveal of Numbani and Volskaya Industries, they were teased in a couple of official Twitter posts. One of them depicts an in-universe news report about Volskaya Industries by Atlas News. In the ticker is the headline "Doomfist exhibit opening Numbani Unity Day."

Volskaya Industries/Numbani teaser image

Later in the animated short "Recall", the Atlas News broadcast Winston is watching has another headline: "Numbani postpones annual Unity Festival after anonymous threats."

Atlas News broadcast during "Recall"

Sombra's Conspiracy

In the Sombra Origin Story video, the conspiracy web at the end pictures the Doomfist gauntlet. It is connected to a node picturing a Spider Tank, which is also connected to the Numbani node. It's other immediate connection is conveniently hidden behind Sombra, but it's implied to be connected to the Talon node.

The Numbani node is also connected to the Volskaya Industries node through a node for the schematic of the new mechs featured in "Infiltration".

Doomfist's extended connections in the conspiracy

Developer Comments

On November 7 at Blizzcon 2015, Bill Petras gave a description of Numbani at the World of Overwatch panel.

Bill Petras: So, unlike any other part of the Overwatch world that we have, the one city where humans and robots live together in harmony is Numbani. And this is a really special city in Africa where together the humans and robots have built this magnificent marvel of technology for the entire world. But also they are threatened by the villainous hero Doomfist.

Later during the Q&A portion of the same panel, a fan asked about Sound Quake. Chris Metzen mentions Doomfist again in his answer.

Chris Metzen: We're still developing characters like Sound Quake and things like that. We don't have a core plan for that character yet, but there's other characters that were mentioned in that flick, like Doomfist or whatever, that we're developing the idea of. 

On December 10, 2015, Chris Metzen and Michael Chu discussed Doomfist in an interview with PC Gamer.

PC Gamer: The gauntlet in the announcement cinematic was Doomfist’s. And then his gauntlet is the payload on the Numbani map, and Numbani is just ripe with references to him. There are banners that say “the Savior, the Scourge, the Successor” and in all of the imagery “the Successor” is always conveniently blacked out. Can you give us any hints about Doomfist? He seems like a very important character in the world that we pretty much haven't heard anything about. 

Chris Metzen: I would just frame it by saying it's a perfect example of what we were just talking about. We did not develop Doomfist to be any more important to the franchise than any other character, at all. What started to happen with Doomfist, the more we jammed on him, especially—you got the Gauntlet in the announcement cinematic. And then you've got the same Gauntlet being taken on the payload in the Numbani map, and then this exhibit [about Doomfist in Numbani]—and we kind of started thinking how fun would it be if the Doomfist character is actually more of a generational hero, like you see in some of the the big superhero universes. Potentially any number of people had been The Flash or any number of people had been a Green Lantern. And there's kind of this sense of generational identity. So Doomfist was kind of just a fun riff on that. We've talked about the gameplay of doing a Doomfist character—again, we have nothing to announce—but we've talked about it and how much fun would it be to design that character. So as Numbani took shape as a playable space, we knew that this character of Doomfist would be from here and how fun [it would be] to present the idea as more of a generational [character]. 

But, we have no particular aims to make that character any more foreground in the fiction than anybody else. It was just a fun, creative exercise. So in that way, what you see on that map and what it makes you feel, as of today, is what you see and not necessarily much deeper than that. One day, if we build a Doomfist character, that character will be totally informed by the fact that there were Doomfists before him, if that makes any sense. But of course, I want to reiterate we have not announced any Doomfist character at this time. But it's just kind of a fun way to chase that character's identity. You have anything on that, Mike? 

Michael Chu: No, I think it's a really good example. He started as a line in this cinematic, and then these ideas that sort of gain traction and gravity. We'll jam and a little bit of an idea will come out, then we decide that “Oh, we're going to do the Numbani map,” and then we're all like talking about what the map is all about. I remember we spent a lot of time talking about what the point of that map was, and we had all sorts of different ideas. I mean we had a ton. At some point, it came up and it was just like, “Oh, what if it's Doomfist’s gauntlet?” And then once you have that as a core beat in the gameplay and for the map, then it's like, “Well, how do we help to tell that story?” And then we have more discussions and we're just trying to find ways to tell that story and you can see how it kind of goes from something that's mentioned in the cinematic to a key story beat. 

PC Gamer: At the time you guys released that cinematic, had you already made the Numbani map? Had you decided that you were going to go further with Doomfist? Or at that point was it literally just a gauntlet? 

Chris Metzen: At that point, when we made the cinematic, it was just a gauntlet. I remember we kind of had a writing team at the time as we were scripting that cinematic and Jeff Chamberlain, the director [of the announcement cinematic], really laid a lot of that out. But I'm like, I want to just have almost like a shotgun blast of flavor. So I had riffed Sound Quake and Doomfist, and I just personally enjoy riffing compound noun names if World of Warcraft is any indicator. So I just threw a bunch of shit out to make it sound like there's all this texture. I guess we're letting air out of the balloon and looking much less cool, but that was the intent of the flick—to create a sense of a far larger tapestry that we would actually weave together over time. And that's been my experience with all these game worlds over time. WoW started very, very humbly back with Warcraft 1. It's really time in this strata of ideas that give a world its real depth and the depth of its details and specificity.

Datamined Content

A voice line was found where Reaper mentions Doomfist:

Reaper: Doomfist should do his own dirty work.

In the 2/7 PTR files, Reddit user Venxa found the model of the Numbani payload with its glass broken. (source)

Model found by Venxa

In the live PTR as of 2/8/17, the payload is still intact, so a later update to implement the broken in payload is expected. In addition, another Reddit user, owmapper, discovered that the broken glass model still contains the gauntlet. (source)

Notes and Speculation

• Because the Successor's name is in Omnic, many believe he will be "half-Omnic" or even a full Omnic.
• Even though the Successor is a silhouette, some features of his face are visible. Notably, he appears to have white markings on his face, similar to that of the Savior.
• The Savior's gauntlet looks smaller and more handmade than the Scourge's. The Scourge's and Successor's gauntlets look similar and could be the same gauntlet but modified.
• Each Doomfist's banner has a different background.
• The Savior has a bright yellow sunset.
• The Scourge has bright green smoke.
• The Successor has a graphic of a raised fist.
• Taking subtext into account, it can be assumed that the Savior was a heroic figure. The "villainous Scourge of Numbani" is a confirmed evil-doer, and the Successor is still up in the air. Though he is leaning towards villain considering the Reaper line and Petras' comments.
• The Successor's poster background has a raised fist, which is a common symbol of solidarity and resistance movements. This could signify a good or grey moral alignment depending on how the Successor's story plays out.
• The museum announcement claims that the gauntlet was wielded by the Scourge, but from his poster it is evident that his gauntlet was for the left hand. The gauntlet that we are familiar with is right-handed. Either this is an oversight or:
• The Scourge the announcer is referring to is actually the Successor, and/or,
• The Doomfist gauntlet adjusts to the dominant hand of its current wielder.
• Starting with a viral Reddit post, Terry Crews has been many's choice for Doomfist's voice.
• 11/21/16: Terry Crews responded to the post with "I would LOVE TO PLAY DOOMFIST" (source)
• 12/15/16: Terry Crews visited Blizzard HQ, leading to mass speculation that this was connected to him being casted as Doomfist. (source)
• 1/4/17: Terry surprises everyone again by posting on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, asking fans "Who wants to hear me do the voice of Doomfist for real??" (source, source)
• 1/5/17: Fellow actor Dwayne Johnson cosigned Terry as Doomfist on Twitter. (source)
• 2/3/17: Terry does a mock audition for Doomfist for Yahoo esports. (source)
• There is also a theory that the Doomfist gauntlet itself speaks. This is actually evidenced by a piece of concept art for the Cinematic Trailer where there is written dialogue for the gauntlet.

Concept art of Doomfist gauntlet speaking (source)

• At some point the name for the Scourge on the museum poster was changed from Akinjide Ngumi to Akinjide Adeyemi.
• Some theorize that one of the Recall portraits could be the Successor due to the similarities between their silhouettes.