// KOTAKU — GAMING
Overwatch’s First Year-Long Story Reached Its Climax As Fans Ask What Was Even The Point
Overwatch began a new year-long story arc earlier this year in which Vendetta, a new sword-wielding hero, rose from the shadows to overtake Talon, the franchise’s terrorist organization long led by Doomfist. The entire narrative kicked off in February when Vendetta seemingly killed Doomfist and took his seat at the top of the organization, and fans were in their feelings about it, much to game director Aaron Keller’s admitted delight. Eventually, Doomfist was revealed to have survived his fall from the top of Talon’s base, and Blizzard has spent the months that followed showing him gathering his old recruits to take down Vendetta and reclaim his place as the leader of the organization. Yesterday, October 29, Blizzard released a new cinematic that brought everything it had been building to full circle. The fan reaction has been, well, complicated.
Overwatch’s latest cinematic, “In the Wolf’s Mouth,” is the culmination of all the audio dramas, web comics, and animated shorts Blizzard has released over the course of 2026, and it starts out with Sojourn, Winston, and Tracer all infiltrating Vendetta’s stronghold at Colosseo. By this point, several of her allies have pulled out of her world domination scheme, but the members of Overwatch must still stop her from setting off an EMP that could level most of Europe.
Sojourn manages to make her way to Vendetta, but is nearly defeated. Just as her cybernetics are starting to spark from all the damage, Doomfist himself, decked out in a new fist courtesy of Doctrine, arrives on the scene and gets a rematch with his usurper.
This time, he is victorious and says that he now sees the world anew. He had been complacent for as long as he’s been around, but now says he has “evolved.” Evolution through conflict has ostensibly been the character’s whole deal since he debuted in 2017, but that hasn’t really been true in practice. Sure, he’s started scheming and putting events in motion, but many of them have just never gone anywhere because Overwatch, having taken this long to put any real momentum into its story, has never followed through on almost anything he’s done. While part of his stagnation as a villain could be attributed to Overwatch‘s similarly stagnating story, it’s true that Doomfist hasn’t really done much over the course of the past 10 years. The short ends with Sojourn begrudgingly letting Doomfist escape with his loyal crew, while Talon’s leader leaves Vendetta for Overwatch to take into custody, swearing that Talon will return as “something new” in the future.
But now that Vendetta’s been defeated, it seems like for all of Doomfist’s talk that “something new” is coming in the future, the end result of Overwatch’s story is that we’re kind of back to square one. Doomfist is in power, Overwatch is on thin ice with the United Nations as an officially unofficial peacekeeping group, and Vendetta’s coup seems to have been nothing but a temporary disruption of the status quo.
“Spends a year hyping up a villain and telling you how strong and powerful she’s become, doesn’t actually matter and all her upgrades are deleted in the span of a few seconds and she gets a humiliating ass kicking without landing a single blow,” a fan writes on Reddit. “Masterful storytelling and stakes, Overwatch.”
“Really feels like Blizzard failed her character,” another responds. “I get that she was going to lose, but holy fuck what an universal and humiliating ass blasting that completely undermines and ruins her character.”
Even Fareeha Andersen, the voice of hero Anran who joined the game’s roster earlier this year, voiced similar criticism after the cinematic went live.
I think… this current ow story arc doesn’t hit for me because it lacks meaning. When the setting remains unchanged after the story’s been told, that can be fine if the characters themselves have changed! But we need to see them experience emotion beyond just anger and more anger
Ironically enough, while some took issue with Doomfist’