Noted huge guy Terry Crews is no stranger to gaming. He took part in EA's star-studded Battlefield 1 livestream at E3, built—and then upgraded—his own rig, and even has his very own PC Gamer search tag. And now he's hinting pretty strongly that he wants to join the Overwatch squad as the voice of the mysterious Doomfist.
Who wants to hear me do the voice of Doomfist for real?? https://t.co/l4aszRrDYEJanuary 4, 2017
The whole thing got started in November, when Crews said on Reddit (via Imgur) that he'd love to voice the as-yet-unannounced Overwatch character Doomfist. The idle comment got traction the following month, when he actually paid a visit to Blizzard HQ and posted a photo of himself in front of an Overwatch sign. "LOVED visit with the geniuses at BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT today, and meeting the creators of one of my favorite games!" he wrote. "OVERWATCH! LETS GO!"
The likelihood is that the "LET'S GO" exhortation was simply an expression of Crews' force-of-nature enthusiasm, but this Artbuff story suggests that there might be more to it—that Crews may be gently, but actively, campaigning for a role in the game. Support for the idea certainly appears widespread among Overwatch fans: His Facebook post attracted more than 3,000 comments in less than six hours, and the responses that I've seen are almost universally positive. (Although some commenters would prefer that Blizzard simply add Terry Crews to the game as himself.)
The Overwatch wiki explains that Doomfist is actually a title that's been held by three different characters thus far, each of whom has wielded the powerful gauntlet seen in the original Overwatch cinematic trailer. As former Overwatch creative director Chris Metzen explained in our 2015 interview, the gauntlet was originally meant as just a "fun riff" on a "generational hero" like Green Lantern—that is, multiple individuals who take on the same hero persona by wearing a particular techno-magical doodad—but as time went on, the idea grew into something bigger, and is now a highlight of Overwatch history.
Metzen emphasized at the time that Blizzard had not announced plans to make Doomfist an actual character, and it still hasn't, but I can't help thinking that this is a snowball that's just begun to roll downhill. Intentional or not, Doomfist is clearly a significant part of the Overwatch lore, and Crews seems like the sort of celebrity voice that players could really get behind. He's not a neophyte, either, having previously voiced characters in Saints Row 4 and The Expendables 2.
And come on, how do you say "no" to this?
