Breaking down the details of the latest Overwatch teaser

When you’re in a game with a player who instantly locked in Torbjorn and immediately started spamming “You’re making a chicken out of a feather!”, it’s hard to remember that Torb is one of the greatest minds Overwatch has to offer. The absolute madman lost his arm and immediately grafted a giant lava shooting claw on there instead of a new hand. Most importantly, he seems to have designed “Slaga”, the weapon featured in the latest Twitter teaser from Overwatch. If we know anything about Overwatch, the next hero will likely be wielding Slaga on the fields of battle. Let’s take a closer look at Torbjorn’s notes to see what hints we can gather.

At first glance the blueprints seems to reveal something that looks a little like a hammer or a strangely shaped mace. But if the device is a mace, it’s handle is far too short and its head is far too big. So, what exactly is this weapon that Torb is working on?

Our first, and probably best, hint lies in the word scrawled over the top of the blueprints, Slaga V3.0. Aside from simply being the weapon’s name, it’s also the Swedish word for flail. If we look a little closer, we can see that under the larger blueprint -- as well as on the covered left side of the main blueprint -- is a smaller breakout that appears to show the flail expanded out into something that almost looks like a grappling hook, so perhaps it’s some combination of the two.

A flail that doubles as a grappling hook might sound strange but it seems well within the realm of possibility for one of the Overwatch world’s greatest inventors. When the flail’s top is tucked in, the device could serve as our newest hero’s primary weapon, while it’s expanded for could serve as a mobility tool, allowing the character to zip around the map somewhat like Widowmaker, or perhaps pull enemies or allies toward them like Roadhog.

While this all seems like a good guess for the base of the weapon, it does leave a few unanswered questions about the teaser image released today. In the bottom right, on Torb’s tablet, we have what look like a list of materials included in making the flail. While most of them seem to make sense, Gummiblad -- Swedish for rubber sheets, per Google Translate -- as well as the second to last item which is tough to make out but appears to be, maybe, Hog Mutter -- which means, nothing specific that I could find -- both seem to be lacking in any quick or sensible explanation.

Along with all those notes about Slaga’s capabilities and lethality, there’s one more important thing we desperately need to point out.

Blizzard Entertainment

Look! It’s Torbjorn’s cat, playing with a mousey. We’ve seen Torbjorn’s cat before, in the comic Reflections.

Blizzard Entertainment

Wait a minute. There’s a cat... owned by Torbjorn... who’s interested in his schematics? Do you remember the scrapped hero who was a cat wearing a jetpack? Rocket Cat has been a fan favorite, despite being deemed “too far” to be an Overwatch hero. Months back, lead writer Michael Chu mentioned Rocket Cat:

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about jetpack cat since Jeff mentioned the hero a while back. I wasn’t on the team when the original concept happened, but I’ve been thinking that Torbjorn has a particularly interesting cat, and who knows what stuff Torbjorn has lying around...

Wait. Forget Brigitte and Slaga. Are we seeing the origins of Rocket Cat? Heroes Never Die is dedicated to examining the depths of every new piece of lore, no matter how long it takes. We will get the answers the community deserves.