Louder Than God’s Revolver And Twice As Shiny @makkurii - Tumblr Blog

Day 1 prompt: Celebration

spurikenweek? more like spurikenmonth at this point with my snail's pace... but i will continue to work hard to get the rest of the prompts out, however slow that may be lol ❤💚

Pgs 3/11 for comic overall

wildissylunas

Why is Cole so revered in the lore/voice lines?

Ok, I've seen this question be brought up in both a serious and joking manner and I completely understand it because unlike a lot of other characters whose skills are shown heavily either in actual gameplay or pre-game voice lines, Cassidy's full assortment of skills actively can't be explained or shown further then the set skills he's allowed to use in game.

Basically if you don't really look into his lore you wouldn't really grasp why he was chosen to be in Blackwatch in the first place if his only perceived "skills and talents" are good aim, rolling around and a grenade.

So let me explain why Cole Cassidy is so skilled that not only Overwatch want him, but Talon too.

1) His Resume

The first thing in Cassidy's resume is helping found the Deadlock gang when he was fifteen and even before that he was actively Ashe's right-hand man, making him second in command in Deadlock as well.

The next thing he was apart of was Blackwatch, I'll get into why he was hired into Blackwatch later. Cassidy was brought into Blackwatch by Gabriel Reyes, to which (at least by the time of the Venice incident) Cole proceeded to become at least one of the people Gabriel relied on and trusted most and at most, second-in-command in Blackwatch. (Again I'll get into that later)

Now this leads off of the previous point and that is the fact that Cassidy was one of the only Blackwatch member other then Genji to be brought into Overwatch;

Here he is in an Overwatch graduation photo. He is presumably graduating with Tracer, Winston and Genji.

Now let's get into more resent years of him being a Vigilante/Bounty Hunter. Cassidy has been recorded to basically be continuing the work he did with Overwatch but more on his own terms, as seen in this;

this;

And this;

He hasn't really "laid low" in his time away from Overwatch, he continued from where he left off but now he works relatively alone and on his own terms.

And now we can get into the final item on his resume; recruiting and possibly lead his own Overwatch team.

Throughout the New Blood comics it plays with the idea of Cassidy taking the role as "leader" instead of focusing on orders given to him by someone else, not only that but considering what little we've seen on the PvE Story Mode Campaign, Cassidy is mostly fully animated and framed with Sojourn and Winston. Two people who are heavily expected to be taking on leader roles during story mode. (I will expand more about this in a later post)

So that is everything we know that is in Cassidy's resume, now let's get into the next topic;

2) His talents and skills

Let's start off with what he can do in game;

Peacekeeper - Accurate, powerful revolver

Peacekeeper - Wildly fire remaining rounds.

Combat Roll - Roll in the direction your moving and reload

Magnetic Grenades - Throw a short-range grenade that homes in on nearby enemies and deals additional damage if it sticks to them.

Deadeye - Focus. Mark. Draw. Cassidy takes a few precious moments to aim; when he’s ready to fire, he shoots every enemy in his line of sight. The weaker his targets are, the faster he’ll line up a killshot.

(Sources; Wiki, Character Bio)

Now most of these abilities seem to be of the course for a character of his capabilities, but I'm only going to be talking about one; Deadeye.

From what we know in lore Deadeye is most likely what Cassidy is like at peak performance, which on it's own at a lore standpoint is pretty impressive. At a lore standpoint Cassidy is perfectly capable of essentially sniping six people using an impractical gun for sniping.

Yes this is him at peak performance but that is only in game, in lore he is capable of doing that at any time. Think about that for a second. He can basically use his Ultimate at any time.

Ok now, let's get into all the skills/talents he has that are implied by the lore itself;

Having an aim that is on par with Ana Amari with a gun that is generally not used for long range attacks

Being Ana's Amari and Gabriel Reyes's protégé

Him being trained by both Ana and Gabe means he's most likely skilled in more weapons then just a peacekeeper revolver (i.e. sniper rifles and shotguns at the very least)

Being skilled enough at age 17 to be not only considered for Blackwatch but to be put into a high security prison

Being able to survive multiple botched Black-ops missions (Brigitte: My dad says a lot of your missions were disasters.)

Most likely having a hand in writing the Blackwatch playbook.

(The way it emphasises "my" gives me the impression he had a hand in writing it)

Was able to take out a talon with out any casualties, on his own and in an enclosed, moving area. Not to mention several of those talon agents were taken out in the dark. (see Train Hopper)

Oh and let's not forget that he was actively of the run with a 60 million bounty on his head, meaning he was not only being hunted down by police, but other bounty hunters too.

There is also his history as a bodyguard (he was assigned to protect Mina Liao a lot), leading Blackwatch missions (he was in Blackwatch/Overwatch from 17 - 30/31 he most definitely ran a few missions), and just his strong ass loyalty (backstory retconned to he left after the Swiss explosion to emphasise this)

I probably missed some things but these are all the skills he has that are implied by lore. Now we can finally get to the actual question;

3) Why is Cole Cassidy so revered?

The reason Cassidy is so revered is because of the amount of skills he has, his pension for being able to learn new skills and his ability to be a massive threat to those he's fighting against even if he's on his own.

And do you want to know the final nail in the coffin?

The only enhancement he has is is prosthetic to which as far as we know lore wise, is a regular prosthetic.

Other than that Cassidy is, on the surface at least, some regular guy who dresses up as a cowboy.

So in conclusion, Cole Cassidy is more of a threat and an asset then people give him credit for. However this actually isn't of any fault of their own, as much as I've harped on in this post and others on how competent Cassidy is, there is one thing that will still remain true.

And that is Cole Cassidy is a dumbass, a heavily skilled and competent one, but a dumbass none the less.

Now this leads to one final question...

Why does Talon/Doomfist want Cassidy on their side?

#cowboy tag