We almost got a cat-with-a-jetpack hero in 'Overwatch'

Some characters that were created early on in Overwatch's development were shelved, never to be seen again. One of those characters was a cat. With a jetpack. And they shelved it.

In an interview with GameSpot, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan revealed that a cat hero was made for Overwatch while the team was testing the boundaries of the kind of characters they could get away with in the universe.

When we were first starting to make Overwatch we had to test the boundaries. It was a new IP and we didn't know how far or wide we could go, so Winston was kind of this cornerstone in a lot of ways. It was like, "Hey there's a gorilla and he talks, is that okay? Yeah, that's okay." Then on the other end of the spectrum you've got guys like Soldier: 76 who is a soldier guy and they were good bookends. But we had explored much further out from that.

We had done a lot of concepting. We had one hero who was just a hockey player. Literally a hockey player. We later made a Lúcio skin for a hockey player. But he was just a hockey player hero. Then there was this one hero that was a huge internal debate on the team because we just loved it so much but it didn't make it. It was this jetpack and it had this cat that laid in it, like a cat does. Then every once in awhile it would paw at the controls. It was a cat in a jetpack.

That was one of those moments that helped define Overwatch. We just went, "Yeah that's probably too far." But yes. We had a cat hero.

The way Kaplan worded his response makes it sound more like the hero was a jetpack that happened to have a cat controlling it. Either way, we're sure pretty much everyone could agree that a jetpack-cat would be a great addition to Overwatch, logistics be damned.

The jetpack-cat hero sounds kind of similar to D.Va. D.Va sits in and controls her mech suit, which happens to have jetpack-like boosters. She also has face paint that kind of looks like whiskers.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

If only the animal emblazoned on her chest was a cat instead of a rabbit, then we could close this discussion once and for all. For now, though, we'll just have to sit and dream about what it would be like to play Overwatch with a cat in a jetpack.