The Omnics and Discrimination

How Overwatch's story is inspired by a real-world sensitive topic

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Overwatch's Lore

The game is set on Earth, 60 years in the future, but the story truly starts 30 years from now. In an age of rapidly evolving technology, humans of the future manage to create flying cars, laser guns, teleportation devices, and real artifiial intelligence. To bolster manufacturing and creating economic equality worldwide, humans created sentient robots named Omnics in facilities named Omniums built across the world. For a while, humans and omnics existed side by side somewhat peacefully. There were some humans who were unhappy having to treat these "tin cans" as normal people, but they were a small minority. One day, however, the omniums went rogue and began producing militarized omnics to overthrow the human race. This global issue was called The Omnic War.

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With such an overwhelming and nearly endless amount of expendable omnic units, the omniums were a major threat to all nations. Desperate to fight back, the UN formed a team of the world's best soldiers and scientists to fight against the Omnic threat. This team was called Overwatch, and it promptly ended the Omnic crisis, saving humanity. Shortly after, omnics and humans signed a peace treaty that made sure that no such crisis would ever happen again. Overwatch stayed together to delve into space exploration, medical advancements, and other ways to help the world, but politics soon brought the organization down. Due to internal conflict (Much like Captain America: Civil War) Overwatch was disbanded, since the world didn't really need heroes anymore.

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Fast forward 30 years later: Tensions have risen between humans and omnics once again. The small minority of anti-omnics has grown larger, assualting omnics daily, and protesting to take away their rights. Some humans have grown strong relations with their omnic bretheren, and many begin to risk their lives to make sure that their robotic friends aren't permanently shut down. I created this site to inform readers about the rich lore about Overwatch that gains a lot of it's influences from real-world discriminations. In summary:

  1. Humans create Omnics
  2. Humans and Omnics live in peace
  3. Omnics go rogue and attack (Omnic Crisis)
  4. UN creates Overwatch to stop Omnics
  5. Omnic threat stopped and peace is restored
  6. Overwatch is disbanded
  7. 30 years later, omnics and humans don't get along again
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Omnic discrimination is brought up a lot between the heroes of Overwatch, both in-game and in comics and animated shorts. Each Hero has a stance about the situation, and some join the fight because of what happened in the Omnic Crisis. Characters like Junkrat and Roadhog hate omnics because they destroyed their homes in Australia.Younger characters who didn't experience the war, like Lucio, is pro-omnic and loves the idea of living in peace with them. What I like about the game is that it allows you to play as 3 characters who are part of the omnic race:

Name Description About
Bastion
Omnic A militarized omnic unit who re-activated after the war, unaware of his orginal purpose.
Zenyatta
Omnic A robotic monk who travels the world in search of inner peace.
Genji
Cyborg Ninja Student of Zenyatta who used to be a Japanese mobster before a fatal wound gave him an augmented body.

Click here to learn more about Bastion