Echo: Tragically Ironic?

The more I ponder on Echo and her backstory, I realize how tragic and ironic the whole situation was. Dr. Liao literally gave her life to create the bridge between humanity and omnics, and foster understanding between the two.

Unfortunately, her creation has, so far, only been shown to be good for one thing: being a brutally efficient murder machine. Seriously, why does a being built for more peaceful purpose have so many deadly attacks? There’s some serious irony in there somewhere.

Either that, or the good doctor wasn’t as good as we thought. Or at least was as morally ambiguous as Moira.

Food for thought. Hopefully some future lore will examine this in greater detail and shed a bit more light on the whole situation.

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“She went to Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes and basically said, ‘I can make an adaptive learning robot. So, that way, when we send out Overwatch strike teams, if you need a pilot, this robot can fly the ship; if you need medical care it can learn to provide medical care—whatever niche you have on the mission, the robot can adapt and fill that role. And that’s why we think she would be really important to Overwatch.’”

Morrison, though reluctant to move forward with the idea, greenlit the project after Liao gave her word that it wouldn’t get out of hand. “But, Mina took some liberties and really made the robot self-learning… through observation,” says Kaplan. “As she was working on the Echo project, the robot started to adopt her voice. The voice you hear from Echo is really the voice of Doctor Mina Liao talking. The more Echo evolved, the more she really adapted to all of these heroes that she was around all the time—watching them, learning to do what they did, the way they did it.”

Liao’s achievement—an adaptive, versatile artificial intelligence able to modify its behaviors, reconfigure (quite literally) on the fly, and learn from those around it—made Echo both the ultimate mission aide and a potential liability as her sentience developed and she began to question her place in the world.

Thing is - Echo is an adaptative robot. IDK, I have the feeling she was first design to fit all roles - but they may have realised with Brigitte - that it was not a good option? So they made her a dps - probably because OW 2 is at war - and so she’ll be more usefull to kill evil robots than help the teamates.

But her ability to copy the enemy on the battlefield IG - is a nice reference to the lore because you can tank or heal - it depends on how you use it and what you need at that moment. And the player playing as Echo has to be a real flex player to be able to use this ability at its full potential.

Source : Echoes of Echo: A History of Hero 32 - News - Overwatch

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This is actually more concerning. Morrison immediately saw the potential danger of the project, but put his faith in a friend. Although an expert in her field, she obviously felt the science itself was most important, consequences be damned. Liao and Moira must have been best friends.

Now we have an adaptive omnic running around with an adaption specifically designed to murder the critically injured in a quick, efficient manner.

I take it back. This isn’t tragedy or irony. This is science fiction horror in the making.

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She isn’t designed to be murderer. She adapted gun herself so she can help Overwatch friends and innocent people of the war to survive. There’re always two sides. Curie and Skłodowska discovered radioactive elements. Some people uses it to make nuclear plant so humanity can get more energy but very risky to keep in balance, other people uses it to make nuke bomb so humanity can kill itself or to kill other civilizations in offensive or defensive way.
Knife got invented and people can cut vegetables etc. or kill other people.
Science isn’t simple.
Our choices make us who we are. Echo took Mina Liao’s personality. She will kill only humans and omnics who will kill others for sake of money, power and supermacy or she will imprison them in prison.

Or she’ll simply adapt into something more deadly and kill them. Will she be a savior and help humanity and omnics reconcile, or will she become a bigger threat? Will she adapt to save them, or adapt to kill them?

The more I ponder this, the more interesting her character potential becomes. I can even see the potential for her to become a Dexter style killer. Charming and pleasant on the surface, but with a very dark side. I’m much more excited for this character now.

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While very few knew of Echo’s true capabilities, Jesse McCree, a Blackwatch agent sent to guard Liao and her research, developed a friendship with the doctor and was often party to her work on Echo. After Liao was killed in an attack on her laboratory, Overwatch, reluctant to continue pursuing the project without its progenitor, shut everything down and placed Echo in quarantine. Years later, an attempt to transport Echo to a secure government facility went awry when the train being used was hijacked by the notorious Deadlock gang; following a chivalric rescue by her old friend McCree, Echo made her way to Paris to aid the newly-reformed Overwatch in their defense against the Null Sector incursion, as seen in "Zero Hour.” Now, she joins the ranks of the newly-formed Overwatch as a full-fledged member.

“Mina Liao lives on through Echo,” Kaplan notes. “Echo absorbed much of who Liao was, and is also constantly adapting to all of the agents around her.”

Freed from the confines of her lab and learning more about the world around her for the first time, Echo continues to adapt while she works with Overwatch as Liao’s living legacy. As she develops more self-awareness and wonders what the future holds for her, her teammates, too, begin to wonder—will she remain a mere echo of Liao, or will she become her own person?

And it seems what she learned from the agents around her was how to kill more efficiently. Hopefully she picks up some of their positive aspects too.

Can you imagine what she would become had the Deadlock Gang had taken her and reactivated her? Or imagine if Talon got ahold of her?

Yes, her description on the Playoverwatch/Heroes page seems to open the possibility of her going dark in the last line (I can’t quote it right now since the website seems to have problems).

Also I think her design looks made for a dark side. She reminds me a bit of the robots design in the film I,Robot (they turn evil too). I mean she looks really creepy when she turns her face off. Replace the face projection by a red point light and you’ve got a creepy killer robot.

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the possibility of her going dark in the last line (I can’t quote it right now since the website seems to have problems).

I quote it here hour before you…

No, you quoted the " Echoes of Echo" article, not the Playoverwatch/Heroes page (Overwatch 2 - Heroes) for Echo.

The article doesn’t voice the idea that she could possibly become dark, but her description on the website does.

So the difference in A.I. between Orisa & Echo is one is adaptive, though both are growing and learning?

And Zen has a “soul”… while Bastion has a… bird and a new hat?

So you meant this

no one knows how she might evolve in the future.

If we take this from “oh lol” standpoint, look at the current hero roster. Half of the heroes are dps. Put a learning robot with them, which class do you think there is most to be copied of? Oh it’s dps.
Echo adapted to be mostly a dps because most of the heroes are dps and even more of the players are dps.
I rest my case :DD
Another note; Echo would most likely have been classified as a support hero back in the day Symmetra was still classified as a support hero.

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New developer interviews has come out and Echo was originally designed as a support when Zero Hour came out. She only became a dps because they thought Duplicate did not fit a support hero.

So the writers got screwed over and look like total :clown_face: because of the game developers retconning her into DPS.

Do you have a link? Please?

Just head to the front page of the forums and click on my thread “Echo was originally designed as a support confirmed”. Read my OP to get the gist of it.

That’s not what the interview said. They said that they tried designs for each role, but liked the Damage role best.

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I think that’s maybe one of their reasons.

If Echo would be support with Duplicate ultimate, people would complain Echo players don’t duplicate enemy supports and so Echo players would have 2-1 from 7 enemy supports to choose most of time. It wouldn’t be fun to play Echo.
And cause Echo is DPS with Duplicate ultimate now, people doesn’t care who Echo will choose and so Echo players are free to choose most of time.

Yes exactly, with the previous sentence:

But as she is exposed to new people, new ideas, and new situations without Dr. Liao to guide her, no one knows how she might evolve in the future.

Liao was guiding her toward good, so it’s implied without her Echo could go bad.

I think Winston, Tracer, Mei and the rest of them are more than enough to guide her towards good in Liao’s stead.

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