I don’t think I have permission to post links yet, so just google anything I quote here to find the source interview/tweet. Thanks Blizz for making this forum.
The term “god program” comes from the official Pharah comic, Mission Statement. Pharah is sent to destroy a rogue A.I. named Anubis that her company, Helix Security, has kept under lockdown for a few years, but that suddenly broke free. Anubis is shown to have the power to control omnics that enter its domain.
The first text in Mission Statement is an internal monologue from Pharah:
I was afraid that someday I’d have to make this decision. Which is more important… The man…or the mission?
Helix Security should have upgraded the Anubis facility after we took it over a few years back. And now the worst has happened – or it’s about to. The Anubis A.I. – one of the “god programs” Overwatch quarantined after the Omnic Crisis – broke its containment at 2300 hours. The company sent in an engineering team at 0200 hours to regain control of the command center. Dead air since.
So Helix sent my team in. We’re not an engineering team. We’re a “kill everything” team. Mom always said she dreaded this part – walking into the unknown. But it’s what I always love most.
Her team finds an injured man and has the following interaction:
Injured Man: The sentry bots…said Anubis saw us as a threat, and then they started shooting.
Helix Medic: They said what?
Tariq, a Helix soldier: Captain? Th- the Anubis A.I. has the ability to control other operating systems- other omnics. I worked I.T. there until last year. If it gets past the Helix firewalls…that would be bad.
Okoro, an omnic Helix soldier: Define “bad,” in context. Please, Tariq.
Tariq: Capable of corrupting infrastructure and launching military assaults.
Helix Captain: I’m not sure “bad” quite says enough there.
Side-note: Tariq must have an interesting career to go from I.T. to rocket killer. After a few moments, Okoro notifies the squad that something is up.
Okoro: Captain Khalil? There is a problem.
Pharah: Okoro?
Okoro: Anubis…taking control of my systems…something terrible is about to happen. My apologies… Run.
At this point Okoro blows his/her own head off with a pistol, and the rest of the squad is attacked by some one-eyed dog robots- presumably the aforementioned “sentry bots” given how they are already armed. In addition to attacking the squad, Anubis is apparently busy breaking the Helix firewalls, as Tariq reports on its status (“Anubis has almost beaten the firewalls!”) a bit later.
Pharah makes a choice to use her last ammo to save Tariq’s life, which turns out to be a blessing because former-I.T.-now-rocket-killer Tariq has an idea about how to stop Anubis.
Tariq: I worked on this system. Anubis is powerful…but it’s old. And I know these bots. Anubis has them all linked to each other – hive mind. What happens to one, happens to all of them. A feedback loop will paralyze them – and Anubis.
This plan works out pretty good. The sentry bots helpfully narrate what is happening on Anubis’s end:
Sentry Bot: Now! Now Anubis will upload. Universal connectivit- SCRAACK
Pharah’s team saves the day. But each of these segments tells the reader something about the identity of the god program Anubis:
1. Anubis is one of multiple “god programs”.
2. Anubis is an old technology.
3. “God programs” like Anubis were quarantined by Overwatch after the Omnic Crisis.
4. Anubis has the ability to control other omnics and operating systems, including sentry bots, a Zenyatta-style humanoid omnic named Okoro, and potentially corporate/military systems across the world.
5. The sentry bots used in the Anubis facility can be linked together by a guiding A.I. such as Anubis, producing a hive mind and the associated weaknesses.
6. Anubis can escape containment by uploading itself to the Internet
We know Anubis’s deal, but what about the other god programs? There’s nothing concrete, though Ilios and Petra make a big deal about a bunch of Greek god statues and Talon interest in the area. Winston’s A.I. buddy of undeclared origin is named Athena (also the name of a Greek goddess).
You can enter some speculation based on the article “Overwatch is Back: Uncertainty and Hope After UN Confirms Vigilante Activity”, which has the following to say about the Omnic Crisis:
When Omnica Corporation revolutionized robotic manufacturing, it seemed the world was on the verge of entering an economic golden age. Their massive factories of automated construction machines and self-improving software algorithms were patented, marketed as “omniums,” and installed on every continent.
What came next is well-documented. The omniums began to break down. Independent analysis showed they would never come close to meeting the corporation’s promises of growth and output. Omnica was investigated and forcibly dissolved after evidence of fraud was uncovered, its omniums shut down.
That is why it came as such a surprise when these defunct, dismantled omniums woke themselves back up and immediately launched a military campaign against all of humanity.
This was a war many countries thought they were prepared to fight. But no single country, no matter how powerful its military, could permanently shut down a single omnium. The adaptability of robots, once celebrated by humanity, had become a tactical nightmare. Worst of all, there were no demands from the omnics. There was no ideological reason for their aggression. They simply attacked, and we did not understand why.
Overwatch’s original triumphs are thusly described in the article:
In highly secretive missions, [Overwatch] targeted the omnics’ command and control protocols. After great sacrifice and heroism in a series of dangerous raids, they destroyed it all, rendering the omnic armies inert. The Omnic Crisis had finally come to an end.
I think the easiest walk from A to B here is that god programs are the “command and control protocols” initially responsible for operating the omnium factories and commanding the omnic armies during the Crisis. Based on the description of the pre-shutdown omniums, these command and control A.I.s are self-improving. The exact motives of the god programs in starting the Omnic Crisis remain unknown. If at least one of them can control other operating systems, maybe they weren’t even using their own free will to start the Crisis.
But there’s a problem with walking away from the “Mission Statement” comic and speculating in the first place, which are some statements from the Lead Writer about god programs -
reddit AMA 2017.5.17
Q: God Programs from Mission Statement have attracted a lot of attention from people, and I have seen them being used to explain away almost anything related to Omnics, such as the crisis, Bastion waking up, the Shambali, Null Sector, and even Ilios. Can we expect to see more regarding these mysterious programs in the near future?
A: There are some common incorrect assumptions about the functionality/existence/timeline of “god programs.” In, Mission Statement, it’s really used as a colloquial way to describe the functionality of the artificial intelligence in Mission Statement.
Old official forum 2017.11.7
Q: What the hell is god program anyway? How many are there? How do they created?
A: “God program” is more of a colloquial term describing Anubis than a designation for a class of AIs.
We’ve never heard more about A.I.s like Anubis or Athena, just some mishmosh somethingsomething happening at Petra related to Greek statues (which are also in Ilios, and presumably stolen/transported to Rialto, and Chateau Guillard). The following email appears on the computers at Petra:
Survey of the uppermost levels of the temple is almost complete, planning for excavation of the lower chambers. Our greatest finds so far are the statues of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and we are hopeful they will be the first of many.
So there’s a lot of god names getting thrown around lately, but not a peep about god programs, if they even exist anymore. One other thing stands out to me- recently the D.Va short featured some small omnics dubbed “Gwishin”. In an interview about the short, Scott Mercer and Ben Dai had the following to say:
Ben: First, it was hard to decide the name. We chose ‘Gwui-shin’ because it means ghost in Korean, which we thought was nice because they are sneaky and stealthy. They didn’t show up on the radar until they came up close in “Shooting Star”. Also, the omnic factory is located underwater so we asked the concept artist to draw something that has an aquatic design, from which the small flying ship that looks like a squid caught our eyes. It may seem similar to the sentinel from the Matrix because of the tentacles but it’s different as it can transform into a battle mode and a flying mode.
Scott: We wanted to make D.Va’s skills look amazing in the animated short during the making of “Shooting Star”, and one of the skills was D.Va’s Defense Matrix. So we had to have the ‘Gui-shin’ omnics shoot missiles, which influenced the outcome of its design.
But even though the name Gwishin was based on the small omnics, the colossal omnic the MEKA force fights on a regular basis is also named Gwishin (Michael Chu confirmed as much in a tweet). It’s like a faction of omnics named “Gwishin”, but we’ve never seen little ones before. To me this raises the question of whether the colossal omnic is an omnium/god program in control of the little ones, if the little ones are independent, or if both are under the control of the underwater factory.
But if god programs don’t actually exist…I’m really confused!
