"There is a finite number of Omnics"

General Discussion
1

…is there?

Where did this idea come from?

We saw Omnics “fresh off the assembly line” (as Reinhardt put it) in the 2019 Overwatch 2 PVE demo and my understanding of the Gwishin situation in South Korea was that their attacks had been growing in size in sophistication, indicating that their army had been growing.

If more Omnics aren’t being created… where are all these extra Omnics coming from? How is Null Sector’s strategy of throwing military units at various cities/locations even supposed to work? Or does this only apply to the ‘intelligent’ Omnics like Ramattra and Zenyatta and not the Bastion and OR-14/15 units?

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omnics are being produced still, yes.

not all omnics reach sentience/self awareness, like zenyatta, etc.

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3

I’m satisfied with that explanation, but it raises the question of why this is no longer possible.

Hopefully we get an answer.

4

This is what happens when Blizzard doesn’t give us a better understanding of the setting of Overwatch.

Omnics, the ones you are familiar with; Bastion, Zenyatta, Orisa, and now Ramattra are special because they have sentience or consciousness.

The rest of the omnics, the mass produced ones, do not have that luxury. Much of what Ramattra is talking about is the sentient Omnics that can no longer be created (for some reason or another). Due to a lack of a resource, or because of some event that explains what happened.

Echo is something akin to a version 2 Omnic (and Orisa is as well, using an older body/model). And again, it’s not clear why these two possess sentience.

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I’m thinking it only applies to omnics like Zen and Ram, a specific line. Though they don’t make that clear and it’s been established that “omnic” is used interchangeably with “robot” in the Overwatch world. Bastion is considered an omnic. So they really need to be more specific.

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My guess is that after the Omnic Crisis, regulation was put in place that severely limited the AI of future omnics to keep them under control.

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Maybe it’s a retcon. But yeah, Ramattra’s motivation doesn’t make sense when you consider this fact. He wants to save Omnics because he’s afraid of them going extinct. So he turns them all into frontline soldiers? It didn’t seem like the status quo was really so bad for them that they would risk extinction.

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“Omnic” = a robot produced in a (former) Omnica Corporation omnium. Omnic is basically a brand name.

Echo isn’t an Omnic. She’s a robot designed by the person who designed Omnics for Omnica Corp though.

Don’t trust Blizzard to stick to their terminology though.

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No. Omnic Crisis is basically when a bunch of sentient omnics decided to oppose mankind and try to eradicate them. Not all omnics were interested, but a lot of them were.

EDIT: Err. Slight edit here. Certain God AI were responsible for the Omnic Crisis in manufacturing and controlling non-sentient Omnics. Anubis being one of them.

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I think it makes more sense if we consider this to literally apply to the Omnic brand. That company got shut down.

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I believe it was a single Omnic named Aurora who actually achieved sentience at first. She gave sentience to a group of Omnics (all of the thinking/speaking ones) and perished in the process. Nobody has been able to replicate that yet. So there are indeed a Finite number of sentient Omnics.

Ramattra would then commandeer Null Sector and take control, taking their factory to pump out cannon fodder soldiers. They are far more expendable than the sentient ones are, who are dying due to human hate and negligence.

Bastion is interesting, as he seems to have gained sentience on his own. Maybe he’s the key to ending this conflict and making it possible for more sentient Omnics to be born.

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perhaps this is sort of what ram was implying- that the sentient omnics are the finite ones. the sentience came from an omnic called aurora (revealed in a symm comic), and she gifted all the current omnics of her time the sentience as well as the iris. perhaps new omnics wouldnt have the same level of sentience if at all

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I don’t think he is saying they can’t be produced or created anymore only that they cannot reproduce and create more generations (offsprings) themselves or something along those lines. I could be wrong though

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Bastion is interesting, as he seems to have gained sentience on his own. Maybe he’s the key to ending this conflict and making it possible for more sentient Omnics to be born.

Sombra mentions a locked storage drive inside of Bastion that they don’t seem aware of that has good encryption. It’s a rather specific thing for her to talk about.

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They are being built, so yes. And if the racism thing they have working against them were to go through, they could just stop building them. I could see that being a little worrying.
And on top of that, not all omnics are sentient like Zen. So the “finite” thing could be referring to that gift.

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I feel bad for those who are passionate about OW lore. It just never holds up to close inspection, and I see a lot of headcanons thrown around to try to make it work.

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Surely Echo is sentient though, right? I think Ramattra is just a brand loyalist.

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Yeah, it’s a bunch of vague hints and details that everyone is going off of because there’s no official word on the overall setting of the game.

People can only infer basic details, based on the limited details we have from the comics and dialogue found in the game and the cinematics.

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19

It’s an amazingly interesting universe.

It just needs some good writers thrown at it.

I wish Alyssa Wong would come back - although she may have already left behind some great content for us.

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The weirdest thing about Null Sector is that apparently in OW2 they’ve started a world war, and the human militaries are losing. But they can’t build more? How could they ever achieve those kind of numbers?

I guess maybe their grunts are non-sentient robots.

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