The narrative part of Overwatch has been criticized by many for moving at a glacial pace. A feature story on IGN was a response to this, claiming that Overwatch is trying to go for a big Marvel Cinematic Universe-type story, with all the small bits we’ve been seeing for the past few years acting as the “Phase 1” of the overall story. Personally however, there’s another big problem with Overwatch‘s story. No, it’s not the inconsistencies, like McCree’s inconsistent relationship with the gang he joined, though that is a flaw. What I’m talking about is the treatment of the Omnics.

For those somehow not in the know, Omnics are the race of sentient robots in the world of Overwatch, and they act as a big racism allegory in the game’s story. Omnic-haters like Torbjorn, Zarya and Junkrat have disparaging remarks toward the playable Omnic characters, even if they’re on their own team. The King’s Row map has anti-Omnic graffiti, with the Omnic population segregated to live underground.

Junkertown forces Omnics to fight in death battles for their entertainment. The only map that has a completely positive attitude toward Omnics is Numbani, where Torbjorn, Zarya and Junkrat use racist voice lines when they’re brought there. Omnics are representative of the marginalized, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. There is a problem, however, with how Omnics are portrayed as an oppressed race. Multiple actually.

One problem with trying to use Omnics to tell people that racism is bad; is that the story keeps giving valid reasons to distrust Omnics. At the heart of Overwatch‘s backstory is the Omnic Crisis, where deactivated Omnics suddenly reactivated and chose to rise up against humanity in a typical sci-fi plot. This was a worldwide crisis that caused widespread devastation; the backstory of the latest hero, Baptiste, even says that 30 million children were left orphaned in the aftermath of the crisis.

In some places, the crisis is still ongoing: Russia is dealing with a Second Omnic Crisis and a kaiju-esque Omnic occasionally attacks South Korea, retreating every time and re-configuring itself for its next attack. The motive for the Omnic Crisis? There was no motive. That’s the problem.

So far, there has been no stated ideological reason for the Omnic Crisis. They just rose up, killed thousands to millions, and are still killing in the game’s present. With that in mind… can you sincerely blame the distrust people in the Overwatch world has toward Omnics? It’s not like real world racism, with ideological standpoints and power dynamics, no, these things that people built killed millions for no reason, out of nowhere.

Like hey, if the Omnics were tired of being treated as “things” that were abused by humanity, that would be a justifiable reason for the uprising. The crisis happening suddenly and without known reason presents the possibility that such an event can happen again; and the fact that it’s already happening again in Russia kinda provides in-universe characters a good reason to be wary.

Here’s the thing: in the real world, racism is still here among human beings. In fact, the problem is probably getting worse. Why on Earth would one focus more on the rights of robots than the rights of other people? The world of Overwatch already sees all human beings as equal, ignoring real world realities, while proposing a theoretical fictional race of robots to have this discussion on.

This feels ridiculous, especially since they’ve committed large-scale atrocities suddenly and without reason. One could say that using Omnics as a stand-in for actual races saves the Overwatch team from having to delve into messier territories, but as said before, the narrative presents justifiable reasons to be distrustful of Omnics, which is pretty shortsighted.

The Overwatch event and corresponding comic, Uprising, seems to be a re-approach of the conflict. The event revolves around a faction of Omnic terrorists called Null Sector threatening to take over London. The thing is, unlike the Omnics of the Omnic Crisis, these ones actually have reasons for doing the things they do. While there’s arguably justifiable distrust toward Omnics, they were used as slave labor to build London up to its modern state and forced to live underground to not enjoy the fruits of their labor. At this point, these Omnics have a valid reason to rise up in that they’re treated as a slave race.

However, Overwatch‘s approach to the problem is the whitewashed liberal perspective: all injustices must be approached non-violently and if you’re violent, you’re just as bad as your oppressors. All progressive movements are not entirely built on non-violence and it’s naive to think so. For example, as Pride Month approaches, remember that Stonewall, the event was a major catalyst for the LGBTQ+ rights movement, was a riot. Martin Luther King Jr., an example that’s much closer to this, is portrayed as a figure that proves that “non-violence works!” when he was actually a reviled figure at the time. Oh, and he still got assassinated for his troubles, despite the non-violence.

A character shown in the comics and memorialized on the King’s Row map, Mondatta, is the whitewashed Martin Luther King Jr. figure that preaches of nonviolence and harmony between human and machine. Then comes Null Sector, and as any sort of violence is viewed as bad for progressive movements, they are portrayed as a hyperviolent, unreasonable organization. Of course, to demonstrate how unreasonable they are, they choose to attack on the eve of a peace agreement, setting the movement back several years.

They kidnapped Mondatta, (among others) and went on to kill hundreds before Overwatch stopped the uprising. Null Sector is a caricature. It’s the hypothetical “violent left.” It’s the hypothetical that people claim throwing milkshakes at fascists can lead to. These Omnics had a reason to act out, but Overwatch writes them as characters raging a race war with no sympathetic traits to speak of, extremist caricatures that deserve to die.

The portrayal of Omnics as a marginalized group is absurd. For one thing, for the love of god, if you’re going to use a fictional race to talk about racial injustice, think about the history and context of that race so that people won’t be like “hmm, actually, the racists might have a point.” Secondly, being strictly nonviolent will not stop oppression. I’m not saying that marginalized people should jump straight to war, because that’s a crazy hypothetical, but that is a hypothetical that Overwatch embraces. Progressive movements are struggles, and in trying to do a short sighted racism allegory, Overwatch avoids portraying that reasonably.

In writing this article, I realized that I actually like how slow Overwatch‘s main story is. I realize that it will one day re-approach the topic of Omnics and I hope that by the time the story gets there, there would be way more thought put into the conflict. If not, well, I’m glad it’ll take a long time to get there.

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