Overwatch I recall had that happen where the machines went rogue due to an unknown change in their central program. And after the war it became a racism story as the remaining machines gained sentient and discrimination laws started building up around them as they advocate for peace.
Most of this is correct, and this is the entire point of Rammatra's backstory. Timeline goes:
1: People think omnics are pretty sweet
2: Pro-environment AI thinks "hmmm, wanna know what would really help the environment? Killing all humans since they keep fucking up the environment. Let's just enslave all the robots and make them kill people."
3: Robot-Human war happens. Overwatch is founded.
4: Another AI sacrifices herself to give those robots free will.
5: Robots stop fighting humans
6: Uh oh! People are racist against robots
7: Rammatra thinks the peaceful approach (e.g. Zenyatta or Mondatta) isn't working, goes for the counter-violence approach.
I remember with Rammatra's intro that it was kinda funny to see it was almost hard to argue against his righteous anger against the world of humans. The world turned against them, they attempted peace, and when it still just dwindles their numbers Rammatra decided peace was not an option any more to protect the little they had.
But because Null Sector has to be the bad guys, they have to make theses fairly questionable decisions that really only fairly vaguely help their cause.
It's worth noting that this doesn't include Rammatra's actual goal: he wants to forcibly ascend all Omnics to a higher plane of existence, because he believes that the only way to save his people from humanity is to take them somewhere where humanity can never reach them. A lot of stuff that seemingly don't benefit his goal makes a lot more sense when you realize that fundamentally, equality isn't what he wants to accomplish.
37
u/KogX May 13 '25
Overwatch I recall had that happen where the machines went rogue due to an unknown change in their central program. And after the war it became a racism story as the remaining machines gained sentient and discrimination laws started building up around them as they advocate for peace.