E-123 Omega

E-123 Omega (Ｅ－１２３＂オメガ＂?), or Omega E-123, is a fictional character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. He is a robot created by Dr. Eggman as the last and most powerful of the doctor's E-Series robots, only to be deactivated and sealed in an abandoned base to guard Shadow the Hedgehog who was in suspended animation in a stasis capsule. Furious at having his power wasted in this way, Omega swore revenge on Eggman. Rouge the Bat then accidentally reactivated Omega when trying to free Shadow and she soon convinced the two of them to join together as Team Dark to track down their mutual enemy. Although Omega failed to achieve his goal at the end of his team's adventure, he has continued to pursue his mission, occasionally coming to the aid of his allies and other heroes.

Omega has since become a recurring character and part of the larger ensemble cast in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, often working alongside Team Dark.

Appearance
E-123 Omega's design appears to be based on the rest of the E-100 Series robots (particularly E-102 Gamma) while making him stand out by giving him a stockier upper body and arms with red eyes instead of green. He is also much shorter than the other models and his shoulders are much larger with a visible Greek symbol on the front of the left and back of the right with red handlebars on the top. Also, instead of the twin exhaust pipes and the Jet Booster of the first E-100 Series robots, Omega has one circling pipe around the waist with two flaps attached and having twin jets installed in his back below the hunch. The stripe running from his head to stomach has also been changed so that it is a separate piece of metal altogether and not simply painted on like the others and he also has one extra finger and two hands with yellow wrists studded with large spikes like a dog collar. Just below his stripe is a plate of clear material that allows others to see some of his inner workings.

Omega's design was changed in a variety of subtle ways during the Solaris incident; His overall look seems to have thinned him out whilst making him look taller. The yellow casing for his "head" was treated much the same and also brought his eyes closer together. His shoulders almost doubled in size and look more square with defined grooves surrounding his equally larger omega symbol. The central stripe on his chest had been changed from protruding about an inch or two from the rest of Omega's chassis to roughly five inches. The jets on his back were also pointed at a lower angle. The flaps on his sides had also been given grooves, the black arrows seen on his waist pipe and flaps had been removed, the red arrows on the front of his lower leg have been replaced with red stripes, the red section surrounding his torso got split into two pieces and he had sharper and somewhat skeletal hands.

Minor changes were made to his visual appearance in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood such as a smaller casing for his "head," flat shoulders with omega symbols on the front and back of both of them, the flaps hanging from his waist pipe are now thicker and rectangular, the arrows on the front of his waist pipe have been replaced with two slots, the red arrows on the front of his lower legs have been changed to red stripes and a richer yellow was used in his color scheme.

Starting from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Omega has mostly returned to his original 'Sonic Heroes design, with the flattened head, further separated eyes and smoother claws, but has retained the clunkier movements of Sonic the Hedgehog though they are not nearly as slow. In some recent games he has shown small differences. A mainstay since Sonic Generations is that his claws are much more detailed with visible mechanical joints throughout each finger. Aside from that, his central stripe has been shown to be visibly thinner and the width of his upper body widened.

Omega was given an alternate look in Sonic Runners as part of a Halloween event. His torso is entirely covered by a jack-o'-lantern with Omega's eyes peering through, all the red sections of his body have been recolored purple except for his omega symbol which is now orange, his wrists are now an orange shade and vines extend from the pumpkin to his shoulders and waist.

The vertical stripe on Omega's chest has differed in color throughout his various appearances. In Sonic Heroes, the stripe is black in his character artwork and on the in-game model in the Nintendo GameCubeand Xbox versions of the game. However, it is metallic silver on the in-game model in the PlayStation 2 and PC versions as well as in the pre-rendered cutscenes in all versions of the game. His Sonic Channel artwork, which is based on the art from Sonic Heroes, would feature the black stripe for many years before it was updated to the silver color. Most subsequent games would depict Omega with a silver stripe, with Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood being a notable exception. Another error seen on Omega's models in the console version of Sonic Generations, Sonic Runners (his official artwork does not share this mistake) and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U is that all of his torso is colored red, removing the black section circling below Omega's head.

Personality
Omega's only goals in life are to take revenge on Eggman for wasting his potential and destroy the doctor's other robots to prove himself superior. These two goals are absolute above all else in Omega's eyes. As a result, he tends to be extremely headstrong and reckless, unlike his teammates on Team Dark who have more common sense. In Sonic Forces, he performs what is supposed to be a recon mission on Eggman's base, and, rather than sneaking in to get information, storms in guns blazing in an effort to purge the base of every robot within, despite his orders having nothing to do with extermination. At one point in Shadow the Hedgehog, Omega made a comment about how he would "reign supreme". Some fans have taken these words quite literally, and believe that Omega wants to take over the Eggman Empire and become a robot overlord in the style of Metal Sonic. However, subsequent games have shown this less believable, and it is generally taken to mean that he wishes to prove himself as the greatest of Eggman's robots.

Like E-102 Gamma, Omega has a free will and a personality. However, he is considerably less noble than Gamma; while Gamma destroys only what needs to be destroyed, Omega destroys anything that could possibly pose any kind of threat to himself or his mission. From his quotes, he thinks other Eggman robots are inferior to him, dismissing them as "worthless consumer models", especially the E-2000model. He hates side tracking especially when it comes to locating Eggman.

While Omega, as a robot, is largely emotionless, he is capable of understanding the emotions of others, and reacting appropriately. For example in Sonic Heroes, when Team Dark is lead to believe that Shadow may be an android created by Eggman, Omega comforts a depressed Rouge (albeit in a distant, matter-of-fact matter) by saying that they needed the original to make a copy, thus meaning that the real Shadow is still alive out there. In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), he shows depression and anger when Mephiles reveals that Omega is the one who will trap Shadow in the future after the world blamed Shadow for the release of Iblis. It is also possible Omega is superstitious, as he believes in omens such as the appearance of stormy weather, though this might have been because of his scanners picking up a powerful magnetic field.

Omega is fairly loyal and dependable when one is on his good side, a bit of a holdover from his original purpose as a servant, and he's not incapable of looking past differences to forge alliances. He also genuinely cares more for Shadow and Rouge as allies, and trusts their word over everyone else's. In addition, he will temporarily abandon his vengeful quest against Eggman (or even indirectly work with him) if he detects a bigger threat, as evidenced by his participation in the battle against Metal Sonic or Solaris.

It also seems that he lacks any sort of negativity towards Sonic and his friends, and did not even recognize them during their first meeting in Sonic Heroes, as can be heard when the player finishes the Team Battle using Omega. This is probably because Omega was made to contain Shadow the Hedgehog and not as a means to defeat Sonic. However, he does not appear to hold them in high regard.

Stereotypical of most robots, Omega tends to use technical sesquipedalian words instead of casual human speech. An example of this is when he uses "negative" or "affirmative" instead of simply saying yes or no. Although he has been known to use typical human speech before, such as one of his Hint Ring lines from Sonic Heroes: "Looks like those guys are guarding that case."

Notably, in all of his appearances (barring the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game, in which he behaved in a manner stereotypical of old robots), he makes odd, often erratic movements, such as spinning his head as if it's on a 360 degree axis in many circles and rotate his entire upper body the same way during confrontations with Eggman in Shadow the Hedgehog. Whether this is a programming flaw or intentional is not revealed. Also in Sonic the Hedgehog, when Omega is standing still, he makes odd movements as if he's doing warm up exercises.

Voice Actors

 * Jon St. John
 * Jeff Kramer
 * Maddie Blaustein
 * Vic Mignogna
 * Aaron LaPlante