War of Aegis

A video game franchise, starting with a first person shooter, and also including a puzzle game, real-time strategy, and skirmish wargames.

I'm trying to get this page into some kind of order, so editing the original content. Until this process is finished, I'll leave the original version at the bottom

Games

Listed in order of release

War of Aegis

The original FPS. This game's story cast the player as a commander in the Orbital Marine Corps who is forced to go back to the front lines to lead a convoy of refugees to safety when aliens known as Shriekers launched devastating attacks on Earth and many of its colonies. The OMC was effectively a ceremonial force at this point in the story; deprived of all their real power thanks to centuries of disagreement between the Earth and colonial governments.

The most memorable advertisements for the game featured Admiral Book, a holographic "command AI" who was responsible for setting out the missions for the player. The AI's appearance was unofficially modelled on Lady Maxime, who recorded the character's voice. She is tall and heavily built, and even her OMC uniform is heavily stylised to give the impression of a dominatrix outfit; it isn't particularly revealing, but the fabrics being rendered without a texture map can give the impression of latex or rubber.

War of Aegis 2

The second game introduced a little more politics to the plot, although it was possible to play through most of the story without paying attention. This game started by focusing on military engagements between refugees and colonists, as many offworld human settlements had doubled in size overnight, leading to their individual cultures being threatened. The story then proceeded to detail the second wave of Shrieker invasions, and the World Emergency Council's creation of a special OMC taskforce to deal with the alien threat. Later in the game, the focus moves to newly constructed orbital habitats known as "Stratocolonies".

War of Aegis: Beyond Battle

The third game in the series, and commonly referred to as "War of Aegis 3" by players; the 3 was later added to the official title. This game pushed the player to take part in political manoeuvring with roleplaying elements as well as the actual firefights. The story starts with a distress call from a group of children on an uninhabited planet, after their transport ship was damaged and they were stranded on a remote planet. In the news reports between sectors of this game, it is revealed that Shriekers (often colloquially known as "roaches" now) have shown a tendency to attack surface settlements and then move on to other human constructs in the system; but have been known to ignore worlds where the only human presence is on stratocolonies. It seems they'll leave you alone if they don't see you on the ground; which led to many fan theories speculating why this would be after the game's release.

This game allowed the player to play as the original protagonist, Commander Marsh, as well as a team of allies which he forms through the social parts of the game. Each of these characters has different strengths and weaknesses in battle; and each mission allows only some character choices.

4 of Aegis

Another game with an experimental naming style, which was later retconned to become "War of Aegis 4". It was done by the design team in an attempt to remain relevant when many other games were using gimmick names like this. The game was controversial for dropping the presence of Commander Marsh, who has now been appointed President of the Council. Several of the playable characters from Aegis 3 are playable here, and there are stages where the player can create their own character.

This game was the least popular in the franchise, although it was still played by a lot of people even two years after its release. Rather than releasing sequels, the developers decided instead to offer DLC adding more plot to the end of the game, continuing the story at irregular intervals. This was not a popular decision, and many fans write petitions calling for an actual sequel, or stopped following the franchise.

One of the final instalments under this model (later released as a free download for all players) introduced speculation about the shriekers' original reasons for invading Earth. It has been revealed by this point that they had known about humanity for a considerable time, but only came to Earth in search of something specific. Even though the in-game timeline has advanced nearly thirty years since the first game, it was discovered that they are still attacking Earth, tearing down abandoned human cities and fighting small scale ground battles against the remaining animals. One tactician suggests that they are searching for something; and a linguist attempts to analyse shrieker communications and suggests they're searching the planet for an "Unfolding Codex".

War of Aegis 4: Return to Earth

A spinoff from War of Aegis 4, but unlike other story upgrades this one was later discontinued, and is now unavailable and highly prized by collectors. This mission pack dealt with a team travelling to Earth in the hope of finding the Unfolding Codex before the shriekers do; and the story ended with all of the named characters dying. Nobody knows why the developers did this.

War of Aegis: Shadow Covenant I: Shadow Covenant

Nearly two years after the release of 4 of Aegis, and only a month after the poorly-received Return to Earth, nobody expected another edition of this game. There was some speculation that work on the long-promised War of Aegis 5' had been abandoned, and that Return to Earth had just been an attempt to wrap up the franchise neatly. Then, fans were surprised by the launch of a spin-off in the form of the Shadow Covenant series. Media at the time mostly ignored the bizarre subtitle of this game, and instead simply referred to it as "War of Aegis: Shadow Covenant".

The Shadow Covenant games are set hundreds of years before the shrieker invasion, at the height of the Terran Empire (although there are already news reports of some colonies resenting the control of Earth, and hints that the Empire will soon break apart into factions). This game is set on a drifting spacecraft, the Shadow Covenant, which was launched near the start of interstellar colonisation and then rediscovered after more than a thousand years drifting in space. A team of Colonial Marines is sent to investigate, and retrieve any items of potential historic or cultural value. However, they found themselves attacked by zombies on board the derelict ship.

This game deviates from the original military FPS gameplay, instead acting as a skirmish wargame. The player can give orders to a team of marines, or take over any of them for specific parts of the mission. At the time Shadow Covenant 1 was released, the game's lead designer said that it was the first "episode" of a complete seven-instalment story. He promised that the whole story had been written, and that it was large enough to span seven complete games. After a couple of leaks from the studio, it became common knowledge among fans that this seven-part story was going to explain what the Unfolding Codex is, and that the objective of the seventh game would be to transport the Codex to a museum on Earth; explaining the shriekers' obsession with recovering it.

War of Aegis 5

A return to form for War of Aegis; this game was seen as a big departure from the path they had been following with 4. It was popular, and went back to the model of one brave soldier having to fight against a vast shrieker army; starting with a rescue mission for some humans inadvertently landing on a planet, and ending with an assault on a shrieker hiveship in order to prevent them pursuing the characters back to their stratocolony.

This game's big new mechanic was weather. On the planet, there was a complex climate; and you could often look at a weather forecast before deciding which day to perform a specific mission. This would sometimes cause changes in the map based on weather conditions, with flooding or dust storms making different areas impassable, or changing the effectiveness of different weapons. But it also became clear (not mentioned in the manual) that some shrieker unit types would only be deployed in weather favourable to them.

War of Aegis: Shadow Covenant II: Guns of Liberty

The second Shadow Covenant game was set on another derelict ship, this one a lot more recently lost. The game again shared the name of the ship, Guns of Liberty, which was a rebel warship from the early days of the Empire. This time, the player is controlling a group of marines hoping to secede from the Empire, and hoping that the records aboard this lost ship could provide some insight on effective ways to fight against an overwhelmingly larger power. But again, the ship is full of zombies, and it turns out before the end of the story mode that it had come into contact with the Shadow Covenant a generation before.

In-character, the zombies are referred to as 'revenants', and it is left ambiguous whether they are actually dead people, or the descendants of an isolated human population who have evolved into something else under extreme circumstances. But by this point, almost all players and game journalists call them zombies.

The most popular new part of this game was an array of multiplayer options, which allow squads from different colonies to raid the ship at the same time; fighting each other directly, or trying to herd the (limited numbers of) zombies towards their enemies.

Aegis Conflict: Super Deformed Cartoon Carnage Squad

A spinoff game, which may have been created as a joke by the development team after management acquired the rights to include cameos by several popular characters in the War of Aegis franchise. SDCCS introduces characters who would not fit with the previous tone of the War of Aegis games in any way.

One rumour, as yet unconfirmed, suggests that when initially released the game was going to have a War of Aegis title, but would have been denied an 'Everyone' rating for their use of the word "War". Oddly enough, changing it to "conflict" was all the change they needed to make their game suitable for children.

It is primarily a deathmatch party game, designed to allow people to play against each other either online or on split screen. It uses an early version of the War of Aegis 6 engine, which was already in development when this game was released. However, the shaders have been replaced to give the game a cartoony atmosphere, with the uniforms of the OMC changed to primary colours, and most of the characters becoming giant-headed caricatures. Cameos also appear from many other games and TV properties, including Bubble Hunt Magnate, Bibi Babi Miko, and Teddy Lupin. In this game, there is no character death; player characters are instead "stunned" and sit down with cartoon birds or stars flying around their heads for a short recovery time.

There is a short story mode, which may have been added as an afterthought; it deals with President Marsh and Professor Nerk (an antagonist from kids cartoon series Bibi Babi Miko) competing to find the mysterious Planet Cake and travel there to collect the Seven Legendary Frostings in time to prepare for the birthday of "the Princess" (who is never identified in any more detail).

• Adelaide Juniper Spenser is introduced to SDCCS during Hypnosis Doesn't Work Like That!, and enjoys playing the game

Shadow Covenant: Guidance Operations

(mobile game)

War of Aegis: Forbidden Mission

(RPG)

War of Aegis 7

(originally planned as the final game)

War of Aegis: Unlimited Rumble

(party game)

Shadow Covenant 7: Pride of Oceania

(announced as the final game in the franchise)

Shadow Covenant Final

(announced as the final game in the franchise)

Aegis: Sequential Action

(Aegis-themed online versions of Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Pandemic, and 5 other board games)

War of Aegis: Next Alliance

(multiplayer game using the Aegis 6/7 engine, but with all maps and options from 1-4 and SC1)

War of Aegis: Next Legend

(announced as the final game in the franchise; a compilation of the story missions of 1-4 using the engine from 6/7)

Unfolding Codex Omniverse

(Announced some time in the future; a spin-off to a TV adaptation of the manga adaptation of Shadow Covenant. Despite being billed as a new game, it will actually be the story modes of Shadow Covenant 1-6 chained together using the engine from Final and new graphical assets, with the inclusion of some new characters and events added by the manga or TV creators. Controversially, if the player transfers their party over to SC7 and final and completes the full story mode, it unlocks a secret mission which appears to deal with the player party from Return to Earth returning to their home base as zombies)

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The 'face' of the franchise is a command AI called Admiral Book, who consistently gives orders to player characters based on a supposedly infallible strategy engine. She's styled as a holographic dominatrix, and contributes a good deal to the sex appeal of the series commercials. She is voiced by (and unofficially based on the mannerisms of) real world Domme and voice actor Lady Maxime.

The franchise has been mentioned in Big Little Bus day 2, as part of Maxime's introduction.

There is an Aegis-themed area at theme park K-World, mentioned in chapter 310 onwards of Hypnosis Doesn't Work Like That!. The area is kind of grimy spacepunk, with lots of pyrotechnics and billed as an immersive AR version of the games. There are rides, cast members, and all kinds of high tech experiments working together to make you feel like you're there. The park's version of Admiral Book is incredibly tall, and has an outfit that "must have been specially made in order to accommodate her bust".

The main military force in this universe is the Orbital Marine Corps. Following an invasion by shriekers which decimated the population of Earth, they are responsible for defending the survivors in orbital slums known as Stratocolonies.

The latest game in the series is War of Aegis: Infinite Praxis, a massively multiplayer RTS spinoff from the main skirmish FPS. The next release is expected to be War of Aegis 6, which is expected to be released in a few months.

The previous game is War of Aegis: Shadow Covenant III: Tybalt's Vengeance. The 'Shadow Covenant' series picked up during a hiatus in the main series, moving the action from human and shrieker colonies to drifting space hulks which had inexplicably been populated by zombies. These games are set three hundred years prior to War of Aegis 5, in which it was revealed that the shrieker invasion was motivated by a desire to control or destroy an ancient artifact known as the Unfolding Codex, which (it is heavily implied) will end up on Earth as a result of the plot of the final Shadow Covenant game and gives power over life and death. The game's developers have promised that each of the 7 planned games will reveal different aspects of how this happened, forming a longer story arc. Tybalt's Vengeance is the name of the derelict ship in this particular game, following the naming convention established by WA:SC I and II.

Adi also enjoys Aegis Conflict: Super Deformed Cartoon Carnage Squad, which is a spinoff using the original engine but all the uniforms changed to cell-shaded primary colours, character models as caricatures with heads as large as their bodies, and the aliens replaced by cameos from other shows including Bibi Babi Miko. It's a cartoony deathmatch game played for laughs. All 'injury' animations are replaced by characters staggering around with cartoon birds or stars circling their heads. Mentioned in Potty Genius (Adrica and some friends played it several years ago), there is a character Cyborg Book (presumably a chibi robot version of the Admiral) who has a fireball attack. Serious gamers (if they play) call this one beamspam.

Mentioned in Trusting the Babysitter (2 years later) is War of Aegis: Shadow Covenant V: Another Eden. This one has more of the same plot, but also has worldwide leagues, including time-limited events with unique achievements and rewards. It appears that if you're a premium member, you can arrange to buy your achievements as actual medals and patches. The PVP stuff is separate from the story; although certain branches are unlocked by various achievements. There is also a mobile game, Shadow Covenant: Guidance Operations which seems to be some kind of resource management game, supporting a team of investigators on a derelict. Guidance can interact with Shadow Covenant IV and V as well as War of Aegis 6 (the same mobile game works with all 3 games; and has achievements for partnering with the same player as they complete all 3 story modes), allowing you to send upgrades to a friend who is playing on PC or console. It's asymmetric teamwork, and being in the same room as your satellite player may be something of an advantage in tournaments. The slang terms "an instance" and "a satellite" are used by gamers to refer to a single engagement on the main and mobile games respectively. Both games have offline story modes; although one oddity is that Guidance Operations does not have a competitive mode; the only multiplayer it supports is assisting players of the main games (although if you're assisting in a PVP match, you're indirectly competing against other Satellite players who you can't actually see).

The ship Another Eden has something called "ICE networks", but it's not clear what those are yet.

One of the past events (the only limited-time event Adam ever got gold on) was called Hydrocene Crusaders. It featured water filled levels with a unique tides mechanic, and rewarded players with some parts of a unique octopus-themed gear set.

It seems that the time-limited events have both a tournament and a story mode, which acts as a tutorial to any new features they add. Most of these features will only exist in multiplayer as long as the event lasts; but getting any event medals will allow you to enable some of those features in future for friendly matches. some of them also tack extra story segments onto the end of the main campaign, or as branches; these enable an event to add new features to the game and still have some story explanation for them. The event that Adam and Claudia are playing starts with an FMV of a meteor striking the Another Eden; the gameplay introduces biological warfare, parasites, and lizardmen. The lizardmen are the only new feature for non-campaign play, and they act as NPCs who can be killed, looted, or herded towards enemies in a similar way to the zombies.

In multiplayer games, players represent the Orbital Marine Corps of several different states (as they're not full united under a World Emergency Council yet), as well as mercenaries and colonists.

Satellite Operations is framed as a training simulation for strategy AIs, allowing it to simulate situations from both the War of Aegis and Shadow Covenant eras, as well as the Imperial Expansion age. The plot of this game later centres around a possibly-alien AI which has infiltrated the training system in order to better understand humanity; the story mode has new episodes released monthly, but many players expect that the explanation of who/what the mysterious AI Miranda actually is will only be accessible in optional missions unlocked by assisting players on War of Aegis 7 (which has yet to be officially announced, but there have been some leaks).

In Shadow Covenant I, the Terran Empire has peaked, started to stagnate, and is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. By the time of Shadow Covenant V, the decline of the empire is obvious and corruption is rampant. In the main War of Aegis games, the Empire exists in name only and humanity has splintered. Without the need to defend against alien assault, we get the feeling that the remaining offworld colonies would have rebelled to start a civil war at the time of Aegis 4.

For the tournament in SC:5, a few of the game types are listed. Some of these may be the same as in previous iterations of the game:

• Dual / Duel - dual has NPCs (zombies) getting in the way, which can be herded towards your opponent; duel is straight PvP
• Revolving Door - new in the update during Trusting the Babysitter. Winner stays on; the battlefield gets smaller after each bout. There is limited healing for the winner, and a severe shortage of ammo and equipment drops. Score is the same as a series of duels, but with a slowly increasing multiplier for each subsequent opponent faced.
• Snowflake deathmatch
• Multi - many opponents
• Meat grinder - players assigned to either of two teams. You can choose to respawn on death, but doing so reduces the points available to you. Some players will bail after dying 2 or 3 times. It also takes longer to respawn each time you die, and if one side is all dead at once they lose.
• Spoons

In Testing the Babysitter, Adam and Claudia are trying to finish the last few achievements for SC IV. One of the achievements mentioned is Master Sergeant, although it's not clear what this entails.

In A Dose of Humiliation, Marcie's little brothers play in competitive leagues on Shadow Covenant 7: Pride of Oceania. This is a few years old at the time (DoH is set in the near future), but still popular among people who like being rude and antisocial in the multiplayer leagues. The successive games, Shadow Covenant Final and War of Aegis: Next Alliance (both of which were hailed as the final game in the franchise) are prone to throwing in semi-cooperative missions at random, so the haters never do particularly well.

From War of Aegis 5 and onwards, the games used a dynamic soundscape system, which improvises background music on the fly based on tracks supplied by the musicians. This system was originally trained by musician Tomas Gattac, who has something of an obsession with AI-generated music.

Spin-off game Forbidden Mission is an RPG which presents a semi-isometric view, and is only playable online to ensure that it's never too easy for people to just follow a walkthrough. It periodically has new puzzles and secrets added, meaning that more aspects of the story were still being revealed several years after the initial release. We see this game in Treating the Babysitter, on the day it is initially released. The plot is set on a decaying stratocolony which is becoming more like the Shadow Covenant derelicts than the functional societies of the later setting. It surprised players by having minimal alien involvement (one subplot involves three political groups with different ideologies fighting over a captured maimed Shrieker), instead focusing on the political intrigue of a group who is aiming to assassinate members of the World Emergency Council in order to enable their creation of a dynastic empire in their corner of the human worlds. The aliens are a constant threat and a propaganda tool used to keep people from thinking too much about how their own ruling class is taking advantage of them.