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.

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.