V14 – Pg04
A warm welcome to all you new readers in from the Collective of Heroes. Enjoy the comic. There’s plenty to get stuck into, so go for it! I’ll answer all your comments from the previous page… now!
Events from the previous page continue. It seems all that it takes to screw over your fellow man is a little nudge and encouragement.
On the plus side, the mouse from two pages ago didn’t get caught by the owl. Phew!
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If you’ve enjoyed the comic so far, I post upcoming designs and sketches over on my Patreon page. Soon I’ll be uploading the previous issues in PDF format onto there. So why not help the creation of VANGUARD and throw a few quid/bucks into the pot?
Dan
Wait, are those robots? Controlled via video games?
Damn.
Well that’s just fucking terrifying.
And also makes sense. Remote control, if reliable (probably not all that much against an actual military threat with ECM, but great for pacification like this) allows you to harness the near-sociopathic dissociation of killing through a screen, and depending on the reality of the sim (looks like the kids are wearing armor, so AR or VR?) also ensures you get to indoctrinate the new generation in tactics so that they become more effective soldiers once grown.
Insidious, and very very good.
The operators are inside the suit, but are presented a safer view of the world via AR. Rather than being forced into doing something they’d usually balk at, it is incentivised via ‘credits’. These credit will be explained later in this issue, but essentially one can ‘buy’ their way out of servitude.
And as Ragnarok mentioned, they can be coordinated to operate more effectively as a group, similar to the aborted Land Warrior system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Warrior
seems like controlled by kids that think it is just a game really.
Smoothing out reality to make it seem more palatable and committing atrocities much easier.
Ender’s Game anybody?
Good shout, but unlike Ender’s Game, they are there in the field doing the dirty deed!
I notice that Katie is wearing Redcoat armor even though we can see her head. Ths might be akin to the cutaway shots in the Iron Man films where we see Tony’s face inside the helmet with the HUD all around him.
Kate is in the suit. Tried to do a an augmented reality display. They government doesn’t have the funds to roll out an army of robots, but human’s are plentiful and relatively cheap.
Gamification of subjugation! I love the smily face that tells you you’re doing the right thing.
So they have technology enabling combat androids but use humans and and aigmented reality because its cheaper? Now thats what I call dystopia!