I love the idea of Meal Team Six, but in all seriousness, I would just like a really nice and well-made kit with a lot of options that covers a lot of thematic space for the concept of near-future/ultra-modern soldiers. A soldier wearing cutting-edge US military equipment from today is probably how most modern troops are going to look for the next half-century, to be honest. I think that’s why Battlefield 2042 was so, “conservative,” with its designs, it’s just what is practical and realistic. This is the soldier of the next half century.
But for actual FUN near-future designs, take a look at some cyperpunk concept art stuff. Faceless head covering helmets, blocky VR goggle looking things over the upper face and eyes, a bunch of extra cameras, antennae and electronics on the backpack and shoulders. Maybe some armor plates and shoulder pads. Maybe shoulder mounted heavy weapons. Maybe bizarre blocky gun scope options. Maybe heads and helmets with a bunch of tubes coming out of them. Maybe a little extra robot arm from the backpack that is handing the user an extra magazine to help with reloading. Maybe a jetpack. Maybe thin metallic prosthetic limbs. Maybe a giant cyborg gun replacing an arm. Maybe a power loader exoskeleton that current robotics people are developing and we see in Death Stranding. Maybe an optional extra gun that is on top of the helmet. Maybe featureless drone heads.
I’m just spit balling and brainstorming here, maybe something like Wargames Atlantic typically makes a sprue. A boring base body but alternate heads, gear and kit to represent different themes. So I’d go for 3 themes, modern soldier, cyberpunk augmented soldier, and robotic limbed humanoid drone. And a bunch of extra glue-on options to fit any theme, like cameras, antennae, touch-screens. Cyborg prosthetic limbs could represent any of the themes, even today. Mixing and matching would give a lot of options, could represent a lot of stuff. Modern soldier theme would be current-day equipment and helmets, maybe with head cameras and night-vision goggles. Cyperpunk would be big VR goggles, part-metal cyborg heads, head tubes, wrist-mounted keyboard for on the fly hacking. Drone options could be actual humanoid robot heads, full face covering helmets that could have a human underneath, big blocky or cylinder shaped heads with simple geometry that contain electronics, and maybe heads that are just uncovered electronic messes, in the vein of Star Wars IG Droid line.
Maybe have multipart weapons that could have parts swapped for modern scopes and attachments versus some more exotic high-tech blocky scopes.
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