To silence him? Baptiste was a low-ranking officer and field medic with Talon, so how much sensitive information was he actually privy to? Hell, he somehow thought Talon was a perfectly legit security company that provided rescue and relief – clearly he doesn’t know anything important if he didn’t even know what he was doing there.
To set an example? Talon seems comprised entirely of self-serving mercenaries from all around the world loosely held together by a common interest in profiting off of war, so you’d think it would have a revolving door of membership. He can’t be the first person ever to have deserted.
Honor? Talon isn’t a family, or a nation, and it isn’t united by ideology or camaraderie. Why do other Taloners call him “traitor” as if he stabbed them in the back or somehow personally offended them? Besides his former squad-mates, why does anybody care?
I can understand why Talon would want Baptiste dead, but more in the “shoot him if you happen to see him” way, not the “let’s cause a scene by sending a goon squad to a crowded train station just to get this one guy and and his washed-up former soldier cowboy friend” way.
How many guys have died trying to kill this one nobody who doesn’t even threaten them? How many resources have they expended just looking for him?
the reasons can be many. Talon would have an interest in not letting defectors reveal any information about the operations that involved her. even if they are mercenaries, we know that often the raids and acts of terrorism do not have the name Talon printed on the news media. they are to all intents and purposes witnesses who must be silenced if they ask for help from official organizations that could investigate Talon: helix, overwatch…
in the case of baptiste specifically I think that the most useful motivation to eliminate him… is his direct knowledge with Sombra. she is a mercenary who trusts him as a friend, but Talon doesn’t trust both of them. Baptiste would probably be a non-priority person were it not that he himself boycotted a section of talon operations (death of cuerva) and presumably knows sombra better than most of the folks investigating her (comic research)
and while Sombra doesn’t want to disengage from Talon’s information network for his own purposes… Baptiste doesn’t. Baptiste could also hypothetically link to the sensitive information that Sombra gives to the Talon… or worse yet, push Sombra to switch factions, if one day the Talon loses enough power to trust the hacker to save itself. volskaya’s cinematic confirms that sombra acts when it suits her. informing baptiste where to find angela ziegler (we guess from reading the short story and new blood) is a confirmation that she could become an indirect mercenary of overwatch, when the opportunity or the right favor arises.
or at least, in my opinion it is a valid reason to hunt down a ‘simple doctor’, although the fact of reacting against the talon operations is already reason enough.
here we have to focus on the narrative difference between the short story and the new blood saga:
in the short story Talon found Baptiste, but they don’t kill him right away. they have every interest in having him still with them as an ally also for his survival skills. if they bribed it once, presumably they could do it again. maybe thanks to his “friend” mauga. as a terrorist organization, Talon likes to ask for alliance before killing someone who has demonstrated skill at something (as happened with Efi in thoN).
in new blood we have to accept that Baptiste has now lost his chance to join the Talon, it is quite likely that it is the correct behavior to kill him on principle. but we must also remember that this comic saga has the HUGE flaw of not giving any psychology to the threat (in this case, the soldiers of the talon). I mean, all enemies are literally indistinguishable squiggles. we’re a far cry from the visual quality we had in the first mccree on the train comic where any talon soldier had nice artistic detail in just a few panels. I really wouldn’t give much weight to how talon or null sector behave in new Bloods, which unfortunately behave like puppets that revolve around the protagonists like in a hack and slash game.
Well, Talons military side is at it’s core mercenary outfit. It’s likely that the Talon brass itself isn’t even looking for Baptiste at all. They probably just posted a huge bounty on his head after he left and let the mercenaries go after him to their hearts content on the off chance one of them manages to solve a minor inconvenience for them. They don’t care if the average goon lives or dies, there’s plenty of fresh meat for the Talon grinder.
So there’s an endless stream of low level troopers who think ‘it’s just one guy, right? how hard can it be?’ who run face first into a special ops trained combat medic and die instantly because he’s a bit tougher than they imagined.
I don’t think it’s the fault of any one writer, but I have a really hard time believing Talon maintains a positive public image. Every time we’ve seen them enter public view, it’s been a disaster.
Retribution: the then-trusted Overwatch begins investigating Talon. Overwatch is maybe tied to the sketchy assassination/botched arrest of an accused terrorist, but Talon is (probably) definitely tied to lighting up Venice and destroying property just before the world-famous Masquerade.
What You Left Behind: Talon torches and loots a small fishing town to send a message – a message that only gets heard if people know it was them. To be fair, the message was intended for the cartel, not the public, but I still don’t see how they sweep this under the rug.
Storm Rising: Overwatch, now in hot water but still seen as legitimate, captures a Talon associate. Talon, again, responds by shooting up the town instead of involving local authorities.
Train Hopper: Talon robs a train full of wealthy witnesses in broad daylight.
New Blood #3 (Baptiste): Talon goons enter a crowded train station, point guns at civilians, and then start a firefight.
Maybe, but Sombra’s the liability in this case, not Bap. Killing him doesn’t stop her from leaking information, it just gives her a personal reason to work against Talon’s interests. They’re just be kicking the hornet’s nest.
This I actually really liked. They enlisted Baptiste’s help because they happened to be in the area. Mauga, his personal friend, convinces the brass that Bap can still be an asset; Nguyen, being practical, just sees him as a liability and doesn’t want to involve him, but also isn’t going to compromise the mission by going out of his way to eliminate this non-threat.
The writers didn’t need to contrive some super special reason why Talon needs to get Bap, they just had Talon do Talon things and reach out to him as a matter of convenience (and believable personal motivations).
It’s kind of funny you should say this, because I always thought the old comics looked really unpolished. The art quality took an upwards turn with Reflections in my opinion.
You’re right about the villains’ behavior, though. I was really disappointed to learn that Null Sector was going to be the antagonist in PvE, but they needed to have hordes of faceless enemies for players to mow down with impunity, and you can’t do much better than soulless robots for that purpose.
(By the way, is it just me, or did null troopers actually have some personality when Uprising first came out? I thought I recall them talking/complaining when they got discorded/hacked. Did they retcon them to be unintelligent drones?)
This seems most likely to me, but with Talon having its fingers in as many pies as it does, I would think they would have more oversight.
I don’t think Talon tries to have a positive public image. It’s more a case that Talon can (and will) find you if you publicly out them. Sure, you could report your local Talon operation to the police or newspaper, but all that happens is that someone from Talon knocks on your door and puts a bullet through your skull.
Not a great idea. Especially if your local police are in the pocket of Talon, which they might well be given the absolutely absurd rate of criminal activity in the Overwatch universe.
So it’s less that people like Talon and more that they just don’t talk about Talon. Everybody knows that Talon are doing terrible things. They just can’t do anything about it. So they do what all people who aren’t superheroes do in that situation; they keep their head down and pretend everything is fine while hoping the situation solves itself.
I remember them having little visual quirks, like looking around when tracer blinks or shaking their heads when they come around from being hacked. Not sure I remember them talking, though I might be wrong.
But that sparks another question; given that Bastion appears to be spontaneously intelligent, does that mean that all of the Null Sector units are capable of the same thing? They did make use of Bastion units in the uprising, after all. Assuming they all have a vaguely similar level of computing power, that has some pretty horrible implications for what Ramattra is doing with his giant army.
