Extra Punctuation: Hating Warhammer 40k and Space Marine

[nyysjan]

Snip

Yes, but not every setting needs to have real world analogies, in fact, one might argue that the lack of real world analogues makes the setting, in some ways, better than having them would.
If your complaint about WH40K is all about not having real world nation analogues warring between themselves, then i agree with you (but don't actually see the problem), there are some real world analogues (Valhallan = Russian for example), but they are not at war with other such analogues (except in limited ways, some might rebel (like Krieg did) and then be put down, but that's not constant issue.

It's not about the lack of analogues I'm more using the analogues as an example. My real point is that I feel that the Empire is too stagnent en entity to be interesting.

Yes individual planets might interesting. Yes there are empires within the empire (eg Ultramar).

But with such a large expanse of territory it's implausible to me that the empire wouldn't experience some sort of ideological and territorial fragmentation and that these fragments wouldn't face off at some point.

What I suggest is just something that I think would be more believable AND more interesting.

But there is fragmentation, and those fragments do face of, that's what the huge bureocracies are there to prevent, inquisition to uncover, and the imperial guard to stamp out.
That's where the constant rebellions come from, even different bureocracies are at each others throats, arbites and ecclesiarchy might argue about something (read the enforcer omnibus), inquisition is at constant war with itself, space marine chapters might class between each other, etc...

 

[ACman]

Snip

Yes, but not every setting needs to have real world analogies, in fact, one might argue that the lack of real world analogues makes the setting, in some ways, better than having them would.
If your complaint about WH40K is all about not having real world nation analogues warring between themselves, then i agree with you (but don't actually see the problem), there are some real world analogues (Valhallan = Russian for example), but they are not at war with other such analogues (except in limited ways, some might rebel (like Krieg did) and then be put down, but that's not constant issue.

It's not about the lack of analogues I'm more using the analogues as an example. My real point is that I feel that the Empire is too stagnent en entity to be interesting.

Yes individual planets might interesting. Yes there are empires within the empire (eg Ultramar).

But with such a large expanse of territory it's implausible to me that the empire wouldn't experience some sort of ideological and territorial fragmentation and that these fragments wouldn't face off at some point.

What I suggest is just something that I think would be more believable AND more interesting.

But there is fragmentation, and those fragments do face of, that's what the huge bureocracies are there to prevent, inquisition to uncover, and the imperial guard to stamp out.
That's where the constant rebellions come from, even different bureocracies are at each others throats, arbites and ecclesiarchy might argue about something (read the enforcer omnibus), inquisition is at constant war with itself, space marine chapters might class between each other, etc...

And that's where I find it oppressive. It's only instruments of the state that showdown with each other like a giant space-USSR crushing rebellion in Hungary and members of the the Kremlin getting hit by members of the KGB.

 

[KingHodor]

The guard uses lasguns I believe as standard weapons, as in laser rifles. Space marines use bolters, as in rapid fire mini rocket propelled grenade launchers.

I saw a cut away picture of the idea. The shell has about JUST enough standard ish propellant to get out of the barrel then a rocket fuse lights and takes it the rest of the way to the target, which it tends to pierce as even the standard bolts are fairly armor piercing, then when it embedded within a target the bolt explodes from within.

I have never heard of anyone trying to marry the design of a RPG and standard armor piercing rounds on top of making them about.60.70 caliber( such a bullet doesn't exist to my knowledge) and then make them standard issue for special forces, to the point that is also what the SIDEARMS fire.

[Aspie_Gun_trivia]Actually, WH40K bolters are partially based on a real gun/ammo concept called the "Gyrojet" that was made in the 1960s. It enjoyed very limited commercial success and was evaluated by the Army in small numbers, but in the end, it offered few advantages (silent, little to no recoil) while suffering from a number of significant disadvantages compared to traditional ammo (expensive, unreliable, very limited magazine size, low muzzle velocity)[/Aspie_Gun_trivia]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

You know, I came in writing about all the reasons why the wh40k series works for me.. but another question came to my mind.

Can someone who doesn't get or like a IP really be qualified to rate it? I know nothing about My Little Ponies, never cared for it. If I rated a game for it based on my prejudices saying 'It's a serviceable game, but since I really couldn't be bothered to care, I considered it garbage'? It astounds me the sheer number of reviews who say the same thing, that it's Gears of War down to the letter, but since we love Fenix but really don't care about Titus... it's a worse game.

What did the game set out to do? It wanted to send waves of enemies at you and have you shoot, chop, and kill until you felt like a weapon of war. Success in my Book. Slowed down around the final acts because of all the snipers, but I felt my actions had more weight and damage than I ever did in a Gears of War game.

Ignoring a game's good points because you have another game that you've been fanboying over in your mind for a while is not good journalism. To wit I'm not accusing the author of doing this, but the crime has been committed oft in not just Space Marines but games all over.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Yahtzee doesnt really get the backstory of 40K does he? Ah well, its all very funny until he targets you / your interests.

ALso, obligatory BURN THE HERETIC!

 

[Terminal Blue]

But there's nothing to really rival the empire. The empire is this massive pervasive influence on humanity and i'm suggesting that it would be interesting to have more than one faction of humanity that had serious clout. An orthodox cult of the empire with kingdoms/confederacies loyal to it fighting against protestant chapters of the church. This isn't allowed it the fluss as all deviations are treated as absolute heresy.

Now, I have the dubious honour to have read a lot of 40k background material over my childhood, as well as being an Inquisitor player, and this is where my real nerdiness shines through.

But I'm sorry, this is wrong. Most worlds, it's explicitly stated, have only the bare minimum of contact with the Imperium, on some a starship only arrives every few hundred years to pick up resources gathered by a population who believes the sky god Chumbawumba needs them to sacrifice tons of metal by piling it up in a particular place, and religiously as long as Chumbawumba can be rationalized loosely as 'The Emperor' by the missionaries who propagated this belief, it is fine.

There are, it is explicitly stated, cults and religious groups which rival the Ecclesiarchy. The Cult of the Redemption is one of the largest and thus the only one with significant fluff, but there are also the Death Cult Temples, weird tribal religions which just happen to centre around a 'sky god' and so forth. The only one I can recall being 'heresy' is the Cult of the Resurrection, and one particular space marine chapter who just went off and started worshipping a giant snake (Freud Freud). They may not fight each other, but they are meant to have played a pivotal role for example in the Age of Strife (the second big civil war in the Imperium).

The reason you don't see massive interplanetary battles between rival 'nation states' is not because those states don't exist but because they don't have spaceships. Spaceships in 40k are giant monstrosities with hundreds of megatonnes of armament which need a special (and very highly priced) mutant to actually fly them.

Still, since most 'civilized' worlds or even individual hive cities seem to be ruled very much like Dune, with a noble caste divided into houses, there is a lot of fighting even if not full scale open warfare. Heck, the game Necromunda is about battles between manufacturing cartels (or more precisely the bottom feeders and scavengers descended from those cartels). But since 40k doesn't focus on these situations you won't get this information by looking at 40k.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Also, it has Ultramarines.

Never played 40K in my life and all I know about the setting has been gleaned from my boyfriend.

But the name "Ultramarine" makes me crack up every time. The guys at Games Workshop MUST have been taking the piss when they came up with that.

Then again, I reckon they were also taking the piss when they came up with the not-really-dead-Emperor as a psychic lighthouse. (My boyfriend may have given me a slightly bizarre rundown of the setting.)

Why are any of your surprised the skinny nerdy man who loves fantasy, wears a stupid hat, and has a pretentious beard doesn't like military fiction?

I refer to the psychic Emperor above and question whether that counts as "military fiction". "Saving Private Ryan" is military fiction. 40K is something else entirely!

Yeah when I heard ultramarines at starting SM I thought " Really? All of the others largely sound like knightly orders(which quite frankly they kind of ARE) and this one is basically could have just as easily been rendered as AWESOMESAUCEmarines wtf GW?

It's the fact that ultramarine is a colour (a shade of blue), turning the name into a very silly pun on the word "marine". I can almost see the design guys nudging each other.

Guy 1: "OK. So, they're spacemarines in blue armour. What should we call them?"

Guy 2: "Ultramarines! OMG, isn't that hilarious!"

Guy 1: "LOL! We gotta go with that."

But isn't a ultramarine a lighter shade of blue? Closer to turquoise or cyan, and less like the shade of, I believe royal blue they use for the awesomesauce smurfs?

I didn't say it was an especially GOOD pun.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Actually, WH40K bolters are partially based on a real gun/ammo concept called the "Gyrojet" that was made in the 1960s.

Not really though. I doubt the people who made 40k knew or cared.

It comes down to this. There is an assumed progression in science fiction from 'less advanced' projectile weapons to 'more advanced' energy weapons, accompanied by the assumption that combat becomes even more long range and deadly than in times before. What 40k has done is just a completely bog standard reversal of this concept for perversity's sake, accompanied by scaling everything up to 11 and making it cartoonishly huge.

Energy weapons in 40k are trash. They're cheap, reliable crap weapons which are given to soldiers because they are easy to maintain and can be recharged by throwing their ammunition packs in a fire. Even plasma weapons are just insanely dangerous crap which overheats all the time and explodes.

The elite weapons of 40k are all projectile weapons and melee weapons. In fact, the 'ultimate weapon' is just a sniper rifle and a normal sized pistol (carried by Vindicare assassins in game), they're just implied to be the most perfect sniper rifles and pistols ever made, made by people whose understanding of ballistics exceeds our own by a considerable margin and who probably spent an entire lifetime making one piece.

Don't be so serious. It's just deliberate perversity and breaking a cliche for the sake of breaking it. The fact that it seems to have spawned its own cliche (hello Gears of War and your stupid looking chainsaw guns!) is regrettable but beside the point.

 

[FlipC]

So of the current 270+ comments only about three address the actual issue - Is it a good game? Remove the franchise setting to avoid bias and it's repetitive, frustrating; not really innovative; and leaden as hell.

Stating that it suits a 40k setting and that people who dislike it don't get the background etc. would be like insisting that everyone who sat down to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy had read the Silmarillion so they could really appreciate it. Not exactly the way to win over newcomers.

Sure Yahtzee's hasn't 'got' the 40k setting and is basing his opinion on the setting more on hearsay than fact, but given that the game itself barely addresses it that's hardly his fault.

It's a game for those who are already a fan of 40k who'll forgive it its flaws simply because it allows them to stomp around as a member of the Adeptus Astartes. Anyone else is going to say "Yeah it's okay I suppose"

 

[gamegod25]

So says the game critic people only listen to because its funny to hear someone make dick jokes in a british accent.

See I can take cheap, biased shots too. Hey Escapist I want my own weekly internet rant show.

 

[wooty]

Best 15 minutes or so of my life reading some of these comments, I knew straight away that this article would generate controversy and a "man the defences" attitude. May not agree with some points you put across Mr Croshaw, but the responses are keeping me entertained at least.

 

[Siege_TF]

"In the grim darkness of the far future the million worlds of the Imperium Of Man are for the most part peaceful and productive places, with a small portion of them embroiled in near-constant war."

It's closer to the 'reality' of 40k, but isn't anywhere near as catchy. It's also 'deeper' in that it's more complicated than 'Always war, everywhere, ALL THE TIME'. The rulebook is used to draw in new players and skim the surface of the 40k universe with the rest fleshing it out. You can't say something's shallow if it would take hours and hours to explain everything (and it would). Overdone? Sure. Juvinile? Not really (see modified opening line), at least no worse than Star Wars. I know it's got a tabletop game and i seriously doubt it's a well written all-encompassing tome codifing Star Wars.

As for the game being merely 'okay' there's at least one 40k game that's far, far below 'okay'. It's called Firewarrior.

 

[Malshien]

Warhammer madness.

Also this extra punctuartion is:

I loved this comment, it's so true!

Like most I knew when Yahtzee got around to it he would rip apart Space Marine, afterall he once referred to people who like Warhammer "the gelatinous creatures who like warhammer 40k" ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1404-Darksiders ) so it was hardly surprising really. Yes I know that quote could be construed as out of context seeing as it was referring to art direction but I'm sure if Yahtzee would reply he would probably confirm that yes he meant that all those who like games workshop products have as much taste as someone who licks car batteries.

Anyways I thought I would agree with a previous poster that I think that Yahtzee's dislike for the subject matter has blinded him to not only the game itself, but also his own haywire compass that tells him what is good about a game and what isn't. Now I could go on to say about cover based shooting games or gritty war torn stories that he has panned or liked, but honestly whats the point? Did his article make me chuckle? Yes. Did his article make me want to post and/or further a discussion? Yes. Will his article stop me playing again tonight? Hell no!

If that makes me sad then fine I'm sad, but I'd rather be sad and having fun then be cool/right and bored out my skull playing generic shooter number 41 (also known as Modern Warfare with 42 being Battlefield).

(Oh and I like the 40k universe I don't care if it has a million plot holes, it makes its own weird kind of sense which is good enough for me! It's definitely much more fun to just go with it then be pretentious and pick it apart just because it wasn't written by Shakespeare... just saying!)

 

[Corporal Yakob]

I was going to get pissed because this is probably the only time I have fervently disagreed with Yatzhee (I like Gears and COD but also enjoy taking the piss out of them for their flaws)-but then I remembered his job is to incite as much rage as possible for entertainment's sake. So you enjoy your thing and I'll enjoy my thing Mr Croshaw and we'll go our seperate ways. And keep making me laugh!

Oh and one last thing: the 40K universe is most definitely not retarded.