Extra Punctuation: Hating Warhammer 40k and Space Marine Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NEXT | |
Lord of the Rings and the A Song of Ice and Fire cycle are very different beasts. One is high fantasy the other is a hybrid of political drama and low fantasy. Do you really want to see my best rageface? DO YOU!? FFFFFFFFF- Anyway i had best be getting to bed... | |
Really, you should try reading some backstory. Where else can you get priests that look like this?
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Lol people are still actually posting in this. Yahtzee, my salutations to you, as you just pissed off a significant portion of the internet nerds. 8D | |
There are still wars within the empire, rebellions, trade wars between hive cities, occasional interplanetary wars between rival star systems.
Might be something about Yahtzees claim about WH40K being a juvenile war glorifying fantasy for those who've never seen war themselves? | |
Probably ! :) | |
AD&D, I always suspected yahtzee, others I know have also thought that too. Glad you came out bro, now... You enter a 15 by 15 foot room and see two orcs near a chest. | |
Edit: tl;dr But you should totally read it, there's a Penny Arcade link in the rambling text.. 'dangles link' Ok.. Think of the Ultramarines like monks.. Actually, think of all Space Marines as monks, but the Ultramarines as more boring monks. I mean come on, they have "ultra" in the title.. It's a decent game, I get to kill things in amusing and violent ways. Have you never played Serious Sam? Same kind of thing but with a monk as the character. Have fun killing things, the backstory is cool if you're into W40K. Cliched as all hell.. But cool nonetheless.
That comment is sooooo.. 'throttles' On so many levels. There's a huge backstory. Lots of novels considered canon, lots of game material, both wargame and tabletop rpg, video games, huge list. I think the backstory of the fall of Horus is covered in.. Five novels? Something silly. Motivations are definitely there. For instance, Horus, one of the primarchs... Wait.. I'm not explaining this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM And yes that's as dangerous as it sounds, an astronomicon (psyker who specialises in navigation) can home in on the Emperor's mind since he's the most powerful psyker in existence, so it pays to keep him useful since inter-galactic and FTL travel is now possible. That's the beginning of the backstory.. Now, if you said "Lord of the Rings is about this magic item that people destroy and has no backstory whatsoever because I just summed up three books most people don't read because of the length", then I would refer to you as an uncouth cur, tell you to watch your language and start reading the books instead of watching half of the first movie and giving up because it was too slow. Same goes for W40K. Second point, I like large armies but they usually aren't in the table top game, it's much more focused on skirmishes rather than epic battles between millions of forces. Which I always felt wasn't as true to the story (Imp Guard v Orks for instance), but it's fun. More like Company of Heroes than Age of Empires in video game terms. If we're talking planetary wide infestation of Orks, then yes, nukes are used. Or virus bombs, a few of the inquisitors seem fond of those. Space Marines are more orbital bombardment. Imperial Guard are very much into artillery given how weak they are compare to their enemies, so they'll use trenches and arti, but that's not all of W40K. Space Marines are walking tanks so you can drop the cover a bit, but usually they'll be fighting people they're on par with like Chaos. Larger Orks can 1v1 them but there's not as many that can rip a Space Marine apart compared to Imp Guard. The last point about "juvenille bullshit"... Well see, the thing is, yes it takes ideas from sources like Dune and the Bible, but it's still inspired most games, movies and sci fi books you will read and love. Starcraft for instance, put a picture of a tyranid next to a picture of a.. Mutalisk? Most of the zerg anyway. Hell, Zergs pretty much are nids, Protos are Eldar, and humans are still powered armor humans with space marines. Halo, original concept art made him look Imperial Guard, now he's just a Space Marine fighting against Tyranids. Gears of War is another one, the comparisons to GoW were inevitable given GoW is W40K with a different name. Even ADnD was less original than W40K, although that doesn't stop TSR shutting down every possible instance of a character sheet, badly scanned page or fan fiction with legal threats... Bastards. Love the dark elf one.. That was hilarious. But anyway, W40K, learn to love it, you probably already do just in another form. Fan boy, of course. I love the setting, dystopian futures are always nice. Also a fan of Neuromancer and 1984, but you'd have to be juvenille and dull to enjoy those wouldn't you.. Yahtzee is probably trolling since he even went so far as "Glory of war", forgetting that a Space Marines duty is to die fighting to keep humanity alive. Kind of like the kamikasi of Japan or the suicide bombers of a Muslim nation. The crusades never end, you are probably going to die screaming, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Now pick up a rifle and start shooting, you may live through the next 48hrs. ^ ^ lul. Penny Arcade say it better though. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10 Also, BReftwe A'N-1 is my captcha. What happened the old ones that made sense? | |
Yeah, I got that, it was a joke. | |
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. Where's the 40k Henry VIII? The 40K Muhammad? Getting killed by Assasins or Virus bombed apparently. My examples are just suggestions, Warhammer Fantasy has factions that are analogous to real world nations (Empire=Holy Roman Empire, Brettonia= Britain/France) and the dynamics between them can be interesting to read about and roleplay (If you're into that sort of thing.) | |
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. | |
Although I haven't played for a long time, due to living in a fairly small town in China for the last few years, I still maintain an interest in 40k. I brought DoW with me, still check how the hobby is going every few months and my ears prick up when I hear it mentioned, so I often find myself reading these kind of forum topics about it. Here's the question: Why do 40k fans always have a strange complusion to explain the entire backstory from start to end to outsiders at every opportunity? (I'm including myself here) I've only read the first and last pages, but I bet the history of the space marines/Imperium is described in detail at least 3-4 times each page, the other alien races 2-3 times, a few dozen references to how Starcraft/other scifi is just a copy, and there's at least one reference to Squats. ;) I say this with nostalgic fondness. Also, FIFTEEN FEET TALL and weigh like a TON, made me laugh. Yeah, that's how myself and the other 40k insiders used to explain them to our other friends. Only Yahtzee was watering it down. He didn't even mention the ROCKET LAUNCHING MACHINEGUNS!!, the TANK-GRADE ARMOUR!! or the fact they are SUPERHUMAN WARRIOR PRIESTS who can SPIT ACID!!! Sigh. We seem to complusively do that too. Does anyone want to start on Titans? | |
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. | |
Gonna enjoy watching Yahtzee ripping on Space Marine. The game pretty well sucks ass, and it definitely ain't worth $60. I personally want a refund, but whatever. The War40K setting is plenty of fun, though. It's a good way of getting internet nerds up in arms by bashing it, so I'd assume that's the big reason he does it. Taking War40K seriously is a step in the wrong direction - it's more like you're supposed to look at it and just go "... lol" while you manuever your 15 foot tall 800 pound Space Marines into position to shoot armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades into a bunch of green Cockney aliens. | |
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 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. | |
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. | |
[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] | |
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. | |
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! | |
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? | |
Is that.... is that a bolt pistol with a flamer built in? What madness is this? | |
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. | |
Warhammer madness. Also this extra punctuartion is: | |
I didn't say it was an especially GOOD pun. | |
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. | |
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" | |
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. :P | |
Well I dont know they are actually on battleships and space could be considered like an ocean for these ships but lets not let IMAGINATION get in the way of such things your totally right *cough*. | |
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. | |
"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. | |
Fair enough. | |
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!) | |
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. | |
I have a feeling that someone else already said this, but... does anyone else get the feeling that yahtzee is deliberately trolling the 40k fandom? I mean I have a feeling that he wasn't lying and dislikes the setting.... but this massive hatedom rant he is spewing feels kind of like he is intentionally trying to piss off 40k fans. Which makes me wonder if: an eldar stole his girlfriend, a tau Jehovah witnessed him, a chaos cultist ran over his dog,an ork jacked his car, a tyranid ate all of his Branston Pickle, or necron turned his computer evil. | |
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I'm a big fan but I can't really fault anyone for not getting into the back story of 40k. Even I admit that it's pretty silly bordering on ridiculous at times.
I'm not going to give you an itemized list of why a lot of the stuff you claim about the setting is incorrect because
A: I assume there's been a lot of that already and B: I'm the guy who kinda gets a kick out of watching fantasy nerds go red in the face when I tell them I haven't read Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time because I've already read the Lord of the Rings and don't need to read it again.
As for the game...yeah it's clearly geared towards folks who are already a fan of the property who will be predisposed to overlooking the fairly simplistic gameplay or slightly unpolished mechanics because they're already interested in playing around in the 40k universe.