Space Marine - Relic goes 3PS console action

[FieryBalrog]

I didn't see people complaining that you can't play a male lead in Bayonetta, or the strong matriarchal themes in that game.

Frankly I don't give a shit either way. There are entire genres and areas of popular culture devoted to female fantasy (like teen fiction). I honestly don't care that some things cut the other way.

[jakonovski]

I hear Ian Watson's 1990 novel Space Marine is basically a piss take on the sausage fest nature of GW's universe. I should read it.

edit: I ordered it from Black Library's print on demand service. Thanks f13!

[amiable]

Basically, you're being silly in order to push the "it could have been sisters agenda" when it doesn't fit the story/game they are telling. Which is about Space Marine(s). Not sure if you're white-knighting Sjofn since I don't recall seeing you white-knight the whole gender choice thing in threads about any other games, ever. I don't think she needs it, though. Also, you seem to be pushing almost an idea that Relic "would have wanted to make a girl but GW won't let them" with all the talk about GW in this game and not Relic. I'm sure GW would have said "no", but the assumption that Relic would have otherwise have placed a female Adepta Sororita in the game as an alternative main protaganist is drawing a pretty long bow.

I'm not white knighting anyone, I was the one who brought this issue up in the first place, if anything Sjforn is white knighting me!  I love how having an opinion on gender issues in a game must mean I am trying to get my dick wet with some random internet chick whom I have never met or had any contact with as opposed to being an actual opinion that may have some validity.  I like to play games with my wife, who likes to play a protagonist of her own gender.   Sue me.  

Also there is a hell of a lot of difference between having a Xeno (such as an Eldar or Tau) in this scenario vs a member of the Imperium.  Adeptus Sororitas and Adeptus Asatares are (theoretically) playing for the same team.  The inference you make about xeno's is far sillier than what I am suggesting.

If GW is pushing this idiotic line that "hurf-blurf we can' have Adeptus Sororitas because they aren't Space Marines and Space marines are men", then they are just as idiotic and need to be called out for the reasons I outlined above:  lore consistency isn't their strong suit and arguing the grimdark in 40000 years is an all boys club is just dumb.  The actual reason that there are not more female-based armies in W40K is because if the rather poor sales numbers of the sisters (perhaps due to theme and perhaps due to them being not that great an army list).  That logic is completely inapplicable to a video game, where you have a large built in female audience.

[Sjofn]

It only became an issue when Sjofn got out her soapbox and made it an issue. Try reading it again and see where the thread ramps up when THIS ONE POSTER STARTS WITH THE ALL CAPS STUFF AND NERDGIRLRAGEANGST.

Bitch, please. That was mild "girl explaining why women give a shit about playing their own gender to the point where they'll reject a game that doesn't have that option." Yeah, I use caps sometimes for emphasis. LIKE RIGHT NOW.

PS: Your little quote of yourself? That wasn't to me. It was before I attempted to explain why anyone gives a shit about playing their own gender.

I didn't see people complaining that you can't play a male lead in Bayonetta, or the strong matriarchal themes in that game.

Frankly I don't give a shit either way. There are entire genres and areas of popular culture devoted to female fantasy (like teen fiction). I honestly don't care that some things cut the other way.

Game I didn't play, so I'm not likely to complain about something like that. I do generally dislike that, though, I bitched for months about the female-only classes being added to DAoC back in the day, for example. But if you thought Bayonetta was some sort of feminist manifesto made game-flesh ... I really don't know what to tell you.

[Tebonas]

Warhammer 40k is male nerd power phantasies gone gaming world. It comes from an era where girls had the cooties.

When they tried to give the players a choice with the Sisters of Battle, the players largely rejected that choice.

Relics hands are somewhat tied in this. Were there female Space Marines, it wouldn't be Warhammer anymore. And they would lose more hardcore W40k nerds than they would win women gamers.

Its one of the worst examples to fight for gender equality, right after demanding more women in gay porn.

[Margalis]

I didn't see people complaining that you can't play a male lead in Bayonetta, or the strong matriarchal themes in that game.

This was actually a common complaint and is generally considered one of the reasons the game perhaps underperformed.

[jakonovski]

When they tried to give the players a choice with the Sisters of Battle, the players largely rejected that choice.

Nerd pedantry:

GW themselves seem to hate SoB, they just released a new "codex" in the form of two White Dwarf articles. They redid precisely zero models, and you can't even buy the old ones anymore except whatever stock they have left at the mail order, for $10 per figure. The basic sculpts are 15 years old.

[Merusk]

I didn't see people complaining that you can't play a male lead in Bayonetta, or the strong matriarchal themes in that game.

This was actually a common complaint and is generally considered one of the reasons the game perhaps underperformed.

That and the immature "lol boobz" 'sexuality.'

[Morfiend]

I really love ripping apart Orks with a Chainsword. Oh yeah, and apparently I am horrible at multiplayer in this game.

Carry on.

[Ghambit]

Tbh, I have yet to even come across a female in the FLGS at the wargaming tables.  You'll see em boardgaming or roleplaying it up, maybe they've got a coven of sex-starved WoD vamps under their control, whatever... but, when it comes to wargaming they dont bother.  (shrug)  How sexay would it be though watching a she-nerd push minis across a table. mmmmmmmm

[Ironwood]

I've seen them.  There's a couple locally who attend the Games Workship tournaments.

They're pretty good, though they're kinda young so I shouldn't be looking.

Legal.

But Kinda young.   BECAUSE I'M OLD.

[Kitsune]

In Deus Ex 2 I played a girl Alex D (and why was the D such a surprise reveal for her, she was like twenty and she'd never wondered what her last initial stood for?), in Mass Effect I played a boy Shepard.  In games where the protagonist's gender is fixed like Metroid or Zelda, it never really had any impact on me in either direction.  As long as the story doesn't suffer for adding in gender choices, I'm completely for it.  In this instance, it doesn't impact the story at all, it's just GW's stupid set in stone lore behind everything.

[Ingmar]

I didn't see people complaining that you can't play a male lead in Bayonetta, or the strong matriarchal themes in that game.

This was actually a common complaint and is generally considered one of the reasons the game perhaps underperformed.

That and the immature "lol boobz" 'sexuality.'

I was going to say, Bayonetta is about as strongly matriarchal as the Miss Universe pageant.

yeah, real big fucking issue there. Such an angry post.  

And if you don't make it, a few of us go 'yeah that sucks' and we move on. There's nothing more retarded than an meta-argument about the argument we were already having, though, so whatever, I'll drop it.

[NowhereMan]

I think I must be lucky being a white guy because I don't even notice gender, etc. with Space Marines. The dude's an 8ft tall killing machine that can spit acid and gain the memories of his enemies by eating their brains, that is not really a 'relatable' character even if you share the gender and general markers of ethnicity. Frankly you're playing as a wholly separate species. Hell the SomethingAwful thread about this game is full of white males moaning that they want to play as IG because Space Marines simply don't create a compelling narrative (admittedly that might have changed totally since they found themselves able to shove a chainsword through an Ork's skull.

Now not being able to buy this on Steam because I'm in the wrong country, that's actually proving enough for me not to bother with this. Forcing me to wait a couple of days for a physical copy and, way more importantly, requiring me having a physical copy and not having access to Steam's awesome supar servers for reinstalling has become enough of a reason not to purchase a game. Steam has spoiled me right up until the point their servers crash, they go out of business and I'm no longer able to play any computer games.

[Ingmar]

I would love to play as IG, but I didn't figure that was worth complaining about. 

[Ard]

Wouldn't that game be about 5 minutes long before a tyrannid eats you or a commisar shoots you?

[Mazakiel]

They could always do a Ciaphas Cain game. 

[kildorn]

Wouldn't that game be about 5 minutes long before a tyrannid eats you or a commisar shoots you?

You have 1 HP and no shields. But every time you die, you spawn another guardsman. You have 1,000 effective hp.

[Ingmar]

Wouldn't that game be about 5 minutes long before a tyrannid eats you or a commisar shoots you?

Not if you're the commissar! 

[kildorn]

wtb Inquisition skinned Ace Attorney game. Collect clues! Find who is guilty or innocent!

.. then burn everything anyways, because they were all going to be guilty eventually.

[Ard]

Get Rockstar on the job then, that sounds like it's just a retooling of LA Noire 

[Ingmar]

In all seriousness, a Vindicare Assassin (or really, any of the Officio Assassinorum temples) game could be pretty sweet.

[Fordel]

Ingmar just wants to murder his guildmates for raid buffs.

[Sjofn]

Shit, don't we all?

[kildorn]

Screw the raid buffs. 

[squirrel]

I've seen them.  There's a couple locally who attend the Games Workship tournaments.

They're pretty good, though they're kinda young so I shouldn't be looking.

Legal.

But Kinda young.   BECAUSE I'M OLD.

I think you should position yourself as a 'mentor'. In the totally not creepy but creepy way. Ya know. I'm sure the missus would understand.

[Lantyssa]

I get what you're saying, but basically the lore overrides your girl-rage. The game is called SPACE MARINE, and is about the most high-profile, best-selling part of GW's IP. It's not about the Adepa Sorotitas, or the Imperial Guard, or the Inquisition. It's about Space Marines, and they are all male.

Space Marines ignored women in their lore for the same reason it's ignored in the game... Some dude making his Mary Sue didn't think about women.

It's a shitty justification.

[kildorn]

At the very least they're sterile. So it's pretty much just a thousand year sausage fest at military school in a Space Marine chapter.


On a game related note: I don't really like the multi. It's.. tiny maps and silly weapon/perk combinations.

[Ingmar]

Stick it out til you can paint yourself pink and you'll have more fun.

[kildorn]

I have done the pink thing, and had an okayish time until running into a bunch of folks with iron halos and melta + reload perks on the rather short ranged maps.

While I like the lethality, I think it's a bit silly to make every map pretty much short range, and then gate the shotgun and armor perks.

[Ingmar]

I had plenty of luck long-ranging people with a devastator personally. I did a lot better with that than with an assault marine, tbh.

[Kail]

The jetpack class really needs more XP than the others to be effective.  I think my K/D was something like 2/5 before I got that astonishingly cheesy "kill everyone near you when you die" perk, and then it jumped right to 1/1, finally edging into positive numbers when I hit level 18 and got the two-hit-kill hammer.

Devastators were the only class I could get a decent score with early on, that heavy bolter is hilariously powerful when it's deployed.  I'd often get assaults landing right in my face and start pounding on me, but I still had time to deploy the gun and blow them away before they killed me with the resistance to melee damage perk that you start with (though the kamikaze explosion generally did me in).  Heavy plasma seems super cheesy, but I haven't had a chance to play around with it much yet.

Tactical marines are weird.  Their weapons generally seem the lowest damage of the three, and their role is kind of vague.  Devastators are probably better snipers with lascannons and better at midrange with heavy bolters, assaults are way better in melee and more mobile.  The teleport beacon is kind of neat, but few people use it regularly.  Other than that, I kind of get a kick out of playing them, but they seem to be the weakest of the three classes to me.

[Azazel]

I hear Ian Watson's 1990 novel Space Marine is basically a piss take on the sausage fest nature of GW's universe. I should read it.

edit: I ordered it from Black Library's print on demand service. Thanks f13!

I've got that book, I bought it when it came out. I'd tell you all about it, but I can't recall a damn thing about it. Well, I remember a Marine who had

Not sure if it's the right book, though.

[Azazel]

I'm not white knighting anyone, I was the one who brought this issue up in the first place, if anything Sjforn is white knighting me!  

So you are. I apologise.

I love how having an opinion on gender issues in a game must mean I am trying to get my dick wet with some random internet chick whom I have never met or had any contact with as opposed to being an actual opinion that may have some validity.  I like to play games with my wife, who likes to play a protagonist of her own gender.   Sue me.  

Also there is a hell of a lot of difference between having a Xeno (such as an Eldar or Tau) in this scenario vs a member of the Imperium.  Adeptus Sororitas and Adeptus Asatares are (theoretically) playing for the same team.  The inference you make about xeno's is far sillier than what I am suggesting.

If GW is pushing this idiotic line that "hurf-blurf we can' have Adeptus Sororitas because they aren't Space Marines and Space marines are men", then they are just as idiotic and need to be called out for the reasons I outlined above:  lore consistency isn't their strong suit and arguing the grimdark in 40000 years is an all boys club is just dumb.  The actual reason that there are not more female-based armies in W40K is because if the rather poor sales numbers of the sisters (perhaps due to theme and perhaps due to them being not that great an army list).  That logic is completely inapplicable to a video game, where you have a large built in female audience.

White knighting has nothing to do with " trying to get my dick wet with some random internet chick" anyway - certainly not how I meant it. Oh, and I like to play games with my wife as well. It's just not 100% important to either of us what gender we're playing.We're still doing Borderlands and she chose the hunter because she wanted to play a ranger sniper rifle guy with a pet. Would it have been better if she could have chosen a girl character? You betcha, but it's not a deal-breaker. (And yeah, if you want to offer Gearbox feedback for BL2 on this kind of thing - ie make it a class choice rather than character choice since the characters in BL are paper-thin anyway then go here:
http://survey.gearboxsoftware.com/index.php?sid=67832&lang=en

girl explaining why women give a shit about playing their own gender to the point where they'll reject a game that doesn't have that option." Yeah, I use caps sometimes for emphasis. LIKE RIGHT NOW.

PS: Your little quote of yourself? That wasn't to me. It was before I attempted to explain why anyone gives a shit about playing their own gender.

Um, I know. It was also quoted in response to Ingmar. When he was telling me that I was the one who made it an issue. When it was you who did so first. If your gender choice is an overriding issue in what you will or won';t choose to play, then, well, whatever. Seriously, I don't really care. I'll support more choice in player gender whenever it makes sense to me in the context of the game, but if it doesn't, I won't. Like I said several posts ago.

Hey, in the interest of gender equality, is it ok if I call you "bitch" now as well? How about dickhead? whore? cockhead? fuckstick? dumb cunt? Because, you know, I've been refraining from using personal attacks while posting here for awhile, but I'm sure if I called you "bitch" either in response or (especially) first, I'd be piled on. Not butthurt, by the way, just making an interesting observation. 

Warhammer 40k is male nerd power phantasies gone gaming world. It comes from an era where girls had the cooties.
When they tried to give the players a choice with the Sisters of Battle, the players largely rejected that choice.
Relics hands are somewhat tied in this. Were there female Space Marines, it wouldn't be Warhammer anymore. And they would lose more hardcore W40k nerds than they would win women gamers.
Its one of the worst examples to fight for gender equality, right after demanding more women in gay porn.

Sisters were introduced as a full army shortly after Necromunda came out, and the Escher (all-girl) gang did very well in sales. I think they were expecting the same to happen with Sisters, but they were unfortunately
1) despite power armour, etc, not as good as Space Marines, or one of the extra flavours of them.
2) very ornate and intricate - much harder to paint well than SMs with large flat undetailed armour.
3) Thematically too similar to marines - and without the differentiation of something like Imperial Guard.

A friend of mine was trying to get his wife into 40k and thought the Sisters might work for her. She rejected them because their armour had boobs on it "Madonna bra" and they all had the same "bob" haircut that she didn't like.

Nerd pedantry:
GW themselves seem to hate SoB, they just released a new "codex" in the form of two White Dwarf articles. They redid precisely zero models, and you can't even buy the old ones anymore except whatever stock they have left at the mail order, for $10 per figure. The basic sculpts are 15 years old.

Nerd news:
The word going around at present is that the new WD SoB codex fulfills the same role as the recent-ish Blood Angels WD codex - a brief update to tide players over and get them changing up their armies slightly in anticipation for a forthcoming SoB codex in about 6-12 months with new plastics, etc (Jes Goodwin has mentioned something about plastic Sisters, for example), around the release date of the next edition of 40k. But carry on with "they hates sisters". Oh yeah, the current models might be 15 years old, but they're Jes Goodwin sculpts, which makes them still better than 85% of everything else GW puts out there and able to stand up well against anything put out by anyone else.

Tbh, I have yet to even come across a female in the FLGS at the wargaming tables.  You'll see em boardgaming or roleplaying it up, maybe they've got a coven of sex-starved WoD vamps under their control, whatever... but, when it comes to wargaming they dont bother.  (shrug)  How sexay would it be though watching a she-nerd push minis across a table. mmmmmmmm

My wife plays LotR SBG with me, and has mucked about with 40k back when we had more space. I've even got her painting miniatures now. We don't go FLGSing though, because like Ironwood, we're now OLD.

In all seriousness, a Vindicare Assassin (or really, any of the Officio Assassinorum temples) game could be pretty sweet.

Yeah, the lore is pretty rich with a lot of options for some good games. Though 3/4 of the Assassin temples are male, so they'd probably only let you play as a female Callidus. 
Actually, I ordered this figure a couple of weeks ago to use as a Vindicare
http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/store_maelstromgames/images_product/cvb_inf_pan_lti_502_000_01_large.jpg


Still waiting for my copy of the game. Fuckers didn't mail it out until release day, so at least another week.

[Trippy]

Drop it Azazel.