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 Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate is a video game set in the gothic science fiction backdrop of the Games Workshop game system Warhammer 40,000. In it, players take command of a number of squads of Ultramarines to do battle with their ancient enemies the Word Bearers, Traitor Marines, Chaos Demons, and their commander the Chaos Lord Zymra. It was released in 1998 and... What? Oh! Wrong Chaos Gate. I actually remember playing the original Chaos Gate long long ago, it was a much slower game, having the player control many more individual marines at a time per mission, not unlike its contemporary X-Com (Julian Gollop version, not Jake Solomon version). Much like X-Com Chaos Gate also has gotten remade into a much smoother more streamlined modern version where the player controls only a small number of marines, and it works on a simpler action point system rather than time units. Much like Jake Solomon's X-Com! I think it's going to pretty obvious that I'm going to draw a lot of comparisons between Chaos Gate and X-Com in this LP. There are a lot of similarities where Chaos Gate absolutely saw what worked with X-com, but I think the most interesting parts are the differences where Chaos Gate looks at things X-Com did, or players griped about, and made different design choices. Almost all of those choices they differed on I think are pretty amazing in gameplay and really insightful or smart choices in design. These choices give Chaos Gate a very unique feel and so much flavor, even though I can easily make the argument it's built on the back of, or on the skeleton of the new X-Com model. Okay, so X-Com is kind of your thing, but tell us about Chaos Gate Right! Chaos Gate is a squad based turn based strategy game. The player controls a team of four space marines on missions to combat the Nurgle threat to the sector. The game has a strategic layer consisting of a star map that the players base of operations, the Baleful Edict, can fly around to respond to plague outbreaks. Kind of like responding to abduction missions in X-Com 1. drat it! I was going to stop talking about X-Com! Each planet has it's own Plague-o-meter and successfully completing missions will help lover the plague-o-meter. If the Plague-o-meter reaches five then Bad Things happen, and if enough planets max out on Plague-o-meter then Nurgle wins and it's game over. Hey that sounds a lot like the panic meter and countries pulling out of the project in X-Com 1! drat it! Not again! It is actually hard not to notice the similarities. In Chaos Gate the player upgrades the Edict much like the base or the Avenger in X-Com, soldiers level and gain new skills in a way that makes for plenty of choice and customization but you never have enough skill points to get everything the class can offer, and managing the big crisis on the strategic map is a sort of hybrid between X-Com 1 and 2.  What's unique about Chaos Gate then? Chaos Gate takes many different approaches to fundamental mechanics than X-Com does. There is no randomness to the game. Attacks do not have chance to hit or miss. Damage is not variable or given a range. Everything about a given action is known ahead of time. The only exception off the top of my head involves units getting knocked back from explosives and not knowing precisely which tile they will land on but that is a very very minor thing. Chaos Gate operates on 3ap instead of X-Com's 2ap and doesn't have any abilities that end your turn early. Three ap with this different rule set can allow for some new and maybe obvious but non intuitive plays if you're very used to X-Com like I was. Such as moving out of cover into the open, shooting and then moving back into cover. Oh hey, cover, how does cover work when attacks aren't accuracy based? Cover provides flat damage mitigation. Doesn't that mean it's very difficult not to get shot in Chaos gate then? Exceedingly so! But that's also a difference in design. Chaos Gate does not expect you to go through missions without taking damage. It does not require you to do so either. It expects you to take damage and deal with enemy fire while you advance through obstacles to victory. In fact, that may lead into the thing I like most about it's design. Chaos Gate does not demand perfection. Get shot, lose a mission, marines may die. It will be fine. Chaos Gate has a series of cool ways to ensure even if you struggle or take a setback or two that you are not disadvantaged for long. Fallen marines can be used to give skill points to surviving marines. Critical injuries can be healed and augmented with cybernetics which give permanent passive stat boosts. Unwanted marines can be returned for the resource used to recruit new ones. Marines can pay to have their entire skill tree respeced if you feel you made a mistake when leveling them. There's probably a term for this design, but it's the opposite of 'the rich get richer'. If a player goes through the game never making a mistake, never getting wounded or losing a marine then they don't get to utilize these catch up mechanics. But they don't need to either. I really, really, appreciate design like this. It feels natural and organic, and seems to fit lore wise even though I'm not a real warhammer fan I dunno if it is or not, and it offers a really great way to not feel super screwed over because your high level marine died. In X-Com if your Colonel rank soldier dies, well that's it. He's dead, you've lost a major part of your team, there's no saving grace, and it just feels bad. Chaos Gate gives you multiple chances with the Resilience mechanic, and some value for a fallen marine, allowing you to give a small permanent boost to another marine that they otherwise couldn't get. I think it's great. Many people on the Steam forums thought it was crap because to absolutely min/max a marine you need to intentionally kill a max level soldier to use the ability to boost a living marine, and they wanted that extra boost on everyone, entirely missing the point that this is a catch up mechanic and if you aren't losing people naturally, you don't need this mechanic's help. Aside from all of that, Chaos Gate gives you a very big toolbox to problem solve in combat. Every class has a wide arrange of abilities and gear they can select from to contribute differently on the field. While I may have a particular build for each class I tend to use uniformly, there are no bad builds. Each marine has a skill grid with more options than can be selected so no one is ever going to get everything and the variations make every marine unique. Gear choices start to factor in too a little later in the game, as upgraded gear can come with unique properties, effects, or change a normal ability into something different. Typically this is more evident on the melee weapons but if you get a flamethrower that can do stun damage when they normally can't, you can start doing silly things! I almost forgot precision targeting! Critical hits are important and do way cooler things than just extra damage and really makes melee feel powerful. Oh and the stun mechanic. There's so many little cool things I'll get into in the videos!  About the LP itself Having cryogenicly frozen ourselves for roughly 38,000 years I am joined once again by my good friend Olesh who will be joining me just as soon as I get the freezer working again and he's not in danger of melting. Chaos Gate itself tries to tell a bit more story than X-Com does and regularly has story beats where the player can talk to the three main NPCs on the ship and get their view on the campaign, current events, and each other. So I will be talking to them whenever new events and dialog is available. Of note I'm skipping the tutorial mission where the previous commander of the Baleful Edict dies after killing a Bloodthirster at the end of a campaign against Khorne. This is the explanation for why we are in command and why the Edict is in such bad shape at the start of the game. My usual preference to the thread remains; don't spoil story for anyone that has not seen or played the game themselves, but any mechanical discussion is fine. Just no story or boss spoilers. Oh yeah, Chaos Gate has boss fights! They're great! They're way bigger and more involved than Alien Rulers or Chosen. Every boss has their own strategy or mechanic to understand and work through in these big arena fights and they're just awesome. Look this game is great, just scroll down and start watching. Oh did I mention how much I love how a lot of the maps have interactive things to shoot at or use to your advantage in combat? Table of Contents      
Jade Star fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 09:57
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 A campaign against Khorne ends in victory, however the previous commander of the strike force is dead and the Baleful Edict cries out for repairs. We were headed to Titan for much needed repairs and reinforcements, but the Inquisition has charged us with an important mission; investigating a potential new plague with signs of Nurgle behind its spread. Hey folks, the first episode is just packed with cut scenes to set the stage and start telling the story. The ship isn't repaired and it's not safe to let Olesh out of his freezer yet, but we'll be seeing him by the next video. This intro into the game will be short and sparsely commented on to let the writers and voice actors do their work and I appreciate their efforts. GW tries to tell a compelling story and it feels pretty good to me, someone with only a passing familiarity with the warhammer 40k setting. There's a lot of things to talk about from game design, mechanics and gameplay, the story and lore of the setting, and so much more. I'll be talking or posting more in depth about things as we go, so if there is anything you're curious about or want discussed, post away!
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Apr 9, 2024 10:07
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Jade's insomnia has struck again I see, unless I get my time differences too screwy.
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Apr 9, 2024 10:15
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This'll be interesting to see, I wanted to check the game out on release but was distracted by real life stuff and have since kind of forgotten about it.
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Apr 9, 2024 10:38
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This is a good game and pretty different to X-Com, but I dropped it after the first big plot beat because my optimization brain made me start again and again. Also because I was reloading to make absolutely sure I triggered pods in positions where all my marines could get the most of their 3AP. That is entirely a "me" problem, though.
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Apr 9, 2024 10:54
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 Repairs begin, the generator breathes life back into the Edict, and the freezers are functional once more. The Edict is still in poor condition but long range scanners are operational and the warp drive is functional. The inquisitor's fears about a plague seem to have merit, as two star systems report signs of outbreak. The system is vast and the Edict can not respond to every outbreak at once, we will have to make choices about when and where our efforts are best spent. Let's talk about our three main story characters Ectar, Lunete and Vakir. They represent and hold different but integral roles to the story. Ectar is sort of a fill in for the player. He's a marine, he stays on the ship and gives orders, and if it wasn't for the nature of this being a video game he probably would be the next in line to command the Edict. Or at least that is what I get from the situation. He's our zealous mission guy, and later he's going to be the source of making our war gear extra rad. Lunete maintains, repairs, and upgrades the ship. The condition of the Edict is very important not because a upgraded ship means faster travel speed, larger barracks, increased exp gain, and so on, but the Edict itself is a win/lose condition. Once the game is out of the baby zone start up events the Edict is subject to a number of events that can break facilities, cost resources, get tossed around by warp storms, fight Death Guard ships, and so on. If the Edict is destroyed, it's game over. There is no singular 'this is a game over' event either. Warp storms and chaos torpedoes may slowly wear down the hull rating or HP of the Edict over time, and if you don't have the means or time to affect repairs the game could be cut short no matter how flawlessly you win every tactical mission. Vakir is our plot driver and researcher. She has brought us the discovery of a Nurgle plague and she has tasked herself, and the Edict, with stopping it. She will also research new advancements and upgrades in the ships library over time and if given enough samples to work with. I feel the trio gives a bit of life into the game, and I appreciate the large amount of voice work done by the game and VA team. I hate reading in games, but more to it the voice brings flavor and character into it. Getting to hear the annoyance in Vakir's and Ectar's voices as they bicker about proper conduct and heresy is great. Also Vakir is Y'shtola in FF14 so that's also cool and kind of funny. Alright you maybe saw this coming buuuut.... They're just Space Bradford, Space Shen, and Super Space Vhalen. I can't fault Chaos Gate too much for this, as the trinity of soldier, engineer, scientist is kind of primordial. Each character correlates to a key aspect of game progression. Your team gets stronger and you need a guy for that. You need better equipment as the game goes on and you need a guy for that. And you need to research things for plot and/or development of your team and you need a guy for that. I am not a writer, I don't know how much could be done with the formula here, but this is one place where Chaos Gate doesn't differentiate itself from X-Com very much at all. It's not a real bad thing, but it does sort of hit the trope and stay stuck in it hard. Now, does that mean they don't have good dialog or anything? No, absolutely not. There is a lot of back and forth between Ectar and Vakir and it develops through the events of the story. Enough to make me care about what happens to them during the course and ending of the game. Jade Star fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 11:00
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Oh, big deal thing I forgot about in the first post and will go edit in later; DLCs. I am using only one of the two DLCs available for the game. I am using the Execution Force DLC and I am not using the Duty Eternal DLC. The Duty Eternal DLC had very mixed reviews, with some saying it just made the game harder for no benefit. It increased the number of things the player needed to juggle. The dreadnought isn't a regular member of the team and only usable on specific DLC missions. etc. So I don't own it. The execution force DLC is awesome though, as it brings in 4 unique characters to the game. The four kinds of assassins employed by the Imperial Army are available to recruit and all bring something unique and cool to every mission. It also adds a minor wrinkle to the Nurgle forces with occasional bands of baddies that can rapidly mutate mid-combat. And maybe a few new enemy types. Though I can't remember if nurglings and such were released as part of the DLC or included in the update to the main game and for free.
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Apr 9, 2024 11:08
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The kill team members are fantastic additions, much more squishy than a grey knight, but absolutely lethal if used properly.
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Apr 9, 2024 11:27
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This looks quite interesting. The art direction is a bit "cartoony" for a Warhammer 40k game, which feels weird. I'm guessing that the previous captain or whatever dying happens in the tutorial? Also, the sound effects are a bit loud, which makes it impossible to understand what you guys are saying as soon as you do something.
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Apr 9, 2024 16:14
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This is a good game and fun, but I never really got a hang of the melee combat. My endgame team mostly just doubled-up on Purgators. The melee was there for chaff and stuns only. The big guns did all the workDTurtle posted:I'm guessing that the previous captain or whatever dying happens in the tutorial? Yeah, your starting strike team and him attack a Khornate stronghold. Your team holds off a bunch of bloodletters while the Force Commander goes toe to toe with a Bloodthirster. He wins, but dies right after from his wounds.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:31
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Wanted to share some interesting lore about Warhammer for those who don't know much about the series itself. Basically just whatever I find interesting to share each episode. Episode 1 - Flying Skull Medpacks So, what's up with those flying skulls that heal people? Well, those are called servitors, or more specifically, a servo-skull. Why does it look like a skull? Because it is a skull! You see, AI isn't a thing in Warhammer. Or rather, it was, and it ended up getting called Abominable Intelligence. That's because during the Dark Age of Technology (which was about 25k-15k years ago), people actually managed to create AI devices known as the Men of Iron. These were servants who eventually rebelled against their masters, leading to a bloody war between them, ending in the defeat of the Men of Iron. AI was promptly banned afterwards, and this edict remains in effect to this very day. So, what do you do when you need a robot who can think? You turn someone into a robot, duh. Servo skulls are made from loyal servants of the Emperor, and while technically dead, continue to serve the Imperium even in death. It's considered a great honor to become one in fact. They fly using an antigravity device fitted inside of all of them, and are quite rare for obvious reasons. Only the elite can have one for themselves, which of course, includes Space Marines like in our squad. Episode 2 - The Emperor's Seed While talking to our Omnissiah worshiping buddy (will probably go over the Omnissiah another time), he mentioned the gene-seed of the Grey Knights being tied back to the Golden Throne, or the Emperor. So what is Gene-Seed? All Space Marines are superhuman monsters of men. Each one has multiple extra organs, some organs humans don't even normally have, just general increased intelligence and strength, along with many other boons. Why are they so strong? Along with a fuckton of modifications, they have something called a Gene-Seed implanted into them. This is DNA originating from the The Grey Knights were created personally, by the emperor himself. And as such, they have his completely unaltered gene-seed too. They call their many implanations the "Emperor's Gift" because of this. I won't go deep into the Grey Knights themselves in this segment (I'm trying to keep this to smaller details within the wider universe), but they specialize in fighting Chaos Daemons. That's why our group just went from fighting Khorne to fighting Nurgle. To better be able to do this, every single member of the Grey Knights is a Psyker, possessing psychic powers linked to the warp. Despite this, in over 10,000 years of service, not a single Grey Knight has ever fallen to Chaos  This purpose is why they have the pure unaltered gene-seed. They need it, to fight the warp itself and all the chaos within. But of course, gene-seed is a limited resource. In order to make more of it, all space marines have an organ called the progenoids. One is located in the neck, and one in the chest cavity. Each one contains a separate sample of the gene-seed of the chapter. This is recovered after the marine's death, making recovery of corpses all the more important in order to make new space marines. No gene-seed, no marines. That's all for my first post. Will make another big message when the next update comes out! And anyone who wants to know more about or discuss the lore is free to ask, I'll try and help out where I can.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:53
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DTurtle posted:This looks quite interesting. The art direction is a bit "cartoony" for a Warhammer 40k game, which feels weird. I think the art direction is a small stroke of genius. Normally 40k's visual design is extremely overcomplicated and messy, which stems from the tabletop being aimed as a model assembly/painting/customization hobby first and a functional wargame second. Games Workshop is primarily in the business of selling models, after all. Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters pairs the extremely recognizable Space Marine aesthetic with similar elements of design that you might see from World of Warcraft and a Dreamworks film, to help provide characters with visual distinctness and readability. The game's visual language has a lot of recognizably modern touches, keeping the feeling of 40k style while keeping lots of bright distinct lines and colors. This makes UI elements pop, makes gameplay elements clear and readable, and generally makes the game feel more comfortable to play by reducing visual processing strain on the player. The OG Chaos Gate has a much more strict 40k aesthetic and is visually much more bland and requires the player to focus harder on understanding what they're looking at to consider the board state - something the original made still more difficult by providing the player with many more units (and enemies) to manage at once. This Chaos Gate is a dramatic improvement in pretty much all respects. On the audio side of things, the game's sound effects are great but also loud. I can say that I was in the process of revamping my audio setup and not everything had arrived by the time of the second video - this should be dramatically improved by the third video, as previously my audio was extremely quiet and had to be substantially boosted. I have a new mic now that requires less aggressive post-processing. In general terms, this is a very forgiving game. It's not necessarily easy, and the difficulty has been tightened up in a few ways since release, but Jade brings up in the OP that Chaos Gate does not demand perfection, and it's extremely true. Many other tactical games lack systems to address a failure spiral, where bad luck and mistakes can permanently set you back. Other tactical games have trap options where you can set yourself back, sometimes irrevocably, by customizing your units (via skill-ups or gear upgrades) in suboptimal ways, limiting your power. Chaos Gate gives you a lot of tools to pick between, and very few of them are bad. We'll go into this in more detail later in the LP, but overall Chaos Gate wants you to succeed and encourages you to accept imperfect and unideal situations and roll with it.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:34
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Solarium posted:This purpose is why they have the pure unaltered gene-seed. They need it, to fight the warp itself and all the chaos within. But of course, gene-seed is a limited resource. In order to make more of it, all space marines have an organ called the progenoids. One is located in the neck, and one in the chest cavity. Each one contains a separate sample of the gene-seed of the chapter. This is recovered after the marine's death, making recovery of corpses all the more important in order to make new space marines. No gene-seed, no marines. Don't they technically have two copies of the gene seed? Their original which can be recovered and a new one that gets grown out of one of their numerous implants and can be harvested prior to death so their ranks can grow? or is that a thing the grey knights explicitly don't have because they're special?
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Apr 9, 2024 19:42
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One of the things I love about this game is how the marines and enemies look (to my uneducated eyes) like painted minis. Or at least what example painted minis from google search or on 40k podcasts look like. Though I guess I should add to that 'with less shading/brushing/fake dirt' which might contribute to a 'cartoony' look. Choosing Grey Knights as the chapter you play is a very good choice. Everyone gets special powers, wrist mounted storm boltors look cool, are easier to justify low ammo capacity, etc. On the subject of DLC : I played with Duty Eternal but not Execution Force (because it came out halfway through the run.). Mild mechanical spoilers, just in case it matters to someone. DE makes 1 out of 3 of each outbreak be a DLC one, which are balanced for you to do with a Dreadnaught (like, pods of 4 Chaos Marines, placed in sight of each other 'balanced') and you can't BRING the Dreadnaught until you've done a Plot Mission (and a DLC mission after it) so you have to speedrun the main plot or pull out the Exterminatus. It was fun and cool, but made me literally restart my whole run to adjust for it.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:58
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Kurieg posted:Don't they technically have two copies of the gene seed? Their original which can be recovered and a new one that gets grown out of one of their numerous implants and can be harvested prior to death so their ranks can grow? After 5-10 years, the progenoid has sucked up enough DNA to make a new gene-seed, which can then be cut out and used as a new sack of seed to be used for the next marines made. They're typically harvested prior to death for obvious reasons, to be able to expand the chapter more.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:01
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Kurieg posted:Don't they technically have two copies of the gene seed? Their original which can be recovered and a new one that gets grown out of one of their numerous implants and can be harvested prior to death so their ranks can grow? or is that a thing the grey knights explicitly don't have because they're special? Gene-seed (it's officially hyphenated) can, technically, be harvested before death, but typically isn't. Every full space marine that lives long enough (ten years or so) has a pair of implants that create a new set of gene-seed and so theoretically you can turn one dead marine into two new ones over time. The lore on this isn't particularly well thought out, as canonically the majority of aspirants do not survive the implantation process - the failure rate on new space marines simply does not match up to the "birth" rate, even assuming that every dead marine's gene-seed is recovered, so those organs implanted into aspirants have to be recyclable to a degree. Space Marines also need to tithe a certain percentage of their gene-seed back to the Mechanicus, to monitor mutations and also so Terra has stockpiles with which they can order new chapters of Space Marines to be created. Grey Knights are special in part because they have good, "pure" stockpiles of genetic material. Gene-seed is a package, basically consisting of organs, genetic material, and viruses/nanomachines that transform the aspirant's body from a normal human into a Space Marine over the course of implantation. Most chapters of Space Marines have to culture these organs in a living aspirant. A few chapters - Grey Knights being one, and Ultramarines being another - have good enough material that the organs can be grown separately and then implanted later, which is more reliable and reduces the risk of mutation/organs being wasted by an aspirant dying. Most chapters can't do this, which is the canonical explanation for why there are so many more Successor Chapters grown from the gene-seed of the Ultramarines and Dark Angels. The creation of new gene-seed is one of those things that was lost technology, which is why there's such a big deal about preserving and using even flawed and mutated gene-seed like the Space Wolves or Blood Angels possess - it's such a limited resource that they can't afford to waste what they have, and why growing more in the bodies of Space Marines is so important - even though it risks further mutation, it's the only remaining option.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:32
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DTurtle posted:Also, the sound effects are a bit loud, which makes it impossible to understand what you guys are saying as soon as you do something. Yeah i caught this is post between videos 2 and 3. Game sound goes down across the board in video 3.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:54
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 Thankfully we are able to reach a second bloom mission before it is too late. This is always handy throughout the game as more missions mean more exp for marines, more requisition earned, or opportunity to spend requisition on gear (later, once Angry Space Grandpa opens up the armory for us), and can lower the amount of plague pips spread across the sector. So it's always good to do every mission you have time and manpower for. I posted this before, but I'm moving it here under the relevant video because I got the order wrong in my head and reference this specific map. One of the little things I want to talk about in this video is map design. Jake Soloman's X-Com 1 used hand crafted maps, while X-Com 2 used a procedural generation from a sort of terrain palate to create random and unique maps every time, but still flowed together with all the bits and pieces and features fitting together. Chaos Gate has hand made maps. We may see repeats during the LP but I don't usually mind or care. The interesting thing I think Chaos Gate does with these hand crafted maps is that it creates or controls a flow with many of them. With this map being short it's pretty easy to see there is a linear path to take. Move forward from the start, a courtyard, a big wall and door separating the next space which was empty this time, and then a final sort of open area. Worth noting is that there aren't invisible walls or the illusion of terrain continuing on at the edges. There are hard cliffs like the map is a battle field suspended in some celestial space for the fight. You can very much knock enemies off the edge of the map and into the abyss to kill them. I think this does two things; first it gives the whole thing a sort of majesty or epic feeling, in the literary sense. This mission wasn't just on some patch of land on a planet, it was torn from the planet and lifted up into the heavens for a grand battle to occur upon. Secondly and more to real to the gameplay experience, is that it creates a path that the map and game designers can tailor and design exactly how they wish. They don't need to worry if you approach some area from some unexpected direction, because you can't. They can know you'll be approaching from one direction and can place an enemy patrol where they wish and more or less dictate the area a fight is going to happen in. Then they can start decorating that fighting space in great detail. It leads to a tighter gameplay experience, things are planned out and smoother. Rarely do I ever have to look upon a section of the map and go 'well gently caress this place, there's no cover' or worry that in order to advance I need to move into terrain that looks like a death trap. On top of that, hand crafting the maps tends to mean they are very well decorated, in terms of aesthetics as well as function for gameplay. In the first area there are very nifty statues with enormous bases that act as a 2x2 square of high cover, but you can shoot the statue to have it come crashing down to crush enemies and destroy cover alike. There are braziers that fit the gothic imperium of man aesthetic everywhere and many of these can be shot at to poor fire and coals over nearby enemies. It's such an unexpected little bit of fun to utilize these things in Chaos Gate. Many of these things do different things and are interacted in different ways. By comparison X-Com really only ever had the red barrels where you shoot something that's not an enemy and it explodes. Truly, on a deep, logical, mechanical level the statues and fire bowls and pillars and columns might not be that much different from red barrels, but the visual and mechanical differences make them novel and fit into the environment of the game in a more seamless fashion. I think that's worth noticing and appreciating that and Chaos Gate does a great job with a lot of these little touches, more of which I will surely comment on again in the future.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:56
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I'm going to start imagining that the whole Space Marine project continues for another 40,000 years or so, encounters time travel and that's where Orks come from. Gene-Seed organs turned into spore sacs.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:18
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Bruceski posted:I'm going to start imagining that the whole Space Marine project continues for another 40,000 years or so, encounters time travel and that's where Orks come from. Gene-Seed organs turned into spore sacs.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:22
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I love how extra a lot of the stuff in this game is. Shooting down tall pieces of terrain, massive explosions and piles of fire, marines hopping across place to place to travel farther, and my favorite is how you can frequently tear enemies into chunks. The critical hits are literally dismembering your opponents. It's incredibly extra and amazing.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:53
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The joyful extra-ness of the game makes me sad about things like patching in higher stun values (which are looking higher than when I played I thiiink. I remember cultists being 3~4 stun, but was also normal difficulty). In terms of catchup mechanic, one interesting one is about if you get knights killed. Weirdly, it's the only way to get someone with a filled out skill grid. IIRC
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Apr 10, 2024 01:58
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Solarium posted:I love how extra a lot of the stuff in this game is. Shooting down tall pieces of terrain, massive explosions and piles of fire, marines hopping across place to place to travel farther, and my favorite is how you can frequently tear enemies into chunks. The critical hits are literally dismembering your opponents. It's incredibly extra and amazing. This was the exact sentiment of someone watching me stream it for the first time. I think it was the teleport into combat cinematic where she called it Extra. And it's true. I love it. Something about the game is visceral and makes it all feel so good.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:01
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Episode 3 - Apothecaries: Even Space Marines need medics Since this episode was just one combat encounter, I decided to go into more detail on one of the main classes we have in the game, Apothecaries. Namely, what each of their main duties are. Let's start with battlefield duties. As is evident from what I titled this post, the main duty of an apothecary has to do with battlefield medicine. Space Marines are costly to create, so you want to keep them in the best shape possible. Apothecaries receive special medical training that allows them to heal up their fellow brothers on the battlefield to keep them in the fight. Next up is pretty much the most important duty of an apothecary, and why they are one of the more respected ranks within their organization. Recovering the gene-seed. I talked about it in my previous post, but the gene-seed is the backbone of any chapter. As such, apothecaries are trained to retrieve the bodies of fallen brothers, then cut out and remove the progenoid glands to save the genes-seed within. Onto the last of the battlefield duties: euthanasia. I'm just going to post a quote directly from the lexicanum page about this one. Index Astartes: Medics posted:Not all wounded Marines can be saved; some are beyond even the Apothecary's skills. In this case, it is the Apothecary's responsibility to administer "the Emperor's Peace" (euthanasia) to those warriors who deserve it. The Apothecary's medi-pack (known as a Narthecium) includes a special humane killer for this task, called a Carnifex — a solid spring-loaded piston of metal. This is applied to the sufferer's temple, its powerful spring hurling the piston through the Marine's brain and killing him instantly.  Anyway, onto off the battlefield. Since they're the ones to take out the gene-seed, they're also the ones who smack it back into new recruits for the chapter. Most apothecaries actually take on this role. They spend their time training new recruits and other apothecaries, with only a few going out on the battlefield to snatch up progenoids and keep alive other soldiers. Apothecaries are also the bio-researchers for the chapter, spending a lot of their time keeping the chapter alive through gene-seeds and medical care. These apothecaries are part of a chapter's Apothecarion, with a Chief Apothecary running things. For a final note, there is a special role within the Apothecaries. These marines are called Apothecary Biologis. They take samples of xenos threats to study and come up with brand new improved ways to kill them in the future. This role seems to be what our resident Inquisitor is getting up to, studying the corpses brought back to her. Although she's obviously not a marine herself.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:20
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Excited to follow this lp. I did one playthrough back when it first came out, and I recall it as a pretty good game. Also Lunete owns bones. Now because I'm a huge loving nerd, I'm going to do some nitpicking. Solarium posted:So, what's up with those flying skulls that heal people? Well, those are called servitors, or more specifically, a servo-skull. Why does it look like a skull? Because it is a skull! Yes and no. While you are correct about servitors in general, servo-skulls aren't servitors. They're robotic drones controlled by a simple cogitator, that's grimdark for computer. They are housed in an actual skull for grimdark reasons. Generally honouring an individual by allowing them to serve after death in hovering skull robot form, and I suppose you could make the case for some spiritual handwaving about them not being technically robots. As for the servitors, we get a look at those too in the game. Most visibly the four plugged into each corner of the map console. Even though they're permanently plugged into the map, and their only job is "do map things" they're still most of a torso and head of a former human. quote:
A marine has two progenoid glads. The lore is inconsistent about if they're harvested before death or not, but let's assume no. Each gland can grow a full set of the 19 organs, which include two new progenoids. In ideal conditions that means you need to recover slightly more than half of the gene-seed to maintain numbers. (Mars also takes a 5% tithe) Some aspirants don't survive their transformation, but that's fairly rare, as that is why aspirants are put through gruelling trials before implantation, testing fortitude and genetic compability. From here it gets fuzzy though. Many of those 19 extra organs are grown outside the body and implanted when they're grown. Some are grown in the aspirants by injecting some of the gene-seed. So it's a liquid? That can be split up? Who knows! Reasonably you could when you're in need of extra gene-seed use disposable human hosts or even even grow in a vat a new pair of progenoids from single one, that then turns into four, then sixteen, etc. You'll probably run into copy of a copy problems eventually, and presumably this is why some chapters have degraded gene-seed where one or several of the organs aren't functioning correctly or at all. As for the Grey Knights' resistance to Chaos, yes the pure gene-seed is part of it. But there's several things more that's special about them. Most notable, they're all psykers. Psychic powers are rare. Somewhere around one in a million humans are psykers. Most of them are deemed to weak to control their powers and are fed to the emperor. Only the very strongest are even considered for the Grey Knights. Their armour is all inscribed with anti-Chaos wards, which are also supercharged by the wearers psychic powers, this being the Aegis, which is represented in game. Lastly, they've all as part of their training been possessed by a daemon and banished it without external help. Christ, that was a bunch of  , sorry everyone.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:50
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Jade Star posted:The four kinds of assassins employed by the Imperial Army are available to recruit and all bring something unique and cool to every mission. Technically there is no Imperial Army. It was split up into the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard (which is now called the Astra Militarum) after the Horus Heresy as part of a series of reforms to prevent another civil war like the Horus Heresy. The other major change was that the Space Marine Legions which consisted of tens or hundreds of thousands of Space Marines were split into Chapters of 1000 men and stripped of their command authority over the Imperial Army's successors. The reforms succeeded in that regard as there has never been a singular threat towards the Imperium like Horus since then. The largest Space Marine rebellion since the Heresy consisted of only four chapters (technically five). The Grey Knights aren't limited to the standard 1000 members because they need all the manpower they can get and they operate under much closer scrutiny from the Inquisition.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:10
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I may misuse terminology a lot in the LP. I am not a big follower of Warhammer, but the Total War series and Chaos Gate have been super rad so they are the source of my limited knowledge of the setting/universe. Really the most in depth warhams setting I know is Bloodbowl. Do not make me go roll a BB2 LP into this LP.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:17
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E: /\/\/\ Why did I think that it was you who did a Dawn of War lp?? That was, let's see, Coolguye and TheLastRoboKy. Well, go play the Dawn of Wars some time, they're good. (not Soulstorm or Dawn of War 3, those are bad) E2: Mechanicus might be more up your alley, it's another Xcom-adjecent game, and the soundtrack is goddamm fantastic White Coke posted:Technically there is no Imperial Army. It was split up into the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard (which is now called the Astra Militarum) Similarly, the Imperial Navy is the Navis Imperialis in High Gothic. Almost every given organisation in the Imperium is the same, one name in Low Gothic, one in High Gothic. In the real world, the reason the boxes of minis says Astra Militarum on them now instead of Imperial Guard is just marketing logic/search engine optimisation. Google "Imperial Guard" and you get a bunch of pictures of star wars dudes in red robes and some other stuff alongside the 40k stuff. Same with Space Marine/Adeptus Astartes. It's not anything about copyright, that's a load of bullshit. Groetgaffel fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 03:23
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White Coke posted:...the Space Marine Legions which consisted of tens or hundreds of thousands of Space Marines were split into Chapters of 1000 men....  , and the two sides don't get along too well.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:39
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If anyone's interested in learning more about the 40k universe, the only one I can really recommend is Leutin. Here's the 40k beginners who's who. Most other lore channels are pretty bad. For reading yourself 40k wiki is a mess, Lexicanum is better. And most of all stay away from Arch. He used to go by ArchWarhammer, and he's a nazi fuckhead.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:06
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Really, the most important bit of Warhammer 40k lore is that Ciaphas Cain killed the Archon King when things looked most dire for X-Com. God drat, there really is so much overlap between X-Com and Chaos Gate.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:48
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Jade Star posted:I may misuse terminology a lot in the LP. I am not a big follower of Warhammer, but the Total War series and Chaos Gate have been super rad so they are the source of my limited knowledge of the setting/universe. Don't sweat it. My 'Well Actually' was counter 'Well Actually'-ed as is right and proper.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:57
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Jade Star posted:Really, the most important bit of Warhammer 40k lore is that Ciaphas Cain killed the Archon King when things looked most dire for X-Com. Was he the Canadian who wore the snake queen as a hat?
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Apr 10, 2024 05:41
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Jade Star posted:Really, the most important bit of Warhammer 40k lore is that Ciaphas Cain killed the Archon King when things looked most dire for X-Com.
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Apr 10, 2024 07:09
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There are approximately 1000 space marine chapters. Each one is given a number, although numbers will be reissued if a Chapter is destroyed. The Grey Knights are number 666 even though they were created before the Second Founding (which is when the loyalist Legions were officially split into Chapters) so they either called dibs or some other Chapter had to trade with them.
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Apr 10, 2024 08:13
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Groetgaffel posted:If anyone's interested in learning more about the 40k universe, the only one I can really recommend is Leutin. Here's the 40k beginners who's who. Oculus Imperia is also pretty good, but not for everyone due to the premise being 40K lore presented in-universe.
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Apr 10, 2024 08:50
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White Coke posted:There are approximately 1000 space marine chapters. Each one is given a number, although numbers will be reissued if a Chapter is destroyed. The Grey Knights are number 666 even though they were created before the Second Founding (which is when the loyalist Legions were officially split into Chapters) so they either called dibs or some other Chapter had to trade with them. It's because they are the Emperor's special little boys and nobody is allowed to mess with them. Seriously the Grey Knights are just the worst, lorewise.
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Apr 10, 2024 08:59
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Philippe posted:Seriously the Grey Knights are just the worst, lorewise. Somehow even more boring than Ultramarines, which shouldn't be possible.
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Apr 10, 2024 09:06
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The SMurfs at least have the fun Roman theme going on, and Robot came back to life.
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Apr 10, 2024 10:39
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Its funny. When the Grey Knights were the tippy top forces made of gene seeds embezzeled from the tithe and the loyalist remnants of the traitor legions I disliked them. Now that the Custodes are an actual army I don't mind them.
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Apr 10, 2024 11:02
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