Here’s what it takes to get one of Warhammer 40,000’s space marines ready for a fight
It’s a process.
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If you’ve ever looked at a fully armored space marine from aWarhammer 40,000 gamelike Dawn of War, Battlesector, or indeed, Space Marine, and thought, “They must take ages getting ready to go out with all that on,” then you’d be right. As a new animation from the official Warhammer YouTube channel shows, it’s a heck of a process.
To be fair, the marine in the video is one of the newer-model primaris marines wearing Mark X Tacticus Armor, which is why the helmet comes in multiple parts and the collar is fashionably popped. It probably doesn’t take quite as long for your basic joe regular marines in older makes of power armor. And anyway, given that it contains life-support systems and a power pack, it’s not like he needs to ditch it whenever he wants to go to the toilet or whatever.
What this video really gets across is the amount of ritual involved in armoring up. There’s a robed tech-priest overseeing the operation, skulls full of incense, and a lot of chanting and recitation. The Imperium is all about making things more baroque than they need to be. The scale of the gear comes across well too, with two servitors struggling with the weight of the chest piece, even with their cybernetic arms. The bolter looks massive, too.
If that’s got you excited to play a videogame about space marines, then good news: even more are coming. There’sSpace Marine 2, release date yet to be announced, andChaos Gate: Daemonhunterscoming on May 5. That one gives you a squad of Grey Knights to control, the psychic space marines dedicated to fighting Chaos daemons. They wear specially crafted Aegis Armor to ward them against the powers of the Warp, and probably take even longer getting ready to go out.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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