Khorney Dialogue: Space Marine Does Chaos
The good news about Relic's upcoming Warhammer 40,000 manshoot keeps on getting gooder. First, THQ reversed their decision to not release it on PC. Then Quinns came away from an early preview with a much bigger spring in his step than we expected. Now we hear that it won't, as had previously been hinted, be merely a matter of bashing/stabbing/boltering Orks until they're all dead. The Space Marines' gnarly arch-nemeseseseses Chaos will be showing up too. Nicely-rendered blood for the blood god!
Chaos 101, in case you're not a 40K gonk: they're as close as this sci-fi universe comes to an archetypal evil. Space Marines turned to the dark side, replete with mutations, demon allies and all manner of dark mysticism. They're divided between four gods - bloodythirsty Khorne, the changeling Tzeentch, plaguetastic Nurgle and kinky Slaanesh. No word yet on which sliver of Chaos is to appear in Space Marine, but the released screens so far suggest a mix of the lot with a slight emphasis on Khorne.
The scoop on the bad lads' appearance in Space Marine went to Destructoid, which is surely a Chaos-aligned site if ever there was one. In addition to a short interview detailing the role Chaos play in the game, there are more, and higher-res pics, over there. C
onfirmed so far are Chaos Space Marines, Bloodletters (the sexy chap in the top screenshot), Psykers and Renegade Guard. I will be enormously surprised if there isn't some manner of gigantic, Chaos themed end-game boss or suchlike as well.
Relic had previously claimed they didn't want to feature Chaos because their frontline troops are essentially the mirror of Space Marines in terms of ability, so they'd gone for shoving loads of Orkish cannon fodder in front of Ultramarine protagonist Captain Titus instead. Turns out they were fibbing, and in fact enthuse that "while Titus can fight 30+ Orks at once, fighting 2 or 3 Chaos Space Marines presents a serious challenge."
I would like to play the video game called Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. There, I said it. To be honest, I'm much more keen on this than I am on the 40K MMO that's also in the works, as laying down the ultrobiff directly rather than worrying about experience points and loot seems a better way to realise the fiction. Then again, we've seen very, very little of either game, so you shouldn't believe a word I say.