Poll: Could Bioware actually pull off a good Warhammer 40k game?

[Eddie the head]

Could they pull off the atmosphere, work with the lore,

Given the mess they made of ME3 with tonal shift in the ending, combined with thier lore changes across ME, I'm skeptical of their writer's ability to work within thier own lore, let alone someone elses. Best case scenario here, don't let Bioware writer anywhere near it. Instead bring in the better class of BL author to write the script, Dan Abnett, Gav Thorpe, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Sandy Mitchell, Andy Chambers. Some combination of these could deliver a solid plot to hang a game on.

Oh come on even vary smart people make mistakes form time to time. Remember even Einstein once said "god dose not play dice." Well quantum physics proved that one wrong. I mean given the backlash I doubt they will make the same mistake twice.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Heh, no.

40k is at it's core brutal and unrelenting war on a ridiculous scale. Yeah, in DA:O and ME3 there is this sort of thing going on, in the background, but in 40k it's always at the forefront, it's taken above 11 and there's very little room for anything else. No romance or anything resembling romanticism, no space opera, no great questing around the land/galaxy, no single universe shaping individual, no neatly solving every problem you come across without blowing it's head off, Bio's typical character archetypes would not fit without heavy alteration.
None of Bioware's tried and true elements will even remotely fit into this setting.

And from the gameplay side of things Bioware has never done fast-paced combat particularly well, which is absolutely essential for anything that aims to do 40k justice.

Ciaphas Cain novels by Sandy Mitchel.

Your argument is invalid.

Uh... shit. But if this is a sequel to Space Marine we're talking about then there won't be room for anything like Ciaphas Cain's... adventures (which I really need to freakin read). It'll have to be like the brutal unrelenting violence I described or else it wouldn't be Space Marine.

Regardless, even if it weren't Space Marine 40k has a premise and a tone very unlike anything Bioware has done before and I feel they would be wholly unsuited to working with it. I think Bioware became so successful because they stuck to a bunch of things they were good at and became very good at using those things, but those things don't fit within 40k. For instance, in 40k war isn't a sudden, world-shattering event driven by some kind of evil the protagonist ends, it's a common occurrence and there's no end to it; even the most powerful of human individuals typically have little impact on the universe as a whole (unless maybe you're a daemon prince or something), there is no big hero that shows up and ultimately soundly defeats the big bad once and for all, and there's no 'rallying the various groups at odds against the greater evil', the greater evil is whatever isn't you. I think most importantly, when it comes down to it Bioware stories are typically like Great Hero in a Big World, whereas 40k is more like, Many Little Heroes in a Stupidly Gigantic World.
Yes, there's a ton of various depictions of 40k that aren't necessarily about people and aliens smashing each other but they work because they preserve what 40k is at it's heart, and the heart of 40k, the gargantuan scale, the status quo of perpetual war, the general suckery, the total impossibility of reconciliation between the warring sides and the grim humor, are things I think Bioware wouldn't be able to pull off.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

At this point I don't trust Bioware with their own IP's, so no.

Even if they were the pre-EA Bioware a Space Marine game would be a waste, a Dark Heresy title with Puritin/Renegade system and dealing with the factions of an Imperial hive (PDF, noble houses, underhive gangers, arbites, etc) would.be a better fit.

 

[Megalodon]

Oh come on even vary smart people make mistakes form time to time. Remember even Einstein once said "god dose not play dice." Well quantum physics proved that one wrong. I mean given the backlash I doubt they will make the same mistake twice.

Whether they make the same mistake again depends on whether they actually understand where they've been going wrong, and I'm skeptical about that at the moment. In the last three games they've made, each one has had at least one thing that's left me annoyed because it shits on their earlier games. The entire ME3 ending, the lack of any kind of trial following Arrival, the personality transplant they gave Anders in DA2 and the whole Revan-Exile force ghost thing from TOR (which is the one I'm least certain about, as I haven't played it only read about it, but I don't like the idea of old protagonist getting fucked over offscreen).

While I'm open to being proven wrong by DA:I, as it stands I struggle to see Bioware pulling off 40k in a way that won't piss me off.

 

[Patrick Hayes]

I can envision the Bio40K game now: romances between space marines and eldar, space orcs with unresolved daddy issues and repenting chaos marines with hearts of gold.
It would almost be worth giving the franchise to Bioware/EA just for the massive rage it would cause.

Oh, I'd love to see that.

DA:O was sunshine and lollipops compared to the "best" day in the 40k universe.

No, Bioware doesn't have what it takes to do a 40k game.

But a lot of people are saying how 'dark' Warhammer 40K is, but what makes it so dark? My knowledge of the IP comes from the game (and even so I don't know much about it.) Where's the lore and the stories that makes it dark and gives it emotional impact?

What I mean is, just saying 'these people are all totally ruthless and everything is war and depressing' doesn't really have any emotional impact.

For something to truly be 'dark' (for me anyway) it would need to make me care about what's going on in a some kind of personal level. Have there be humanity and good things in there as well, otherwise it's just caricatures killing each other.
Bioware could do that, but I'm not sure Warhammer is about that.

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

Two words. Dark. Eldar.

 

[Vivi22]

Bioware can't make good games out of other properties or their own original IP's, so why would I expect them to do any better with 40K?

 

[endtherapture]

Bioware. No way, they'd just run out another game with the same plot as KOTOR, Dragon Age and Mass Effect...

However Obsidian could do it, and in the process write a deeply philosophical comment on war into the game and somehow subvert 40k and make it genius, just like they did in KOTOR2.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

-The C'tan; A species of aliens with the power to sap a star dry, and who can wipe out entire species on a whim.
-The Eldar; An ancient alien race whose supreme decadence gave birth to the God of Pleasure, who wants to see the Universe go out in one massive orgasm.
-The Tyranids; A hostile alien species that consumed an entire galaxy (possibly more) before finding their way to ours.
-The Tau; A seemingly benign race that welcomes all, and then chemically neuter them so they slow and quietly die out.
-The Orks; The want to burn the galaxy because it'll be fun.
-Imperium of Man; Pathologically mistrustful and extremely violent towards anything not human. They sacrifice tens of thousands daily to power the stasis chamber of the Emperor.
-Forces of Chaos; Want to destroy every living thing as a offering to the Blood God, Lord of Change, Prince of Corruption and the God of Pleasure.
-Dark Eldar; Sexual sadists who like to capture thousands to torture for years at a time.

 

[Lieju]

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

-The C'tan; A species of aliens with the power to sap a star dry, and who can wipe out entire species on a whim.
-The Eldar; An ancient alien race whose supreme decadence gave birth to the God of Pleasure, who wants to see the Universe go out in one massive orgasm.
-The Tyranids; A hostile alien species that consumed an entire galaxy (possibly more) before finding their way to ours.
-The Tau; A seemingly benign race that welcomes all, and then chemically neuter them so they slow and quietly die out.
-The Orks; The want to burn the galaxy because it'll be fun.
-Imperium of Man; Pathologically mistrustful and extremely violent towards anything not human. They sacrifice tens of thousands daily to power the stasis chamber of the Emperor.
-Forces of Chaos; Want to destroy every living thing as a offering to the Blood God, Lord of Change, Prince of Corruption and the God of Pleasure.
-Dark Eldar; Sexual sadists who like to capture thousands to torture for years at a time.

Two words. Dark. Eldar.

Those are concepts.

I can make up stuff too; Blurb-elves, who feed on pain and employ nanobots that burrow in the skulls of their victims to cause them unfanthomable pain for all eternity.

But what I asked was what stories have been told with that stuff that elevates it from 'nasty stuff I made up on my lunch-break' to actually believable world, or at least something I'd care about.

There's a difference in saying 'I made up this alien race that are totally evil', and telling a story about them that actually makes you feel bad.

Warhammer 40K just strikes me as too cartoonishly evil and dark to actually be anything other than silly.
But as I have been told, it has a lot of history and different writers have written stories about it in different styles, ranging from dark comedy to more serious.

 

[Ravinoff]

I don't think anyone could. The 40k setting just doesn't really lend itself to a good videogame concept. It's just so ridiculously over-the-top GRIMDARK that anything trying to play it straight will come off as braindead, and GW probably won't sign off on anything tongue-in-cheek enough to work.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I don't think it would be a good idea for Bioware to make a WH40k game.

CDPR on the other hand, I would like to see and play their interpretation of a WH40k RPG.

 

[VonKlaw]

I think the problem is that most good Bioware games rely on the same model reused in a different way (Character choices, romance options, big bad.etc) in a way that just wouldn't really work as a 40K game.

How the hell did you give a Space Marine different moral choices to make when anything outside the Codex Astartes is heresy?

 

[MCerberus]

How the hell did you give a Space Marine different moral choices to make when anything outside the Codex Astartes is heresy?

Kill the heretic or...
Kill the heretic slowly

 

[Clowndoe]

I don't see why not. If you ask a doctor (a bad one if you don't like the company) to screw in a plank of wood he's not going to use his scalpel, worst case you might have to slap him on the back of the head once or twice. As long as they decide right off the bat to not even try a story, I figure they could use it to occupy idle coders and animators while the writer work on something else. All they have to do is expand on the original without messing up what made it enjoyable.

And I liked Space Marine, it did a good job at letting me briefly live my big dumb Space Marine fantasy. I just hope the next one let's me wade into some of the other detestable xenos filth.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

Mass Effect 2 makes me negative. Warhammer 40K is not to be an easy game. A game that dumbed down like ME2 makes me negative considering you only had 2 types of guns/rifles and few types of armor.

I'd rather see Tech 5 or Rockstar for that matter make a WH40K game, anyone but Bioware.

 

[spartandude]

CDPR on the other hand, I would like to see and play their interpretation of a WH40k RPG.

Imagine if them and Obsidian teamed up to make a game based off the Inquisition

 

[NortherWolf]

Well, the part of me that hates Warhammer's Teen GrimDorkiness(TM) would love to see Bioware completely shit on the lore with super special CockJesus who will solve all issues of the universe while getting the choose between the Dark Eldar/Eldar/Tau chick and who has a lovable and goofy humorous sidekick in the form of a pet Tyranid.
And in five, ten years all everyone will remember is the goofy Tyranid.

So in short, no, not now, not ever.

 

[VonKlaw]

How the hell did you give a Space Marine different moral choices to make when anything outside the Codex Astartes is heresy?

Kill the heretic or...
Kill the heretic slowly

RENEGADE INTERRUPT: Pretend to let the heretic go, before killing him. And his entire family. And then the planet he lives on just in case. Exterminatus, ho!

 

[Saviordd1]

Well, personally I think warhammer is stupid. That said, you cannot make Satirical Parody into good drama. So no, you cannot appease to both fans.

Oh god, SHIELD YOURSELF GOOD SIR!

But otherwise agree completely, the only way to make warhammer not laughably sophomoric is to keep up with the self parody thing. And I just don't think that's Biowares thing. I also want them spending time on games that could actually be interesting.

And no, I'm sorry, the books don't count. I read one of those things and it was so god damn cringe worthy it was scary.

Then again Bioware DID write Fenris so who knows, maybe they could pull it off.

 

[Auberon]

I think the problem is that most good Bioware games rely on the same model reused in a different way (Character choices, romance options, big bad.etc) in a way that just wouldn't really work as a 40K game.

How the hell did you give a Space Marine different moral choices to make when anything outside the Codex Astartes is heresy?

As if the Wolves ever cared about Codex especially after Armageddon. There may be others, but for now they are the only ones I recall.