Gabe unburdened himself yesterday, revealing all - and he apparently likes Star Wars Outlaws a lot now that you can save your game. Among other features, you have a "weird little guy" you can use to interact with the environment, and one of those interactions is robbing motherfuckers. People seem basically fine with it! I guess the thing we have to remember is that all these people were born, grew up, and now live inside Star Wars. There's so much weird shit going on at any given second - they got these toothy desert holes, they got bats that live inside worms that live inside rocks that float in space. Maybe gettin' a little crawled on every now and then doesn't register at all.
I've been pretty impressed with what I've played of Space Marine 2, and as someone who is deeply nestled in that fandom, I have some info for those of you coming in cold:
The Large Blue Gentlemen are Adeptus Astartes, specifically, a type of Space Marine called Ultramarines. You might think that is because they are blue and they are marines, but no. Obviously, it is because they are from Sub-sector Ultramar. Even though they tend to be the face of Space Marines generally, inside the community they're considered sort of cringe for a variety of reasons - it's not uncommon to hear "smurfs" used as a descriptor. Their ubiquity is part of it, but they're also considered Goody-Two-Shoes, by the book soldiers in a setting where other distinct groups of marines - called Chapters - have really whacked out style and lore. I think their vibes were rehabilitated vigorously by Dan Abnett's Know No Fear, but then, he's the best to ever do it.
The Weird Red Cloaked Guys are The Adeptus Mechanicus, a technological priesthood whose rituals maintain the war footing of the Imperium. They commune with "machine spirits" and waft sacred incense over the USB ports. Core to the setting is the idea that humanity's best days are long past, that nobody really understands how anything works anymore, but enough real information is encoded in these chants that things keep chugging along. They worship an entity called the Omnissiah, or Machine God - which is a teensy bit heretical, because everybody else worships the Emperor. But because nobody else knows how anything works, and they need the Adeptus Mechanicus to turn things off and - this step is crucial - turn it back on again, all parties have decided that the Emperor of Man is the physical embodiment of the Omnissiah. Everybody wins…?
I won't be able to stop talking about it, so you'll have to endure more of this on Monday probably. The strip is also about my inability to stop talking about it, so there's a richness there.
Today is the last day that the PAX Shop is open, so the window is closing on mementos of that event. It really felt like the early days to me, and I know I'm not the only one.
(CW)TB out.
