Sisters in Soulstorm: Our Lady of Run Away

I didn't much like Dawn of War: Soulstorm. This is not an unsual sentiment, of course; many people were disappointed by Soulstorm's lack of new content, the poor quality of what new content it did have and the various bugs resulting from it quite literally being missing the last 10% of its development (not the least of these troubles being the infamous load times on any non-cutting-edge computer).

Having to wait fully five minutes to get to the map screen aside, my chief complaint with Soulstorm was that the Sisters of Battle in particular were handled weakly. After years of Dawn of War's presence in the gaming atmosphere, this was the Sisters's big chance to shine in video game form. Alas, the result came through markedly less impressive than it could have. To be frank, I loved the voice acting for them virtually across the board-- the voice acting for characters is one of my favorite elements of Dawn of War and it enriches the game's atmosphere to no small degree-- but that's about all I can say in their favor in this iteration.

There are numerous mediocrities by my measure. The character models lack the polish and personality of the other factions, with bland expressions and spotty animations. The building design for the Sisters leaves much to be desired, a Sisters base looking more like St. Basil's Cathedral than the kind of dark, Gothic design one would expect.

The Sisters are known as the single most faithful faction in the entire Imperium, possibly more faithful per capita than any other group or race. And yet, in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, their morale breaks almost as easily as the Imperial Guard, who by the game's arithmetic are mostly cowards who need a Commissar to scare them into battle with a boltgun.

The Sisters can be upgraded to improve their morale, but this still seems off; if they weren't already unshakably, insanely faithful, they wouldn't be Sisters. I note that similarly, the Necrons can suffer from morale damage, even though their forces are comprised almost exclusively of soulless machines.

The game shows no qualms about giving different types of resources to different races-- Sisters get Faith; Orks get... Orks; Dark Eldar get Souls; Necrons actually lose a resource, making them more centralized-- and I see no reason Morale should not be apportioned the same way, as a unique resource that some factions simply do not have as a concern.

The Sisters represent an interesting quantity in Imperial society. They are the effective pinnacle of faith, the apex of fanatical devotion. They've got that old-time religion in their hearts, and they are going to use it to beat people to death.

Thinking about it, it further occurs to me that Sisters having an expendable Faith resource just cheapens things even more. The argument can be made that this is only fair, but by then "faith" no longer so much represents the strength of belief in the Sisters as it does the attention of the Emperor and whatever local energies come into play in making the miracles they summon. To make matters worse, they get more of it from adding artifacts to their listening posts; a guard tower explodes on the other side of the battlefield and suddenly the Sisters can't pray for healing anymore. You can see the problem.

In this case, it's a matter of morale rather than faith; the loss of a holy artifact (which they chose to install in a combat outpost, no less) can damage the morale of the warriors on the ground, but for it to actually quantifiably reduce their religious faith in the God-Emperor presents the Sister's faith as weak and inconstant-- entirely at odds with their characterization. The comical absurdism of it would be a boon if Dawn of War were trying to capture the dark comedy and tragic farce of classical Warhammer, but it isn't, and so it can only damage the tonal atmosphere and make the game sillier than it means to be.

For those interested in some very fine Battle Sisters models indeed, I would highly recommend looking up the French fan-made Witch Hunters mod for Dark Crusade 1.2. It's sadly incomplete and no longer in development, but what does exist is playable and most definitely worth seeing.

At the end of the day, the Adepta Sororitas as presented in Dawn of War: Soulstorm do have something to offer, if only their mere existence as a playable faction. The representation, however, leaves much to be desired. I mean that plainly; it leaves me wanting more and better than what I got, though I seriously doubt we're going to get a Battle Sister video game to compare with Space Marine or anything of the like any time soon.

J'retour

It has now been two months and seven days since last I made a post to this blog.

To be frank, the reasons for this dearth of posts are simply that I've been going through a lot of stress lately and have been preoccupied with other unrelated projects. In this time, I simply wasn't able to think of anything to write that would be interesting or useful enough to actually post here; however, in more recent times this has finally begun to turn around.

Mainly, I find myself interested in writing more about Warhammer 40,000 again, since I seem to be getting annoyed with it once more, which is how the blog got started to begin with. I've got some ideas for new articles; novel reviews, faction analysis, fan fiction and whatever other things I can come up with as I go along.

Watch this space in the coming days for new content, here at Forty Thousand Hammers.