For The Emperor!!!

I am a big fan of Warhammer 40k. For some reason certain people find that unusual. I am not sure why. The 40k Universe is, in my opinion, the best science fiction universe currently established, and far, far superior to any other mainstream sci-fi verse. So of course I am a fan ... what other universe has 8 foot fungi fighting space nuns?

I should clarify that I am more a fan of the books and lore than the tabletop RPG, which is possibly where people get confused. I have over 30 books so far, most involving the Horus Heresy, but some focused on the 40k era proper. Many folks only really consider the tabletop realm when describing 40k to them. This is a shame and something that also confuses me as 40k is so much more than plastic figures and dice rolls on a table. The video games, for example, are a great way to explore both the lore of the game and the glorious and horrifying universe that is 40k.

One such game is Inquisitor Martyr, a B-tier ARPG by a small indie company that I have been playing recently. For what it's worth, its not a bad game, but not quite on par with the likes of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile. It is perhaps more comparable to Wolcen in terms of production value as far as ARPGs are concerned. Nevertheless, Martyr has allowed me to cleanse a pocket of the galaxy of xenos and heretic filth in 40k style, which is more than I can ask for in the current drought of good 40k games. Hopefully Darktide further cures that itch in the near future.

I have been playing as a Crusader, one of 4 types of 'Inquisitors', a word used very lightly in said game. I burn things with a Heavy Flamer, the most zealous and righteous tool for correcting the errors of heretics, mutants and the unclean. The build focuses on crit, vulnerability and area of effect damage. It's all very straightforward work. However, the build I am running is quite unique as I seem to be doing something that no-one else is. I usually build incredibly tanky with good sustain in almost all ARPGs I play, and although that is technically no different in Martyr, I am approaching it from a very different angle.

In Martyr, there are up to 3 health pools you should maintain in order to stay alive. The first two exist by default, Health and Suppression. Health is obvious: if you hit 0 you die. Suppression is not as obvious, as you can technically be completely suppressed (i.e. 0 suppresion) and still stay alive. Suppression acts as a pseudo crowd-control and status effect resistance meter, with multiple game mechanics tied to various stages of it. Keeping it as high as possible in the green or "Protected" state is usually the best strategy. Both health and suppression regenerate out of combat, however you will definetly need to build for both if you want to stay alive IN combat (i.e. sustain).

Energy shield is the third form of "health" pool that you can explore, sitting over/before your health pool and tangential with suppression. It is optional as you can choose to use gear which gives you energy shield on activation, or have (very) small amounts of it accumulate on hit or kill. You can accumulate up to 2x your health pool in energy shield. However, it is generally accepted within the community that energy shield is ... really bad. This is mostly because it does not scale with your defenses at all (i.e. it takes raw damage) and therefore does not last for any reasonable or worthy amount of time. However, it is the backbone of my build's defenses and sustain.

To explain, I will introduce you to one of the many Psalm Doctrines (i.e. think D2 Runewords) currently in the game:

As you can see it gives you health and energy shield based off a portion of the damage you deal. Not too bad, but it absolutely pales in comparison to some of the more powerful damage focused Psalm Doctrines, for example:

Sooo ... no one uses it. This is a grevious mistake, one that I personally cannot blame people for. Prior to using Psalm Doctrines, you are taught that energy shield sucks and you shouldn't pay it any attention, which is mostly true. However, 12% of your damage done going into energy shields is quite considerable ... assuming you are dealing truckloads of damage and SIGNIFICANTLY more than anything else in the game. So, the more damage you do, the tankier you become. However, you can still get suppressed while shielded and occasionally even lose health. You don't always have the potential to maintain 100% energy shield uptime, especially when things get hairy. To counteract this, I will introduce you to two very special relic gear enchants, which again no-one seems to be using:

Yes, that's right. Taking damage to energy shield can completely restore your health AND suppression, and taking higher amounts of energy shield damage (i.e. raw damage) means you only do this faster and more efficiently! That is ridiculous, and results in a build philosophy very much in the vein of "a good defense is a good offense". Essentially, damage=tankiness=sustain. Combined with a reckless playstyle, the build becomes incredibly fun to play with a solid risk vs reward paradigm, dealing and wading into damage as a means of staying alive. Observe...

Inquisitor Martyr has been a good bit of fun during a general drought of interesting games. I will likely be done with it soon, but I can safely say I did enjoy it and definitely got my money's worth (over 110 hours presently). It has also taught me a few things about game design that I was not expecting.

Recklessness!

Somewhat recently, I had a laugh and an enjoyable conversation with some old school friends regarding one's sense of humour, inspired mostly by me randomly linking them my first Youtube video ever. This video title 'Warrior and Rogue Live Action PvP' was a video published in 2008, but was actually created the year before I even made a Youtube account. This video is incredibly violent and stupid. It uses footage from Braveheart, audio from Unreal Tournament (though people still think it is from DoTA!) and text from World of Warcraft, composed to be what the title suggests, a live action player versus player video. It was created for the purposes of comedy and I remember having a jolly time editing and releasing it back in the day.

Strangely enough, watching it again 12 years later, it had not lost its charm. It was still as ridiculous and horrible as it was when I was a younger man. The only difference is that I am somewhat embarrassed about it nowadays. The content is something I would never show someone off the cuff as I think it points directly at my still incredibly dark sense of humour, inspired by Ren and Stimpy, Monty Python and other politically incorrect media of the 80s and 90s. My sense of humour is about the last thing that I ever actually reveal to people and this video was much too forward for modern day discourse.

I was also embarrassed because the quality of the video is absolutely rubbish! I am sure at the time both myself and the Youtube Gods thought it was state of the art, but at just 480p and 25fps, I knew this treasure would not age well. So, I had the grand idea of completely recreating it from scratch, being my first ever 'remaster' of an old video. During this process I rediscovered just how much effort went into even this first publication, as it took almost an entire day of straight editing to get it basically 99.9% the same as the original, but this time in glorious 4K (2160p) at 60fps. Behold!!

Something I realised while re-editing this is that the original footage I was using was not at 25fps, meaning I must have forced this during my 2007/8 rendition. This caused a variety of syncing issues that needed immaculate attention lest footage went out of sync with the original (but also remastered) audio sequence. Every 5 seconds I needed to cut frames, increase or decrease playback speed and resync in order to get the new and old footage to roughly line up. This took a long, long time. In addition to this, I decided to render the whole new composition at 60fps using a frame blending technique called Optical Flow. This has a tendency to create artifacts, particularly early on in the video, when the sampling has not had many frames to work with. You can definetly notice this in the opening sequence, but it quickly dissipates. I guess every video will have its quirks, and this is one of them.

Anyways, part of the reason I did this was because the conversation I had with friends was around the idea of whether or not I would ever make something like this video again. The truth was that I actually would, and to prove my point ... I simply remade it again. That probably seems like a waste of time, but for me it immortalizes something about the era I grew up in, what I found funny and honestly still find comical today. In a time where I find myself laughing less and less often (for various reasons), having something like this in my skeleton closet is reassuring. Even if it is quite embarrassing.