Admit it, you’ve noticed the plethora of space marines tromping around in your favorite vidya. They are white, bald, gritty and probably don’t wear helmets so as to improve their peripheral vision, lower their wind resistance and generally improve their bad-assery rating. Every once and a while you may get one who is vaguely ethnic, or has some hair, but for the most part, they are all the same. And for a good reason.

Simply put, space marines kick ass.

What’s that you’re saying? You like to play a character with some personality? Too bad. Space Marines are too buff and manly for personalities. If anything, games like Gears of War 2 would be infinitely better if the namby-pamby feelings were ignored. On the flipside of course, if space marines are too bad ass (ala Haze) their dialogue becomes stunted and painful to listen to.

The best space marine games will either have no dialogue or dialogue that borders on satire. The new Matt Hazard game exemplifies this with the hilarious Will Arnett channeling his inner action hero to berate the game that he himself is in. In the silent protagonist category, we have people like Nathan Hale from Resistance 2 or Master Chief from the Halo series. In both cases, the soldiers are subjected to the horrible realities of war and are being attacked on all sides by an unstoppable enemy. Nathan Hale also suffers from a disease that will render him dead before he can even save the planet. Do you hear either of them bitching about it though? No fucking way. Why? They are too busy being badass.

A popular contention is that the silent protagonist allows the player to transport themselves into the game, using the hero as their own avatar. Whether or not we have hero fantasies, we usually have asskicking fantasies. In a society where fighting is largely discouraged, it feels good and masculine to be able to be competitive and make other people feel bad about themselves. Single player campaigns allow us to save the world while an increasing emphasis on multiplayer with indepth scoreboards and stat-tracking systems allow us to display our prowess to any who would look.

Our societies as well tend to value intellect over pure brawn. There was once a time when those with the most physical strength ruled, but those times are long past. Of course, an emphasis on one thing always breeds another, which is undoubtedly what gave rise to the popularity of the UFC, and similarily, sports themed video games. And, lest we forget, you can find plenty of muscly bald white guys in the UFC, WWE, NFL or any other sporting association you can name.

Will we one day be able to get a good story in a First Person Shooter? That depends. Some would contend that Half-life has already achieved this. That being said, that seems forgiving seeing as they use the same cutscenes and set pieces that any other FPS uses. The story in these games comes at a cost. If you use a cut-scene, you put a halt to the action, which is anathema to those who want to rock. It may also force you to develop the character, which you may have no intention to do. Presenting story elements during gameplay makes little logistical sense as you should be focused on asskicking, not the history of some ancient race. One must also imagine being in the shoes of a space marine. What would you want to hear in battle, orders or the cause of the recent malhovian uprising? Needless to say, if someone was yapping my ear off, i would shoot myself in the head (so as to disable the headset, not to kill myself. My health regenerates anyways, no biggy).

Perhaps the only problem with the Space Marine is the continuity across story lines. All space marines have rifles, regenerating shields, com-systems, etc. This effectively serves to make the genre stagnant but paradoxically reliable. Space Marines in this sense are the new World War 2 allies. You fight the same nazi’s with the same garands and the same medics. Is this bad? Perhaps. Will it change? I sure hope so. The time will soon come when being a badass space marine will lose its charm. Until then, keep on buying the same game, and enjoying it.