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Bald Space Marine

Concept »

Bald Space Marine is the concept in many shooters that the player's character is a generic blank slate with no or little narrative development. Recently parodied in TimeSplitters and Matt Hazard. Also exemplified by limitations in technology.

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Technology 

Some developers have addressed the issue of the inclusion of the Bald Space Marine in their titles.  Epic's Design Director Cliff Bleszinski has stated that while the characters in Gears of War typify this concept, it's not necessarily always about the narrative.  He stated in a recent interview with Develop that the technology of the Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 / Current PC cycle are great at rendering architecture, lighting and metals but things like character model details, such as hair, are more difficult to render:

At the same time, in this generation the translucent effects are very hard to pull off. That’s why everybody sees a lot of these bald characters and wonder why games feature so many fucking space marines. Well, the tech is good at showing off armour and it’s not that good at doing hair. That’s why we have bald space marines. There’s your answer people.

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