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Hello,
So after reading GameInformer I saw the pictures for the new game Destiny. I saw tons of TAU. Anyone think GW will sue since they sue everyone else with even the smallest of reasons?

So...Bungie has not been sued by GW then?

You may want to change the title to something a little less sensationalist and misleading.

Also, those are totally not tau. They look more like the Clone Troopers from star wars, imo.

why not? It's not like deactivision has a shortage of money.

Misleading title changed.

Please don't do things like this in the future.

Thanks!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So...Bungie has not been sued by GW then?

You may want to change the title to something a little less sensationalist and misleading.

Indeed. And GW doesn't sue people with money and lawyers.

Tau? Not really. Generic armour is generic.

To be honest, I don't see any Tau influence except maybe one or two of the helmets.

Sorry about the Title. Wasn't trying to Mislead.

Mainly the helmets. GW has sued for Heads and bits before.

I understand about the ability to actually handle to GW lawyers since they have money.

You're joking, right? Games development studios have no money. They only pay their programmers for maybe 30% of the time they actually work - not because they're greedy monsters (except EA), but because they can't afford to pay more than contracted hours (and games require mucho overtime to meet the deadline).

That doesn't seem right. Where does all of the money go?

Why not? You only get the respect you demand.

However, for a company that has pretty blatantly ripped off Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator, Alien, Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, any number of anime producers, etc, etc ad nauseum, I'd say maybe take a pass on something that looks only marginally like the intellectual property they already ripped off of Robotech.

Frankly i don't see a Tau influence.

I see more Tali / Geth from Mass effect than anything (at least in the bottom picture).

In all due fairness, there is only so much variety you can get with a humanoid figure in sci-fi armor and weaponry. It's actually kind of fun to point out how many alien races in each setting are bipedal and have thumbs.

I don't so much see Tau in those pictures as I see the standard problem with sci-fi. For a genre with limitless possibilites for character, story, and setting people can't seem to stray from the standards.

Generic sci fi soldiers? Yes

Tau? Not at all

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
That doesn't seem right. Where does all of the money go?

Publishers, software, equipment, licences... making games is expensive, even before you start paying the voice actors, animators, programmers, writers and so on.

Halo 3's development budget was $60 million, and took 12 months from initial announcement to final release. To put it into perspective, the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released the same year, had a development budget of $150 million and took 18 months from start-filming to finished product.

The OotP movie had to be designed to run at a significantly higher resolution than Halo 3, meaning that the 3d models and animations had to be of significantly higher quality. Other additional costs incurred by OotP include licensing the plot and characters from Rowling (while Microsoft had bought the licence for halo outright when they made Halo 2), the significantly larger cast (Halo 3 had about 40 voice actors, including all the extras. OotP had that many face characters). That's before you even begin to count the fact that most of the Halo 3 assets were recyclable and reusable, not only within the game itself but onwards towards ODST, the DLC and Halo 4, and how many were recycled from Halo 2 and Combat Evolved.

However, none of that takes into account the sheer, unrelenting greed of the publishing companies, who generally take 60%-80% of the profits from anything, be it game, film or music CD.

GW wouldnt touch it anyways. They go after independant authors with little to no visibility. Why go after companies that blatanty rip their IP off like Blizz and produce lucrative and highly visible commodities like succesful video games and movies? Newp, may as well wallow around in the overpriced tabletop world with asinine moneygrab digital products and B-List devleloped video games.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
GW wouldnt touch it anyways. They go after independant authors with little to no visibility. Why go after companies that blatanty rip their IP off like Blizz and produce lucrative and highly visible commodities like succesful video games and movies? Newp, may as well wallow around in the overpriced tabletop world with asinine moneygrab digital products and B-List devleloped video games.

I assume you're talking about Zerg and Nids.

Which came out first, Starcraft 1, or WH40k 3e Nids?

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
GW wouldnt touch it anyways. They go after independant authors with little to no visibility. Why go after companies that blatanty rip their IP off like Blizz and produce lucrative and highly visible commodities like succesful video games and movies? Newp, may as well wallow around in the overpriced tabletop world with asinine moneygrab digital products and B-List devleloped video games.

Because if GW sued someone with actual lawyers, word might get out that a *ton* of stuff in Warhammer (both flavors) was ripped off from somewhere else first.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
That doesn't seem right. Where does all of the money go?

Publishers, software, equipment, licences... making games is expensive, even before you start paying the voice actors, animators, programmers, writers and so on.

Halo 3's development budget was $60 million, and took 12 months from initial announcement to final release. To put it into perspective, the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released the same year, had a development budget of $150 million and took 18 months from start-filming to finished product.

The OotP movie had to be designed to run at a significantly higher resolution than Halo 3, meaning that the 3d models and animations had to be of significantly higher quality. Other additional costs incurred by OotP include licensing the plot and characters from Rowling (while Microsoft had bought the licence for halo outright when they made Halo 2), the significantly larger cast (Halo 3 had about 40 voice actors, including all the extras. OotP had that many face characters). That's before you even begin to count the fact that most of the Halo 3 assets were recyclable and reusable, not only within the game itself but onwards towards ODST, the DLC and Halo 4, and how many were recycled from Halo 2 and Combat Evolved.

However, none of that takes into account the sheer, unrelenting greed of the publishing companies, who generally take 60%-80% of the profits from anything, be it game, film or music CD.

Heh, I thought it might have had something to do with the publishers. Yeah, that is a load of bull.

 Pouncey wrote:

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
GW wouldnt touch it anyways. They go after independant authors with little to no visibility. Why go after companies that blatanty rip their IP off like Blizz and produce lucrative and highly visible commodities like succesful video games and movies? Newp, may as well wallow around in the overpriced tabletop world with asinine moneygrab digital products and B-List devleloped video games.

I assume you're talking about Zerg and Nids.

Which came out first, Starcraft 1, or WH40k 3e Nids?

Alien came out first.

These are not the Tau your looking for, quite some combing the desert for similarities.

Looks more like Infinity.

The top picture looks like P2 Clone Troopers with weird helmets and the bottom looks like run of the mill sci-fi crap. Tau rip-offs they do not make.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
In all due fairness, there is only so much variety you can get with a humanoid figure in sci-fi armor and weaponry. It's actually kind of fun to point out how many alien races in each setting are bipedal and have thumbs.

To be realistic, the opposable thumb is a fairly important evolutionary advantage, lol.

The human body is fairly efficient. Two limbs for mobility, two for utility. Not too big, not too small, and durable enough that it allowed us to become king of our own environment when mated to higher level reasoning.

I mean sure, the anthropomorphism is some sci-fi settings is a bit extreme, but it's not like those characteristics seem unrealistic to appear in successful alien races.


And everyone who played 40K knew that the Zerg were Tyranids when Starcraft came out. So I'm not sure why Pouncey thinks the Tyranids starting in 3rd Edition. The "modern" concept of Tyranids can be reasonably traced back to Codex: Tyranids, 2E in 1993, which is five years prior to Starcraft. The design inspiration from Alien in the Tyranids was also obvious, but the Zerg copied both the aesthetic, and the concept of Tyranids.

The rumour has always been that Starcraft was commissioned as a 40k game, then adopted and originalised by Blizzard when GW backed out of the deal.

Pouncey's comment is likely based on the fact that the current aesthetic of Tyranids was set with 3e. The fluff was set back with the 2e codex, but the 3e models were all significantly more serpentine than the original 2e metals - certain kits, specifically the 'mutant baby' Zoanthropes and the Raveners were all post-3e. At that time, the Hive Tyrand and Warrior also underwent a major redesign, becoming much taller and gaining more head-body-tail linearity (previously, they had heads set between their shoulders, except the Zoanthrope which had a longer neck to accomodate the wider head, and the Hive Tyrand and Carnifex which had their head set into their chests.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The rumour has always been that Starcraft was commissioned as a 40k game, then adopted and originalised by Blizzard when GW backed out of the deal.

Pouncey's comment is likely based on the fact that the current aesthetic of Tyranids was set with 3e. The fluff was set back with the 2e codex, but the 3e models were all significantly more serpentine than the original 2e metals - certain kits, specifically the 'mutant baby' Zoanthropes and the Raveners were all post-3e. At that time, the Hive Tyrand and Warrior also underwent a major redesign, becoming much taller and gaining more head-body-tail linearity (previously, they had heads set between their shoulders, except the Zoanthrope which had a longer neck to accomodate the wider head, and the Hive Tyrand and Carnifex which had their head set into their chests.

Just to serve as a visual aid

2nd edition Tyrant



3rd ed Tyrant



2nd Ed Zoanthrope



3rd ed Zoanthrope



Personally, I think the 3rd ed types look more like the xenomorphs from Alien than Zerg.

They look like Infinity miniatures to me, honestly.