So, throughout all the cinematic scenes in Starcraft 2, including the one in which Tychus was placed in his suit, I always felt there was something a little "off" about the shape and size of the shoulders and arms of the Terran Marine. The head seemed seated too low, and the arms too thick for a normal human frame.
At first, I was able to shrug this off as mere poor vision on my part-- the Terran Marines were clearly already broad-shouldered folk, and most of that shoulder width could be chalked up to extra padding and armor above and around the standard shoulder. The head seems low due to the padding and armor around the neck-- this is explainable. There is nothing to see here, move along...
Yet I was wrong, and blind to the truth, however horrible it was. EVEN assuming the shoulder padding and other things cause the apparently broader shoulders, there remains the problem of arm positioning and angle. Given the thickness of the terran arm and chest armor on the marine, there was no way it was possible for the arms could come out of the shoulder pads straight down at that angle rather than slightly outwards. Your arms can't fall to your side straight if you have armor between your upper arm and your torso... they should press out slightly.
At first, my compatriots would not believe me, so I had my friend Maru the paint /graphic designer put together a blueprint to show how this is possible. I've placed this in spoiler tags for those of you with slower connections.
The first row of the image shows an anatomical diagram of a human, and a front view of a Terran Marine. The second row shows a superposition of the two images, demonstrating their incompatibility, and the hypothetical anatomy of a human who would fit into a Terran Marine suit.
I hope that this adequately explains my issues with the shape and size of the Terran Marine suit and its relationship with Terran anatomy. Various explanations like "Marines are genetically altered conscripts", "Marines are actually gorillas", and "Marines OP" are obviated by the presence of Raynor and Tychus clearly not having gorilla shoulders. I hope that other TL readers will now understand the true and insidiously sinister lies that underLIE the shape of the Terran Marine suit.
Feel free to use this thread to debate how a normal shaped human could fit into a Marine suit, or not fit, as the case may be.
haha yeah true. i also don't understand why marines in suits look much taller than normal human beings, since there's very little height extensions in the suit judging from the SC2 intro.
When you're good against everything else in the game, even banelings, you earn the right to have your shoulder any size that you want. Marines could even be rocking some suits and shoulder paddings from duran duran below that amor or some shit. They are in that level of badassery. They can do whatever the fuck they want.
I just rewatched the initial teaser video (which is totally still badass btw, watch it again... I got chills again ;D)
and I was like 'yeah this totally makes sense' the entire time. Then at the end I changed my mind again.
I'm forced to conclude that they go in normal, but the suit fucks their shit. This is not actually a problem since before any of these effects begin to cause serious problems (takes about 2 months), the average marine dies 32 times.
The reason the marine looks so funky and the hands look so big is because thats just his style.
A similar comparison can be see here in art from the movie Lilo and Stitch. See how exaggerated the lower half of Nani's body is? It was just the specific style of the lead artist that they chose for the movie.
On March 18 2011 18:17 Ptur wrote: the starcraft 2 intro cinematics shows a preview of how the marines get equiped
So when I used to cast (computer started not being able to do it and im to cheap to fix it) I would always say "build" marines and people in the chat would be like no no no you TRAIN marines in the barracks. My respoonse was always to watch that intro again because based on that it really does look like most of the marines suit gets built around him to equip him which is what i assumed would happen in the barracks, not training, building/equipping.
The reason the marine looks so funky and the hands look so big is because thats just his style.
A similar comparison can be see here in art from the movie Lilo and Stitch. See how exaggerated the lower half of Nani's body is? It was just the specific style of the lead artist that they chose for the movie.
You can see his style in all three of Blizzard's franchises, as well as on the album art for the band HammerFall.
They talked a lot about it in the Making Of DVDs that came with the collector's edition which are available here and there. While they could have made everything look normal they didn't think it looked as good from a top down perspective and ultimately decided that this is how it would look. They go into more depth in the DVDs obviously.
I get a weird sense of scale from the game anyway. I always see marines as something realyl tiny and puny (partly because they are in in comparison to everything else in the game ^^), then you see Tychus and wonder what the hell?
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WNeCM.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.google.com/url?source=imgres&ct=img&q=http://www.hellokids.com/img/lilo-et-stitch-n-19-12524.jpg&sa=X&ei=cCiDTdjJJ4j2tgPRxrmBAg&ved=0CAQQ8wc4HA&usg=AFQjCNGlKuthwxHwFSvRFPYlLt96ehtQyQ)
