When you play Space Marine 2 – or pretty much any other game in Warhammer 40,000 – strange words are thrown at you mercilessly. Things like Vox are not complicated technical terms, but simply the language of the world. MeinMMO explains what’s behind it.
If you’re wondering what the hell the “Interact with the Cogitator” task means, you’re far from alone. Space Marine 2 attracts tons of players who actually have no idea about Warhammer – and who can’t do anything with words like that.
In the end, behind such strange expressions there are actually quite simple terms. So why doesn’t the game just use the word “computer”? Strictly speaking: Because a Cogitator works like a computer, but it isn’t one.
Space Marine 2 had to adhere to a number of guidelines and it is quite possible that such terms are part of them. Basically, the simple fact is that the language has developed over the history of Warhammer 40,000 and is no longer what you know today.
The launch trailer for Space Marine 2, the new co-op shooter in Warhammer 40k
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Nobody speaks English, German or any other “dead” language anymore
Space Marine 2, like almost all games in the Warhammer 40k universe, takes place in the 41st millennium. So the language really had a lot of time to develop. And if you just look at what new expressions there are in Cyberpunk 2077, it should be clear that you won’t get very far with the Adeptus Astartes with German or English.
In the empire of humanity there is basically only one language left: Gothic. Even here, however, there are still subdivisions:
Basically no one speaks High Gothic as their native language. The language roughly corresponds to Latin from the Middle Ages and, just like Latin, the average citizen cannot understand a word of it. High Gothic is mainly used by the Inquisition, the nobility or in sacred rituals. The language of the people is Low Gothic.
In the world of Warhammer you can recognize the Gothic by the pseudo-Latin in which some terms are used. The fact that words like “computer” are not easy to read is due, among other things, to the long history of Warhammer and a technology war that has lasted for thousands of years.
One remnant of this is that service robots are made from people instead of being purely technical. Here is a small dictionary with the most common terms and what they roughly mean:
The nerds have their own language and despise the “flesh talk”
But Warhammer wouldn’t be Warhammer if there was only one language. Of course it has to be a little more complicated. Because not all citizens of the Empire speak Gothic, there is another, much broader language: the Lingua Technis, or “the binhere language.”
The Lingua Technis can actually neither be spoken nor understood by “normal” people because it consists of various noises and noises that are generated by cybernetic implants.
The idea behind this language is the possibility of transmitting information quickly and directly without any room for interpretation – binary, so to speak. The information is correct or not, there should be no possibility of interpretation. A Tech Priest in RPG Rogue Trader says: “Binharic is more informative, more ergonomic, and less prone to misinterpretation.”
There are also Astropaths in Warhammer 40,000. They correspond to long-distance satellite communication, except that instead of machines, magically gifted people function as transmitters and receivers.
Corresponding messages are transported through the warp and the communication makes the astropaths vulnerable to the influence of Chaos. Accordingly, these people quickly become insane and usually do not live long. An “astropathic choir” can be viewed in detail in Rogue Trader: The role-playing game for Warhammer 40k on Steam gives me as a fan exactly what I miss in Space Marine 2