Meh, I honestly don't think it's much of a big deal. For all we know, that could easily be explained as a manufacturing quirk. Is there even lore explaining why it's pointed like that? I never even heard of anything about it until you mentioned it.
Dude, I think you're fussing too much over small details. In the middle of a huge battle, bullets flying everywhere, people dying, is your main focus gonna be "Man that armor looks weird."? I say, as long as we can easily tell space marines and chaos marines apart, they don't have to look exactly the same as the lore. I think they looked fine in Space Marine, they looked chaosy enough, or space mariney enough. Although I wish they had the horns chaos marines usually have... but yeah, fact is, no need to fuss so much over armor.
If you can't even bother to look up any modern or old picture of Corvus armor, or even the bloody miniature, you really should not be making a W40K game. Relic also had a lot of other errors in their games as well. But no, having my beloved Corvus beakie armor reduced to some fugly-ass scrunched up beak pissed me off. You can't make any good Raven Guard skin without getting stuck looking at that terrible helmet. What was confusing as well is how Relic had proper Corvus helmets previously in their games- just for some reason they decided to screw up the models in Space Marine. Plus there was the weirdness of them not putting in a lot of the canon armors, and instead renaming bits. The selection was pretty terrible (although at least they had MK IV in the game), and while the painter was good compared to those of DOW I or DOW II- you still couldn't make the little details like the knee insignias, helmet stripes, more chapter symbols, no eye coloration, and some other problems. It'd be extremely easy details for them to add that wouldn't affect the multiplayer or anything. Just simply add the actual level of detail seen in W40K and not generic marines with no way to differentiate their companies besides changing the shoulder trim for Codex-Compliant Chapters. Still not as bad as poor Chaos. They really got shafted. But on a whole, the armor in Space Marine sucked. As for why Corvus looks like that, it's been the canon design for over a decade. While likely explained in-universe that it looks like that for aerodynamics, it's simply been that way for years. And Relic decided to mess around with it just 'because'. And so we get the fugly Corvus helmet from Space Marine that looks like it took a Rhino to the face. Still not as bad as the Vengeance launcher though. Thankfully Space Marine isn't canon in the continuity of W40K, and I think is the only thing in W40K that's non-canon.
I like how you are having a 100% boner for this face plate thing, while right now I am thinking that Games Workshop better not change it like they just recently changed chaos raptors...........and a bunch of other stuff in 6th edition.........I mean have you seen Necrons man................I don't even want to go there. I forsee and angry letter to Matt Ward in the future if that's the case. And if you ask why Matt Ward? It's because it's always his fault.
At least they're the actual company behind the game and have ownership of it. Relic is a commissioned dev with no actual ownership of the franchise and just randomly changes things and goes completely in the way of canon fluff for 'artistic license'. As for the Raptors, my only giref is the jump-pack design. Their new helmets are MK V Heresy and MK IV Maximus. While not the classic Raptor helm, the at least look good. The Necron change was also largely for the best to make Necron Lords and Necron Overlord fleshed out characters that add character to the Necrontyr. The only error was allowing us to understand what their goals were.
Oh I was mainly going on about the fact that they are Space Tomb Kings at this point. Which is not a big deal, but seeing that I wonder if Squats really had to go. Also considering how tight GW is with BI, I imagine you won't really have to worry about it too much.
I see Tactical Marines and CSM with bolter pistol and chainsword: finally also a tac marine could use melee weapons besides combat knifes. As someone said, only sergeants or higher ranks can use those weapons but maybe they will be available trough the "sergeant rank" when enough experience is acquired.
