Extra Punctuation: Hating Warhammer 40k and Space Marine

[Malkavian]

Edit: I mean technically the "High Lords of Terra" are supposed to be in charge? How in charge?

This is the extent of the explanation:

Of which three or four seem to be layers of government and the rest seem to be military or paramilitary.

The High Lords of Terra are in charge. Just that. The Emperor may be above them, but only in a symbolical sense, like many of the monarchies of europe. He is, for all intents and purposes, dead. A religious saint/god. There is more to him than that, but to explain how the government functions, that is sufficient.

EDIT: A little more on the High Lords - they are an oligarchy, basically, and their office is something you rise to politically within your career branch. Each High Lord has an area of expertise. I can't remember all of them, but there is a master of the feelt, a master of the assasins, and so on.Basically, one for each major/important branch of Imperial society.

As for the chart...

The ones I have underlined in read are military branches. Those in yellow are closely affiliated, but not actual military branches.

I am also almost 100 % sure that that isn't an official chart. For one thing, it is missing a branch of the Inquisition.

 

[WOPR]

*snip*

I'm a fan and I still don't get what makes the ultra marines so awesome... I'm a blood ravens fan

Ouch!

IMHO, he does the backstory a serious injustice. Or, rather, he's missed the opportunity to complain about the really specifically crap bits, rather than just the vague premise.

QUICKLY! EDUCATE PEOPLE QUICKLY ENOUGH TO HOLD THEIR ATTENTION!

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Because it's not relevant to the game, it's a wargame, played with small metal and plastic figures, dice and rulers on fake terrain, you don't need the background to play it.

I might be wrong, but that seems like a somewhat shallow perspective to me. If I cared about Warhammer enough to play it, I'd care enough to get the backstory, the lore, the sense of the world that these little miniatures I'm supposed to have painted by hand are also supposed to flesh out. I don't play tabletop RPGs just because the little figurines are cool, but for the whole package. That includes the lore.

If the videogame adaptations fail to deliver that lore, then there's a bit of a problem. Again, it's not hard to fix. A protagonist that's a little less than a scowling fridge with arms, a sense that he's got a life beyond bashing the skulls of Orks in for the Emperor, that he's got personal stakes that go further than blind xenophobia.

As it is, the games fail to deliver that, as simple as it would be to do so.

 

[SyphonX]

This is exactly how I've felt, from the very beginning on hearing about "Warhammer". I never crossed my opinion or stereotype with that of the tabletop games/players, as it's different.

The universe is poor, and uninteresting. It's like Halo, but worse.

I'm also of the opinion that closet-fascists enjoy Warhammer, though I'm not sure thats what Yahtzee meant. Though Warhammer isn't as popular anymore, Call of Duty takes the tip of the spear on that one.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

The GRIMDARK WH40k was never my sort of thing either, I hold nothing personal against it as a whole BUT I've had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting some of its fans who would use its Codex on how to deal with Heretics as a policy for Immigration and Foreign Policy. I wish they'd been joking, but they weren't.

Also given how much the game has been described as meh, perhaps it would have been a better project to base a WH40K game on Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaphas_Cain]

I have it on good authority these are a comparatively light hearted look at the universe from a character who is basically Captain Blackadder (as in Blackadder Goes Forth) but is still action hero brave and lucky, he just wishes he didn't have to be.

 

[ACman]

snip
The ones I have underlined in read are military branches. Those in yellow are closely affiliated, but not actual military branches.

I am also almost 100 % sure that that isn't an official chart. For one thing, it is missing a branch of the Inquisition.

Military/paramilitary/intelligence and associated services then. The interesting bit is the Adeptus Administratum who seem to control planets and military. and in the back-ground even they sound like inhuman monks.

Supposedly this system of governance has been going controlling the entire human galaxy for 10,000 years; which sounds like a situation where you'd have sections of the administratum fall under the control of local princes al la europe after the Roman Empire. But no, the empire is stable despite constant war.

Hence I think it would be more interesting for the empire to fragment. Hence my previous Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox analogy.

 

[nyysjan]

Because it's not relevant to the game, it's a wargame, played with small metal and plastic figures, dice and rulers on fake terrain, you don't need the background to play it.

I might be wrong, but that seems like a somewhat shallow perspective to me. If I cared about Warhammer enough to play it, I'd care enough to get the backstory, the lore, the sense of the world that these little miniatures I'm supposed to have painted by hand are also supposed to flesh out. I don't play tabletop RPGs just because the little figurines are cool, but for the whole package. That includes the lore.

If the videogame adaptations fail to deliver that lore, then there's a bit of a problem. Again, it's not hard to fix. A protagonist that's a little less than a scowling fridge with arms, a sense that he's got a life beyond bashing the skulls of Orks in for the Emperor, that he's got personal stakes that go further than blind xenophobia.

As it is, the games fail to deliver that, as simple as it would be to do so.

And you get the lore in rulebooks, you get more lore in computer games, some more lore in different rulebooks, some more lore in comics, and even more lore in tie in novels.
Just like pretty much any other roleplaying game i've ever heard of.

What he was complaining was that the one individual game (presumably the new Space Marine game, altough he did not specify) did not give him all the info from the get go, and i answered that there was plenty of background to be gained from elsewhere.
Also, if the game (Space Marine) does not give enough info for the player to have a rough idea of the plot, then that would be valid criticism, but as this thread is not about the space marine game, but a more general criticism Yahtzee laid at the WH40K as a whole (and those that play it as an extension), it would be largely irrelevant to the topic (and should be brought up in the inevitable Space Marive episode of Zero Punctuation).

Also, the game (Space Marine) is (i think) made for the fans of WH40K, not as a general recruitment tool of the franchise, so i think it can be forgiven to expect some general background knowledge (star wars and star trek games do), and even if you don't actually know the more intricate galactic geopolitical manouverings or the more detailed day to day activities of the average citizens (now dead and eaten by the orcs) of the world the game happens in, that's fine, it's a shooter, not culture simulation.

 

[Skeleon]

I'm not a WH40K tabletop player, but I've played several of the videogames and read a couple of the books. I think Yahtzee is completely wrong on this one.

The Space Marines in WH40K are not at all like the testosterone secreting gun-toting refrigerators in games like Gears of War. On the contrary. In the actual background, they are often displayed as rather tragic figures, soldiers and heroes of a bygone era fighting in a dying world. Additionally, they had to give up so much of their humanity that they cannot really function among normal human beings anymore. They are extremely flawed and damaged, in a way, despite being physically superior.

Additionally, the WH40K universe is far from solely based on the Space Marines. The Imperium of Man is far vaster and includes many different and interesting factions. What was supposed to be a beacon of enlightenment has devolved into a fascistic theocracy, overwraught with bueraucracy and rituals. Add to that the many other species and entities with their own rich backgrounds and very different tenets.

 

[TheDooD]

I has always bothered me that the 40k universe is essentially a massive fascist theocracy where any sort of departure from the dogma of the state is eliminated with extreme prejudice.

There's no one to side with. Space Marines are battle-crazed fanatics. Chaos is hell. Orks are well... orks. Tyranids are insectoid monsters. Eldar would exterminate mankind without a second thought if they could. Tau are space communists. Imperial Guard are part of the aforementioned fascist theocratic space empire. Cultists are either alien or chaos mad. Necrons are space-undead-robot-gods or some shit.

I always thought the emperor should be more like a space-pope. Then there could be multiple human kingdoms/federations/confederacies/compacts.

But no, any difference will be purged by a bunch of insane fanatical jihadist. Bah.

In the 40k lore the Emperor was a good person that just wanted to help humanity from themselves. Yet the chaos gods screwed him over right before he succeeded. The good thing about 40k there's no defined "good guys" every faction has their heroes, traitors and legendary battles.

Space Marines caught the bad end of the stick when the Emperor died because the damn cultist within their own ranks warped his message into what is basically Christianity on Venom. Right now if the Emperor didn't die the Space Marines might be one of the more wise legions with some wicked tech that wouldn't have been lost because they're frighted of any tech eventhough it's the shit they use everyday.

Hell I agree that people don't like the Ultramarines they're basic simple as that. I'm a fan of the Salamander chapter myself they seem better for a game because these guys are experts in close quarters combat and they use some of the more destructive weapons like flamers and multi-meltas.

 

[Fearzone]

Well that just kicks up the shit storm now doesn't it?

Despite being bleak, the Warhammer 40k universe is one filled with irony and a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor. It is obviously not intended to be taken seriously, but just to have fun with. Which makes it stand heads and tales above more modern IPs and even most fantasy IPs, whose authors do intend them to be taken seriously.

 

[Undeadpool]

Always been odd to me that the Space Marines are considered the "good guys" in this universe when they're basically space-nazis. This would be a cool way to show that there aren't really any "good guys" or "bad guys" in a world of eternal war, but it's almost always swept under the rug (except in the first Dawn of War game, appropriately enough also the one that had campaigns for more than just the Marines) in favor of making them...well NOT be nazis.

 

[Mike Fang]

One of the Facebook commentators, Patrick Courtemanche, a soldier whose served in Afghanistan no less, said he views the WH40K setting and backstory as a cautionary lesson about the dangers of constant fighting and the elements that lead up to it. I think he makes a good point, if we were talking about a single game or movie. But I don't think a cautionary lesson is the right basis for an entire game franchise. It would be rather overkill to develop a roleplaying game designed to endure for generations just to get across one message that a single game or movie or book could do just as effectively. If the purpose of the game it to show people that this kind of existence (one of endless fighting and genocide) is not something that should be pursued, that seems to basically be telling people "don't play this game." Not really the underlying message you want in a franchise.

When such a cautionary message is the end result of a single game or movie or etc., then people will play or watch or read it through to the end to find out what happens to the individual characters in it, thereby seeing the consequences of their mistakes or how they save themselves by abandoning what was so self-destructive. But with a perpetual roleplaying game franchise, once the player realizes the message behind the game, namely that endless fighting is pointlessly destructive, then continuing to play the game would be ignoring it's message.

 

[nyysjan]

So of the current 270+ comments only about three address the actual issue - Is it a good game? Remove the franchise setting to avoid bias and it's repetitive, frustrating; not really innovative; and leaden as hell.

Stating that it suits a 40k setting and that people who dislike it don't get the background etc. would be like insisting that everyone who sat down to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy had read the Silmarillion so they could really appreciate it. Not exactly the way to win over newcomers.

Sure Yahtzee's hasn't 'got' the 40k setting and is basing his opinion on the setting more on hearsay than fact, but given that the game itself barely addresses it that's hardly his fault.

It's a game for those who are already a fan of 40k who'll forgive it its flaws simply because it allows them to stomp around as a member of the Adeptus Astartes. Anyone else is going to say "Yeah it's okay I suppose"

But Yahtzee wasn't reviewing the game. Yahtzee was deliberately provoking a large part of the nerds (including myself) by saying that they're juvenile morons, and that warhammer is crap and we're crap for having made it our hobby.
If all he would've said was, "This game Space Marine isn't that amazing" Yeah that'd be okay, I thought it was a nice game but I can see why many others wouldn't. But that's not what Yahtzee did

It's Yahtzee, its what he does.

I'm still surprised people are surprised by this.

It's not what he did (god (that i don't believe in) knows there is plenty of things in WH40K to take the piss out of), but that he did it so badly, usually Yahtzee is witty, funny, and has a point in his complaints (even though i might not agree with those points at times), he was none of those in this one.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I feel like Yahtzee is just phoning it in with the fanbaiting lately.

If you're going to blatantly fanbait like this, at least do it with some humor and witty insight rather than just saying "you all seem juvenille and if you were as mature as me you wouldn't like this" and making tired jokes about ritalin (it's been like a decade now, can we, as a society, finally move on from ritalin jokes please?).

 

[Fleaman]

I tend to feel that 40K derivative works don't capitalize on the setting's DOOM reserves.

I always feel that people boasting about the Imperial Guard's superior firepower are missing the point of the Imperial Guard flavor, which is to die horribly to phenomena from every branch of particle physics. And once in a while they manage, against all odds (though not really because of game balance of course), to eke out a victory amidst terrible sacrifices while their officers oppress the shit out of the poor assholes. Their heroism is without meaning if the setting is not only out to get them but actually usually does.

I liked it when the Tau were purely idealistic animu people with tons of hope and tolerance and a forward-thinking attitude towards technology, before all that grimderp mind control and sterilization stuff got written in. Because they were tiny, and if a Waaagh or a Black Crusade or a Hive Fleet so much as farted at them they would be utterly wiped out. They were actual good guys, a speck of hope to contrast the backwards oppressive juggernaut of the Imperium, in a setting that would eat them alive as soon as any major player decided to give them the time of day.

What people get right all the time is how over-the-top everything is. Bolters are standard-issue weapons that basically shoot RPGs on full auto. That's great, it's a funny little factoid. It's a funny factoid, because it's absurd and moronically juvenile. And meanwhile, the Space Marines carrying them are all grim and super serious and For The Emperor, and they look totally ridiculous. You say that it's awesome, or AWESOME, in the same way that Fist of the North Star is "AWESOME", which is to say that it's hilarious. What people keep overlooking is that 40K isn't grimdark because of how AWESOME it is, how tough Orks are, how dangerous Necrons can be - it's grimdark because everyone is stupid. And their weapons are stupid. And everything they think of is a bad idea.

 

[Aeshi]

As a 40k fan I'd have to agree with him, the games may be good but the story kind of makes it hard to care about...well anything (why should I care whether the Imperium or Chaos wins when the only real different it'll make is whether the brutal-tyrant-of-the-month bears the Double-Headed Eagle or the Eight-pointed Star?)

Doesn't help that you play as the Ultramarines. If it has to be the Space Marines why not make it one of the more interesting/human chapters like the Blood Ravens,Salamanders or the Space Wolves. (or heck, even the Soul Drinkers or Legion of the Damned if you wanted something a bit more off the beaten path.)

 

[PunkRex]

The 40K universe is depressing as hell but I think thats why the idea of Super, 10 ton, killer majiggs actually works. Half the time in these super soilder games you end up asking why bother but with 40K its the ONLY option. I dont know that much about the back story but there are places in the setting that are refered to as paradise, like Ultimar and... well Ultimar but im sure theres others.

Its also why I think it works in Gears of War, which is evolution. Most of humanity was wiped out and only the strongest remenants remain. The reason their all so big and strong is because anyone weaker proberly died very quickly. I dont really know the GoW back story at all so I could be talking bollox.

Still this reveiw made me laugh, Space Marine actually go doo doo in their suits if I remember correctly.

 

[PunkRex]

Doesn't help that you play as the Ultramarines. If it has to be the Space Marines why not make it one of the more interesting/human chapters like the Blood Ravens,Salamanders or the Space Wolves. (or heck, even the Soul Drinkers or Legion of the Damned if you wanted something a bit more off the beaten path.)

You see everyone says this. The Ultra Marines arnt really boring, their the goodie two shoes, the brothers by the book, the Mr.Perfects who everyone loves to hate... actually it makes sense now.

Hate away good sir.