Extra Punctuation: Hating Warhammer 40k and Space Marine

[plugav]

As a lover of RPGs and WH40K, all I have to say is "Dark Heresy."

True. I haven't played much, but what I've seen was much deeper than just Space Marines chainswording Orks again. Yes, it's still grimdark and full of absurdities, but it's no more "juvenile" than your average RPG setting.

I've said it already, I'll say it again: they should make a video game out of Dark Heresy. Or possibly Rougue Trader.

I couldn't agree more with the point of wanting to play D&D for the storytelling aspect. I love the way it allows you to pursue the story and roleplay aspect. But I've only played with groups that like the combat only and don't give a shit about the story.

My impression has always been that D&D promotes combat-oriented play. It's one of the reasons why I've always prefered Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (the 1st and 2nd editions, I haven't read the 3rd). The combat is there, but your party is far less likely to be a professional dungeoun-crawling commando unit.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Wow, this shitstorm hit 4chan's /tg/ page fast.

 

[DocBalance]

My hat's off to you, Mr. Croshaw. Only once before have you ever made me uncomfortable while reading your articles or watching your videos, but the ending to this one crosses the line just enough for me to be worried that my browser history will now be used as evidence in my inevitable trial for crimes against mankind.

 

[punipunipyo]

I have no familiarity with the WH40K series what so ever so i don't know if it's just something the game needs to fit it's origin, but i keep wondering:

Why the hell can't space marines have a personality?


I'm sure if the game is Gears of War in terms of gameplay then the game could be ok to play, but without anything interesting going on in the story then i'm just not gonna bother.

I'd give "feelings" to space marines if I was to write a story for space marine game... I can think one RIGHT NOW!

Tarkus in Dow2 speaks of Eldar as tricksters as if he was "charmed" by on before just THAT alone could make a story...

Story goes: In war effort against Necron he met up with an Eldar, both are last survivors from their armies, having to depend on each others skills to survive harsh environments, accessing to xeno-tech and med supplies, challenges, and constant ambushes (should consider scenes from both characters will try to assassinate the other party member, but interrupted by an ambush attack that will exhaust them in the end), saved by each others many times eventually got them to fell in love, but as rescue came for the Eldar first so did the misunderstood betrayal, as her Fiance showed up for rescue and shot Tarkus in the back when they were promised to spare him to show appreciation, make matter worse, for the space marine that comes for Tarkus, there were traps awaits them, Half healed, barely able to fight, Tarkus survived till the back up came, (turns out, both side were piloting to kill the surviving member on the other side, but Tarkus didn't know the WHOLE truth... and never will) the final scene ended with the confrontation between Tarkus and his love on the battle field; rather or not story should continue on from that point on is up the the dev's view, as far as I see it, that would be a sweet ending right there before they clash swords... or we could have both of them stab each other in the heart, and fell in battle, but as you know... space marines have 2 hearts, and they WILL survive that, and as the story carries out, Tarkus survived, and secretly kept his love toward that one dead Eldar till this day...

 

[RadiusXd]

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.

Um...that was the whole point? To get away from those Star Trek style utopian settings in a big way. One reason I absolutely hated the introduction of the Tau.

What I couldn't ever understand is why those huge imaginary table-top army clashes were ever considered possible or even desireable. Since the invention of the rifle it's been bad form to mass troops and advance in large numbers. It's just too easy to put too much explosive power in a targeted area for the opponent to survive. So it's all about small unit tactics and staying out of sight and behind cover. The only reason human waves worked a little in North Korea was that they were HUMAN so tactical nukes weren't used. No such problem with Orks.

That was something I brought up again and again on the BL forums before I was banned. A decent author would come up for a good reason for not doing this...usually the place was valuable and they didn't want to wreck it with bombs if they could avoid it.

A bad author (which become the majority) wouldn't care, because the fans would think he was brilliant anyway. I remember people seriously saying McNeill should be a general, because he put lots of effort describing military tactics in Storm of Iron, regardless of the fact they would completely fail in the enemy wasn't similarly useless (mind you, he did a good job trying to avoid rubbing the reader's face in that).

they do the equivalent of nukes, it's called an exterminatus.
involves robbing a planet of all life, and it is only done when all hope for a planets retaking is lost.
Planets are a finite resource, and tactical nukes I suppose are done but are much better survived and far less picky about what it hits then a bolter round.
whats the point in defending a planet if you blow up what your fighting for? and them suits can survive in space.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Gears of War had about zero back-story (not even in the pathetically thin user's guide). But it never pretended to. It was just stupid big muscle-dudes with no helmets shooting bad stuff from behind cover.

Wait...so because they didn't dictate the plot in the manual, it didn't exist? I'm guessing you had the volume off for in-game dialogue and fell into a coma or something whenever the cinematics kicked in?

What bugs me about WH40K is that it PRETENDS to have a back-story but doesn't really. There's just no real explanation of motivations, economy, politics, etc. And from the extremely limited story that is there, these other levels of detail are rendered impossible. It's just WE KILL THEM, and THEY KILL US. That's it.

lol, really?

Can't tell if troll...or just stupid.

It's all just unrealistic bull that only the most juvenile middle-schooler would find engaging.

Look on the bright side: your hilariously uninformed post made Yahtzee's article seem stellar.

 

[rda_Highlander]

Some suggest that there is satire in WH40K's universe. Erm... where? At what time can we see that this is supposed to be satire? is there any reflection of real world events? Any eye-opening scene? A satire needs to have some kind of lesson. In WH40K the lesson I see is "totalitarian blood-hungry regime is the best possible way to keep humanity safe and secure".

 

[Albino Boo]

Bump to both of you there; for the 2000AD refs and for adding some much needed but often overlooked context to the 40k backstory. It doesn't come across as trolling when people have done their homework, so thanks.

Ok, when the terminators of Tera attacked Ydraill castle in the episode called cleanse and purify, they weren't trying to kill all the deviants and they weren't supported by the imperial robots from termight mechanicus. All that from one single strip written in 1984, 3 years before 40K came out. Have you even read Nemesis the Warlock? If you had, then you would know that after the dark age of technology the human empire covers most of the galaxy. The empire whose soldiers are called terminators, where armour, refer to each other as brother and are pledged to cleanse the galaxy of deviants. Sound familiar at all? All in all, follow your own advice and do your homework and you might not sound pig ignorant

 

[mattaui]

It's already been pointed out in the thread, but I think the first mistake anyone makes (and this includes some people actually writing for the WH40k line) is to take that universe as anything but the blackest of comedy. It used to be far more zany, as any trip through the archives of the early 80s would show you.

You take the unflinching militant fanaticism of a dark age mindset and put it in service to a mechanical god-king who survives on the daily sacrifice of the souls of countless innocents, and those are the GOOD guys. It borrows heavily from the Lovecraftian concept of a universe that is a harsh, unforgiving place where humanity's place is insignificant in the natural order of things. Only in this case, humanity rose to the occasion to fight endless swarms of alien beasts and otherworldly horrors, but in doing so have drifted so far from what it means to be human that it's ultimately futile.

A chaos death cult or Tyranid genestealer infestation on your homeworld sounds bad, but when the Imperium decides it's better to just nuke the entire world from orbit (it's the only way to be sure, right?) killing billions of its own citizens in the process, it's a race to the bottom to see who is really the most definitively evil out of the bunch.

The tactics of the game itself also don't make a whole lot of sense, as you've got space-faring races with powered armor and aircraft all piling out into convenient battlefields to duke it out in literal hand to hand combat. Missiles? Bombs? Orbital lasers? Well sure, we've got those, but I've got a power fist and a relic blade that need to feel ork blood!

I say all this as a person who is a big fan of the universe for all it's twisted, sardonic and ridiculous concepts, over the top art and flagrantly silly stories. It's fantasy with science fiction trappings, pure and simple, and for anyone who doesn't enjoy the game for all it's obvious lack of realism, I hope you're at least honest enough to apply that to other games you find so engaging.

It's one thing to simply not enjoy the look and feel of a universe, but to hold Warhammer 40k up as some singularly unbelievable setting is pretty humorous in itself.

 

[Ursinedriver]

I have to admit, I agree with Yahtzee. In high school, my friends were all about the WH40k, espescially the spaces marines. I just found the setting to dark and to full of itself to enjoy, but they still always made me play DoW. That said I can't help but love the Orks and there's nothing more fun than makeing a purple and green Tau faction, taking a Knarloc or two and destroying an enemy base while singing the barney theme over my headset

Edit, Like so
http://tubedubber.com/#52RFSQyDdDA:dsKO_r76kfQ:30:100:0:0:1

 

[Harkonnen64]

"At one point the boy's club happens upon an outpost commander who has been talked up by other characters for a while and discovers that she's an attractive young lady. "Oh god, you chunky fucks are going to be taken aback by this, aren't you," I predicted. And sure enough, they were, in the least emotional possible way."

Here there is room for contention and shows more yahtzees bias then the actual truth.
Basically for those who don't know, the uber tough manly space marines meet up with the commander of the local imperial guard who happens to be a woman.

One of the older space marines looks surprised and asks "YOU are in command?"

Yahtzee interpreted this as cited above, but being familiar with the setting and knowing that space marines have no notion of sexism due to the process that transformed them, to me and i hope most 40k fans, the obvious explanation for the surprise is that mira is a mere 1st liutenant (so low ranked CO) in charge of ALL the imperial guard as the higher ranks and even the comissars got killed, that she is a woman doesn't factor into that at all.

Let's think about this for a moment. In a game and setting dominated by big, burly men in equally big, burly armor, the inclusion of a female character would had to have been something the creators went out of their way to do. And if they would go out of their way to put a female character in a situation where her authority is questioned, they would have had to recognize the possible (or maybe intentional) sexist implications. She didn't "happen" to be a woman, she was deliberately made a woman. Don't underplay the issue.

 

[Princess Rose]

So you pretty much stated somebody elses opinion as your own personal facts.

...? What do you mean "personal facts"?

If you're talking about the fact that other 40K players - one's who've been playing for ten or more years - told me that it was originally a parody and I believed them because they know pretty much the entire history of the 40K universe... then yeah, I believed it when someone who was very knowledgeable told me something. Also, other posts in this thread have confirmed (or at least mentioned) 40K as starting out as a parody, so I appear to be correct in that belief.

If you're talking about Yahtzee... again, facts? I said his opinions match mine. So when someone says "why don't you like this?" I can say "here, this link pretty much sums it up."

Just like I do when someone asks me why I don't like Twilight (I post a link to Movie Bob's review of the third Twilight movie, where he talked about how it teaches women to be submissive domestic abuse victims). When a professional has stated something really damn well, it is foolish NOT to use them as a resource.

 

[Naeras]

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.

From what I understand the Emperor was basically a magic superpowered space Jesus who wanted to protect humanity and teach them the value of science and truth. Then he gets betrayed by his closest, pretty much dies, and then gets worshipped as a god by the masses as a corrupt mashup of the medieval catholic church, communism and fascism runs the machinery: exactly the way he didn't want stuff to end up.
It's basically a Bible satire as far as I'm concerned. A Bible satire with chainswords, jetpacks and orcs.

Oy yahtzee you magnificent bastard that was great. Pissing off fanboys is awesome

Also this^

 

[Zagzag]

MADE UP THEIR OWN

You mean like they did with the DoW series you mention a few lines later? You realize it's the same studio who made those games, right?.

I was attempting, somewhat incoherently, to refer to the fact that since they made up their own chapter for DOW they should have done the same for Space Marine.

 

[rayen020]

as a strategic tabletop game warhammer 40K is good

As a Real time strategy video game Warhammer 40K is really good. (until it get bogged down with too many expansion packs with less and less focus on it's original premise...)

As a storytelling tabletop game Warhammer 40K is bad.

As a first person shooter Warhammer 40K is generic. Which is a shame because it basically invented space marines as they are known today and the video game actually brought some unique concepts to the formula.

Now the big one.
As a storytelling setting warhammer 40K is really really good. The novels the lore and ideas behind it aren't unique but they are presented in a unique way. This setting isn't juvenile it's just the one that a person who hates humans would see coming. deification, absolutes, fanaticism, human perfectionism, these are things the setting deals with and they are not juvenile. Why it deals with such things when it's just a tabletop game is beyond me but it does and that is why warhammer 40K shines.
just my take on it.

 

[rda_Highlander]

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

No, I know precisely what it means. Maybe I didn't pick the right words. At what time do we see that it is a satire? Just because some of you want to believe it is? Or there was some interview where developers said this? I mean, I could say that Tetris is a satire on modern society, and even give some insight, but it would still be my opinion and not the fact.

 

[Princess Rose]

Think all of us 40k fans expected yahtzee to hate/rip on space marine and 40k, but none of us could have expected him to be so WRONG in his views, and people are actually believing him.

Okay, this confused me. How are his views wrong?

He doesn't like 40K because of it's story telling (or lack thereof, in his (and my) opinion), or the fact that the story telling is generally awful (again, in his and my opinion).

That sounds like a perfectly valid viewpoint to me. Sure, you can disagree - perhaps you like the story telling, or perhaps you don't care about the story telling (many gamers don't, even D&D players). That doesn't make the opinion of "I don't like the story" invalid.

The "generation without war" thing is a rather standard grip of his, and it certainly isn't meant to only apply to 40K.

As to the surprise over the women thing, I think that's more a reflection of the mindset of those who made the game rather than of the 40k universe in general. There are plenty of women in 40k... who are equally badly written.

From the point of view of a gamer who has been (repeatedly and often) subjected to the 40K universe and not liked it, Yahtzee had a lot of the same complaints as I do. And, as noted, I'm not coming at this from an ignorant point of view - I hear about this crap all the damn time. It doesn't float my boat. And it fails to do so in many cases because of the reasons that Yahtzee listed.

 

[Calbeck]

I'd have to say I agree overall.

I've looked over the WHM40K universe. I found it strong on drama and action, but short on everything else, and my big tabletop wargaming experience previously was Battletech (3026-Clan Era).

Whereas both franchises have a voluminous backstory, Warhammer's is wide but shallow. There aren't many main characters that stand out, and those that do are stereotypical to an extreme. In fact, extreme characterization and imagery is pretty much the bread-and-butter of WHM40K to start and end with.

By contrast, Battletech provides a strong range of both primary and support characters, driven by a wide variety of ideals and passions. While each major faction presents an overall specialization, this is generalized instead of being made the be-all-end-all found in Warhammer.

Of course, it's easy to dismiss Battletech in computer game terms, since to date almost all such have been in-the-cockpit slugfests between giant robots... which is a slim slice of the entire game universe. It's like going to a smorgasbord where all you end up eating is mountains of creme brulee.

Putting aside the fact that it's a much stronger combined-arms wargame system, the social dynamics and economic considerations in the larger backstory of Battletech are generally what drive the various factions' military decisions --- something with much more depth and nuance than yelling WAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGH a lot.

All of that said, I can see why some people would find WHM40K fun --- on the same level as finding a fart-joke comedy flick fun. It's all a matter of how seriously you want to take your entertainment.

 

[Ursinedriver]

Lol k no one will care in a weeks time anymore.

This may be the most well written argument I've read in months

 

[darthricardo]

Really, I love the Warhammer 40k setting, except for one small caveat.
There is only war.
I mean, after Ten. THOUSAND. YEARS... something would have to give. I mean, yeah, a prolonged state of technoligical regression, I can get that. The world being more or less static, largely based on the near-immortality of the ruling class? I feel that. But after spending so long embroiled in an endless war, something would happen.
I guess the entire premise is an extended dramatization of the stupid old question: What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?