Reminds me of MovieBob's Expendables review. Classic, claissic reactions.similar.squirrel said:
Extra Punctuation: Hating Warhammer 40k and Space Marine
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
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Not impressed by this article. Played Space Marine myself, and... yeah, it's really not that great, but Gears of War? Pretty damn off the mark. Gears of War is meant to make you feel slow, lumbering, and stupid (developers' own words), Space Marine's meant to make you feel huge and unstoppable. If I had to draw a comparison, I'd say it's more like a scaled back Ratchet and Clank game without the benefit of jumping mechanics, platforming, and puzzles. Don't get me wrong, it's really a mediocre-to-average game that doesn't deserve a defense from me, but if you're gonna call it out on being a knockoff at least get the details right.
Uhh? No. It's got very, very extensive backstory. The rulebooks are 90% fluff, 5% actual game rules, and 5% images of miniatures to give you painting ideas. There's whole huge series of novels devoted to it, some of which are actually best-sellers, and four different tabletop role-playing games devoted to the 40k universe. I only recently got into 40k after years of dismissing it just like you did, and I found it was on par with anything Tolkein or Frank Herbert ever did. Just sillier. Much, much, much sillier. But, eh, hater's gonna hate. I suppose it's a bit much for me to expect you to approach this rationally.cefm said:
Wow Mr Croshaw. I'm sure you realized the amount of fanboy rage this article would unleash. In saying that, I myself have never really had any interest in the Warhammer universe. I had a friend that used to do war gaming, WW2, and he only mentioned Warhammer has being similar, yet infinitely more complex and daunting. As such the only other mentions of the game I hear are from fans who seem to have a quest to educate the world of the entire back story. Can't really verify any of your points, for as I mention, I have little exposure to the series, but from what little exposure I have had this article seems to be pretty accurate.
This article sounds more like a expanded part of one of Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation rants then his usual writing.
If Warhammer 40k: Space Marines were a Japanese game and was, more or less, the exact same game but with a different franchise plastered onto it and some other sci-fi or fantasy stetting in the place of what we currently have but it was, over all, exactly the same plot and game play we would go on and on about how much the melee sucks, how clunky the gun play is and how over the top and stupid the action is.
The combos are no better than Dynasty Warriors, the gun play isn't "tight" and the world is as dark and gritty as you'd expect an American game to be. But still we praise it for being fun and defend it because it's from an IP that we westerners love and all of that jive. But mark my words if this game were based on an anime or some other Japanese game IP we wouldn't be so forgiving about it's short comings and blandness.
It really boggles my mind, it really does.
The combos are no better than Dynasty Warriors, the gun play isn't "tight" and the world is as dark and gritty as you'd expect an American game to be. But still we praise it for being fun and defend it because it's from an IP that we westerners love and all of that jive. But mark my words if this game were based on an anime or some other Japanese game IP we wouldn't be so forgiving about it's short comings and blandness.
It really boggles my mind, it really does.
The respective settings of D&D and Warhammer 40K actually have a lot more in common than you might think. For that matter there's an underlying factor that many, probably the majority really, of RPG settings have that unites them: They are generally set after an apocalypse.
No really, think about it for a moment - what kind of weapon does your paladin most want to find, a brand new sword forged last week, or a mystical artifact blade from a dead civilization? Everywhere you turn, you find ancient ruins of advanced nations that reached heights the "modern" world can't even hope to aspire to, before tragedy struck and they were brought low; in your common fantasy RPG, "ancient" equals "better". What was old was grand and expansive, impossibly potent and world-shattering, and in these lesser days you merely sift through the wreckage of history to achieve a fraction of what the ancients accomplished.
40K is just that same concept transplanted into the very far future of a mirror of our galaxy instead of the "undetermined time period" of some alternate universe, applying the notion that "ancient is better" that most people just implicitly expect from fantasy to futuristic technology. It's the dark ages with plasma cannons, psychic warriors, cults that revere the machine without necessarily understanding it. A universe where faster than light travel is achieved by opening a portal through hell, with daemons scrabbling at the seams of reality and the whispers of dark gods promising power to those foolish enough to seek it. The "good guys" are a galaxy spanning feudal empire of theists who preach unquestioning obedience and a closed mind, even as their leaders revel in decadent and probably heretical pursuits. The closest analog to our present day mindset comes from a race of aliens the more established forces in the galaxy consider to be painfully naive.
40K is a cautionary tale and a bloody fascinating setting with depths that aren't readily apparent if you're only looking at the wargame or the superficial impressions people are happy to spread about online. Settings like Gears of War are stupid macho bullshit action romps with no substance at all beyond being a stupid macho bullshit action romp - Space Marine and the Warhammer 40,000 setting itself only look like one of those, and if you're 14 (chronologically or mentally), that superficial impression of the universe based on how it contains power-armored giants with chainsaw swords is enough for you to like it.
Those of you out there who feel you have to deride the setting based on its appeal to the 14-year old demographic (perhaps in an effort to prove that you are certainly not a mental 14 year old, no sirree!) are only doing yourselves and everyone else who listens to you a disservice, and also missing the point, just like Yahtzee did in this article. There's no rule that says you have to like the 40K setting but for once I'd love to see somebody who doesn't like it (and then writes an article explaining why) who clearly knows what the hell they're talking about.
So far, I've only ever seen people attack a straw man stand-in for the setting though.
No really, think about it for a moment - what kind of weapon does your paladin most want to find, a brand new sword forged last week, or a mystical artifact blade from a dead civilization? Everywhere you turn, you find ancient ruins of advanced nations that reached heights the "modern" world can't even hope to aspire to, before tragedy struck and they were brought low; in your common fantasy RPG, "ancient" equals "better". What was old was grand and expansive, impossibly potent and world-shattering, and in these lesser days you merely sift through the wreckage of history to achieve a fraction of what the ancients accomplished.
40K is just that same concept transplanted into the very far future of a mirror of our galaxy instead of the "undetermined time period" of some alternate universe, applying the notion that "ancient is better" that most people just implicitly expect from fantasy to futuristic technology. It's the dark ages with plasma cannons, psychic warriors, cults that revere the machine without necessarily understanding it. A universe where faster than light travel is achieved by opening a portal through hell, with daemons scrabbling at the seams of reality and the whispers of dark gods promising power to those foolish enough to seek it. The "good guys" are a galaxy spanning feudal empire of theists who preach unquestioning obedience and a closed mind, even as their leaders revel in decadent and probably heretical pursuits. The closest analog to our present day mindset comes from a race of aliens the more established forces in the galaxy consider to be painfully naive.
40K is a cautionary tale and a bloody fascinating setting with depths that aren't readily apparent if you're only looking at the wargame or the superficial impressions people are happy to spread about online. Settings like Gears of War are stupid macho bullshit action romps with no substance at all beyond being a stupid macho bullshit action romp - Space Marine and the Warhammer 40,000 setting itself only look like one of those, and if you're 14 (chronologically or mentally), that superficial impression of the universe based on how it contains power-armored giants with chainsaw swords is enough for you to like it.
Those of you out there who feel you have to deride the setting based on its appeal to the 14-year old demographic (perhaps in an effort to prove that you are certainly not a mental 14 year old, no sirree!) are only doing yourselves and everyone else who listens to you a disservice, and also missing the point, just like Yahtzee did in this article. There's no rule that says you have to like the 40K setting but for once I'd love to see somebody who doesn't like it (and then writes an article explaining why) who clearly knows what the hell they're talking about.
So far, I've only ever seen people attack a straw man stand-in for the setting though.
In general, I share this opinion. 40k as a game is kind of shit, the setting as depicted in 40k the game is kind of shit. Heck, the setting doesn't even match up with the rules at all, as anyone who has ever finished a game and contemplated the number of space marines who died in it should have worked this out. But then again, it's a wargame, it focuses unreasonably on one particular type of scenario which actually isn't very common in the grand scheme of things.
The other main source of setting information is the black library, or 'being paid to write poor quality self-insertion fan fiction' as I like to call it.
However, there is another side to it. You just have to dig.
Illustrative example: Games Workshop did briefly release a narrative wargame called Inquisitor, which is all about nuanced, interesting characters and the wider dynamics of what might be called society in 40k, and in which showing up with a single space marine model is the equivallent of pissing in everyone else's cereal. I wouldn't call it an RPG because it lacks the structure and emphasis on balance, it's something very difficult to quantify, probably best described as a sandbox for telling collaborative stories. The setting information is also brilliant, especially considering that most of it is submitted by fans. Unfortunately, much of it is quite hard to get hold of nowadays, but it's still awesome.
A lot of 40k players (although I just play specialist games now, so I'm not one) aren't remotely interested in Space Marines or the 'FOR THE EMPRAH!' vibe they centre around. They bring in the majority of the sales and attract new people to the hobby, so you'd have to be pretty self-hating to dismiss them altogether, but a sizeable proportion of the player community and, I would presume, the conceptual department of the game has no love for them at all.
And yet, it's still popular.
The other main source of setting information is the black library, or 'being paid to write poor quality self-insertion fan fiction' as I like to call it.
However, there is another side to it. You just have to dig.
Illustrative example: Games Workshop did briefly release a narrative wargame called Inquisitor, which is all about nuanced, interesting characters and the wider dynamics of what might be called society in 40k, and in which showing up with a single space marine model is the equivallent of pissing in everyone else's cereal. I wouldn't call it an RPG because it lacks the structure and emphasis on balance, it's something very difficult to quantify, probably best described as a sandbox for telling collaborative stories. The setting information is also brilliant, especially considering that most of it is submitted by fans. Unfortunately, much of it is quite hard to get hold of nowadays, but it's still awesome.
A lot of 40k players (although I just play specialist games now, so I'm not one) aren't remotely interested in Space Marines or the 'FOR THE EMPRAH!' vibe they centre around. They bring in the majority of the sales and attract new people to the hobby, so you'd have to be pretty self-hating to dismiss them altogether, but a sizeable proportion of the player community and, I would presume, the conceptual department of the game has no love for them at all.
40k was invented in the 80s by a bunch of British geeks who clearly took their aesthetic directly from heavy metal album covers. 80s 40k (or Rogue Trader as it was originally called) didn't take itself seriously at all and had much more of a comic book feel to it. However, it looks ridiculously dated now and didn't appeal to the increasingly adult sensibilities of the people who had thought it up, so over time it has become more 'serious' while attempting to preserve the atmosphere. The result is what you see.Katatori-kun said:
And yet, it's still popular.
Translation: "40k is completely over my head." Your shallow and poorly substantiated arguments are failing to impress me and suggest you're bitter about something. Either you tried the game and lost, or your friends play it and you feel left out, or you know some poor sap with asperger's syndrome who won't shut up about it and makes its target demographic look bad. I'm going to guess you aren't a big fan of sci-fi or mythology, either.Katatori-kun said:
That's patently untrue.cefm said:
The Imperium is...not actually a contiguous unit. Basically, it's a shambling feudal empire united by religion, crappy travel and crappy mail. It's Europe, circa 1200, but in space. At the local level, planets work as any planet does, with a WIDE range of governments from republics to facist dictatorships. However, every once and a while, an Imperial starship shows up (and remember, in WH40K, space travel is long, hard and uncertain, so there can be CENTURIES of time beween one ship showing up and another) and asks for a tithe.
Said tithe is usually a load of troops, guns, food, gold, whatever. It is shunted to wherever the Imperium needs it. Some worlds are more directly controlled than others - such as Hive Worlds, where the population is huge enough that the Imperium needs more direct oversight.
So, you end up with "sectors" and "sub-sectors" of interconnected planets, each one supporting and trading with one another, with their tithes being shipped off to whatever warzone the Imperium is fighting in.
The term "There is only war" is less that there is constant war fighting all the time always, but more a fact that every single bit of society is employed in some way toward fighting. At least, that's the plan...obviously, it's a faulty system. There's plenty of peaceful trading, criminal pleasures and so on that. Heck, there are whole planets that haven't seen invasion or war in centuries - or even millenium.
Plus, there are countless human planets that have slipped "Between the cracks". A planet is self sufficient, so if warp storms cut the planet off from the Imperium, it can run it's own damn way.
If you want a really GREAT example of how Warhammer 40,000 turns from juviline insanity to a really well constructed baroque fantasy? Check out Rogue Trader, the RPG.
It's awesome.
Of course.Katatori-kun said:
In the game and a lot of the background material they do exactly that.
And it's what they are good at. When a normal guardsman would be shot to
pieces, they can do what has to be done.
And it all depends on the legion/chapter of the marine (and if he is chaos or loyal).
Some are mindless killers, some prefer ambushes, some are specialized on fast attacks
and some use effective tactics and support troops (Ultramarines: Ultramar Auxilia) or other methods of attack (Dark Angels: They use bikes with teleporter beacons to call in heavy support once they have located the enemy).
In the Horus Heresy books that take place 10000 years before the normal 40k setting
Space Marines are much more than just walking tanks.
But that might be because of the medium. A 400 or so pages long book needs interesting
heroes (and even there a lot of the main charakters are "normal" humans).
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ciaphas_Cain#.TotpqmFYHHc <- And that is the best thing
to ever have anything to do with the 40k franchise. Fun to read and great storys.
The tabletop game is very expensive and while I can appreciate a nicely painted
model, I stick with the novels, audio dramas, comics and video games.
40k is more than SPEESSS MEEHREEENS ^^
I played WH40K till i went to Uni (then I realised that food was more useful). Personally I liked the bit where you actually played the game with friends but getting the army ready was tedious. It was nice the first few times to figure out how you wanted your army painted but after that it was repetitive. I think that ultrasmurfs are especially uninteresting, at least give us the half vampire blood angels, the psychotic space wolves or the Dark angels, or better yet the inquisition so we can have psychic powers. After all no one expects the Imperial Inquisition. Personally I say they should scap the RPG thing and do WH40K Total War, I would so buy that if done right
So far what I have noticed is this. My friends who like WH40k Like the new game. Those who don't play WH40k think it's a big sack of turds covered in sick. Neither side can be remotely convinced by the other. So they may as well call it Marmite 40k.
Do you understand what the term fluff means in nerd circles even in the slightest? Because I'm not getting that impression.Katatori-kun said:
Space Marines do lots of boarding action too, I think that's what he was getting at. They even have power armor that's best for boarding action (Tactical Dreadnought/Terminator armor)rda_Highlander said:
This was posted in the facebook section by someone else, and seeing as a portion of the article was about how people who go to war don't enjoy the entire setting. I thought it best being posted here so it doesn't get pushed too far down the shitty facebook section never to be seen again.
Patrick Courtemanche
As a soldier with two tours in Afghanistan, the last one being combat, and a familiarity with the 40k universe I have to disagree with Mr. Croshaw. What he sees as big and dumb I recognize as a cautionary tale in the same vein as many other dark sci-fi stories. 40k is very much about the dangers of the 'perpetual war' taken to it's extremes. The human government is a fascist theocracy, the average person is slave labor to feed the war machine, humanity is mired in ignorance and even their greatest minds do not understand much of the technology they use, and their greatest protectors are religious fanatics. How much of this is due to necessity for survival, as there are no shortage of genocidal enemies in 40k, and how much is it abuse of power? There in lies the grey area of debate, similar to the one that is currently ongoing about 'Freedom vs. Security'. I see 40k and spend time reading or playing games in that world in part as a reminder of how good we actually have it here and now, and how bad it could get if we let it spin out of control and lose sight of what we are trying to defend. I felt much the same way as I looked at the blasted war torn wasteland of Kandahar Afghanistan and reminded myself of how lucky we are in the West. We should use stories like 40k to promote discussion and thought about our own situation, not dismiss it as a juvenile waste.
Patrick Courtemanche
As a soldier with two tours in Afghanistan, the last one being combat, and a familiarity with the 40k universe I have to disagree with Mr. Croshaw. What he sees as big and dumb I recognize as a cautionary tale in the same vein as many other dark sci-fi stories. 40k is very much about the dangers of the 'perpetual war' taken to it's extremes. The human government is a fascist theocracy, the average person is slave labor to feed the war machine, humanity is mired in ignorance and even their greatest minds do not understand much of the technology they use, and their greatest protectors are religious fanatics. How much of this is due to necessity for survival, as there are no shortage of genocidal enemies in 40k, and how much is it abuse of power? There in lies the grey area of debate, similar to the one that is currently ongoing about 'Freedom vs. Security'. I see 40k and spend time reading or playing games in that world in part as a reminder of how good we actually have it here and now, and how bad it could get if we let it spin out of control and lose sight of what we are trying to defend. I felt much the same way as I looked at the blasted war torn wasteland of Kandahar Afghanistan and reminded myself of how lucky we are in the West. We should use stories like 40k to promote discussion and thought about our own situation, not dismiss it as a juvenile waste.
Yatzhee, you magnificent troll, you've won yet again. The only good thing to ever come out of 40K is the inspiration for the Zerg. Which are basically a militarized version of the Thing. Which is just a shoggoth in sneak mode. So that's my four degrees of Lovecraft.
The entire franchise of Warhammer revolves around sucking its player base dry of money. The actual game pieces are expensive as hell to purchase and are incredible time consuming to paint/assemble. Then on top of it, they churn out tons of books, an MMO (they actually just started the beta for a second MMO), a CG film, a soundtrack and god knows how many video games.