Poll: Could Bioware actually pull off a good Warhammer 40k game?

[Radoh]

Considering how much I don't care about the stupid universe that is Warhammer 40K, I sincerely doubt that anyone could make a good game of that series.
Not without completely ignoring the source material, and if they did that then it wouldn't be a Warhammer 40K game anymore.
Plus, you couldn't work one of the incredibly dumb Bioware Moral Choice system into a universe where the characters are actively forced to be completely obedient with no other thought in their mind lest suffer the pain of death.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

Considering how much I don't care about the stupid universe that is Warhammer 40K, I sincerely doubt that anyone could make a good game of that series.

Not a huge fan of the 40k series, but that statement sort of implies that a) none of the Dawn of War series was any good and b) Warhammer 40k is itself not a good game, because it's not just a setting but a wargame.


I'm sure the 40k universe allows for good games to be made about it, it's pretty vast after all so there's a lot to choose from, a lot of angles you could take. Bioware though... well... yeah... I'm not sure the 40k franchise is the best fit for them...

 

[Radoh]

Not a huge fan of the 40k series, but that statement sort of implies that a) none of the Dawn of War series was any good and b) Warhammer 40k is itself not a good game, because it's not just a setting but a wargame.


I'm sure the 40k universe allows for good games to be made about it, it's pretty vast after all so there's a lot to choose from, a lot of angles you could take. Bioware though... well... yeah... I'm not sure the 40k franchise is the best fit for them...

A)That's actually exactly what I was implying.
I've played both the Dawn of War one and two at the behest of someone, and both were not good at all.
B) Makes no sense to me, as in order to be a Warhammer game it needs to have the Warhammer setting.
Since the Warhammer setting is boring and uninteresting, trying to make a good game from it would be trying to ice skate uphill.

As vast as the universe is the feel and structure is always going to be the same.
1: Fuck the Orks
2: Empire is best
3: No matter if you win or lose, ultimately it's irrelevant to the overall fight since it's so massive a conflict that no matter how well you succeed or fail, every single thing in the entire universe is still going to be fighting you since the whole of the game is Empire on the defensive.

EDIT: Sorry, messed up the quote, hopefully you see this anyways.

 

[DeepReaver]

I dont think they could, simply for the fact that i do not trust any of biowares writers and if GW wanted to bring in an outside writer i have a feeling it would not be one of the good black library ones and probably be The Spiritual Liege himself.

 

[C117]

Sure they can. I've always thought that the WH40K-universe is interesting when it focuses on the experiences of the characters (like in the tabletop RPG "Rogue Trader"), and incredibly stupid when you focus on the grimdark world as a whole. A story being told from the perspective of a group of people desperately fighting for honor/survival/the Emperor/money/anything else is something Bioware could pull of, no problem.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Mixing some humour into a Warhammer 40.000 game shouldn't be too difficult. One way would be to simply pop the player character in as a straight-man to all the Warhammer tomfoolery.

Here's an idea. There must be many worlds rather isolated from the Imperium. The weirdo priest people from Terra haven't called for centuries, and all the nasties are far away enough for the place to cultivate a modicum of functionality and pleasantness. The Sensible System, with planets that are actually decent to live on.
The PC could be a member of a noble family in the System Sensibelus, and given the usual officer title the family has bestowed their children of age for years.

Meanwhile, in an office complex that looks like a morbidly obese Notre Dame with syphillis, a miserable clerk in a robe discovers that the Sensible System exist one day while he's dusting the titanic archives and sorting the skull heap. He notify his superiors and eventually, the Imperium arrives to cash in, and Mr. or Ms. PC from the Sensible System is forced to live up to the officer rank and is sent off to the more ridiculous segments of the galaxy to take command and do ridiculous war on preposterous enemies.

Another idea would be to go a similar route as Brazil the film. You are a robed clerk in a stupidly huge administration complex, tasked with openly pointless busywork, handling files about wars no one remembers and planets dead for centuries. That and lighting candles and wheelbarrowing skulls from place to place.
Then, weird things start to happen. You meet a certain someone who gives a bit of colour to your dystopian life. At which point you are declared a heretic, and need to escape through the Gothic-Ridiculous hive city, on a journey that will take you beyond the furthest stars.

-"Why do the Space Marines over there wear those weird parchment loincloths for? Is there some sort of... Exhaust hatch there that they are modest about?"

-"I do not know... But I know that you can tell the important ones apart from the scrubs, though. They're the ones without helmets."

-"Why? I mean, it's like a big, pale potato on top of a coffeeaneus machinare. Who'd miss that?"

-"Well, everyone, it seems. And they hit the marines that do wear helmets instead. Come to think of it, that armour is useless. They just get shot and fall over anyway, don't they?"

-"Maybe they ran out of all the real armour over the years and made them out of cardious bordae instead..."

Or... you know... they could just outsource the writing to Obsidian.

 

[Lunar Templar]

no. they probably turn it into a Gears knock off if they tried, like the way the made ToR just another WoW clone

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

But what I asked was what stories have been told with that stuff that elevates it from 'nasty stuff I made up on my lunch-break' to actually believable world, or at least something I'd care about.

There's a difference in saying 'I made up this alien race that are totally evil', and telling a story about them that actually makes you feel bad.

The Horus Heresy series of novels would be a good example then.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

At this point I don't trust Bioware with their own IP's, so no.

Even if they were the pre-EA Bioware a Space Marine game would be a waste, a Dark Heresy title with Puritin/Renegade system and dealing with the factions of an Imperial hive (PDF, noble houses, underhive gangers, arbites, etc) would.be a better fit.

Might want to scale it up to about a sector, a segmentum at the absolute biggest. The galaxy in 40k is so freaking huge, that you could fit all of the planets from the first Mass Effect, neatly inside a single decent sized sector.

 

[mrhateful]

Bioware YES, EAware NO

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Depends on the focus of the game. I doubt they could put together a decent Space Marine game, but their stock "Player gets conscripted into the special forces, is betrayed by one of their own, assemble a crew to fight the ancient evil that we thought was gone." story would work just fine with the Inquisition.

 

[Patrick Hayes]

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

-The C'tan; A species of aliens with the power to sap a star dry, and who can wipe out entire species on a whim.
-The Eldar; An ancient alien race whose supreme decadence gave birth to the God of Pleasure, who wants to see the Universe go out in one massive orgasm.
-The Tyranids; A hostile alien species that consumed an entire galaxy (possibly more) before finding their way to ours.
-The Tau; A seemingly benign race that welcomes all, and then chemically neuter them so they slow and quietly die out.
-The Orks; The want to burn the galaxy because it'll be fun.
-Imperium of Man; Pathologically mistrustful and extremely violent towards anything not human. They sacrifice tens of thousands daily to power the stasis chamber of the Emperor.
-Forces of Chaos; Want to destroy every living thing as a offering to the Blood God, Lord of Change, Prince of Corruption and the God of Pleasure.
-Dark Eldar; Sexual sadists who like to capture thousands to torture for years at a time.

Two words. Dark. Eldar.

Those are concepts.

I can make up stuff too; Blurb-elves, who feed on pain and employ nanobots that burrow in the skulls of their victims to cause them unfanthomable pain for all eternity.

But what I asked was what stories have been told with that stuff that elevates it from 'nasty stuff I made up on my lunch-break' to actually believable world, or at least something I'd care about.

There's a difference in saying 'I made up this alien race that are totally evil', and telling a story about them that actually makes you feel bad.

Warhammer 40K just strikes me as too cartoonishly evil and dark to actually be anything other than silly.
But as I have been told, it has a lot of history and different writers have written stories about it in different styles, ranging from dark comedy to more serious.

Sir, I figured you would have taken it upon yourself to research the Deldar, but seeing as I have to write this, I can assume you don't care very much, or are busy eating Cheetos. Ergo, a brief backstory:

The Eldar (before the rise of man) dominated the galaxy. Because of this domination, the Eldar had nothing better to do than coke and whores. Only their coke and whores were turned up to eleven and used by a vast majority of the empire. Some Eldar naturally took offense to this wanton hedonism and took off in worldships. However,a majority stayed behind and eventually fell into unforgivable vices (i.e. Murder, rape, babyfuck, Eldar Centipede, etc) and as a result of this galaxy wide party of awesome (and because the Eldar were an all-psyker race, look it up) their collective superorgy birthed the daemon God Slannesh. Slannesh, upon birth, claimed all Eldar souls as him/her/it's sextoys and tore a giant goatse in the Milky Way galaxy called the Eye of Terror. However, before the massive goatse, the Eldar created what is called the Webway, or in short faster hyperspace. See, up till that point you had to go through this thing called the Warp. For reference material see "Event Horizon" (it's a movie). The warp is not pleasant. Back to the webway, when the giant Goatse happened, Eldar who were in the webway at the time were same, as the webway exists outside of real space.

In the webway, the eldar who weren't nommed, snorted or raeped then nommed were free to continue partying hard. Eventually though, they felt the fistpump of Slannesh calling to their very souls. Basically, a slow death. But! Because they were free to experiment and party with impunity, they came to discover that suffering and existential highs kept them young and even reversed the progress of their souls being nommed. During this time, they established Commoragh. Basically the closest approximation of Rl'yeh you can ever get to. Here, they refined their pain harvesting and drugs to an nth degree. Now they exist to reave and rape, pillage and plunder, all to buy themselves a little more time to party.

God dammit I hate having to do your research.

 

[Timedraven 117]

and of course, make it fun?

Depends on the kind of gameplay they go for, Xcom syle tactical squad command would be nice, or modifiying the Space Marine engine to work with non-marines, because that did the ranged/melee switching really well, which you need in a 40k game.

That would never wo- ........ Wait a minute! Thats Genius! Something like this can be perfect!

OT: Bioware? No. Just no. Their formula would not really work as many have said. Their gather up all the factions would however. You see, but only for one group. The imperium of man. And not many people want to see that right now. It would work by the fact that even different chapters of the Space Marines don't get along all to well at times even the Sisters of battle, inquisition, Iggies (Imperial Guard), and the Space Marines don't always get along just right. The story can be a big battle is going on, and Tzeentch (The god of change, trickery, magic, deceit, spies, traitors and all that intrigue shit) is making all the infighting and its your job as a inquisitor to get everyone to like each other and fuck up Chaos/orks/deldar/a mixture of them. That could work. hard to do right though.

But the Xcom style would be your best bet since you can use it for most factions.

Space marines? No probs they do it 90% of the time they fight.

Eldar? See Space Marines.

Imperial Guard/Inquisition? Stormtroopers, Machanicus, and acolytes are all there.

Even Chaos would work.

 

[Souplex]

It's 40k, the only way to make it interesting is to have your tongue squarely in your cheek.
If they go with a fun tongue in cheek approach, the people who like 40K "In the grim darkness of the future there is only war!" would hate it.

 

[Lieju]

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

-The C'tan; A species of aliens with the power to sap a star dry, and who can wipe out entire species on a whim.
-The Eldar; An ancient alien race whose supreme decadence gave birth to the God of Pleasure, who wants to see the Universe go out in one massive orgasm.
-The Tyranids; A hostile alien species that consumed an entire galaxy (possibly more) before finding their way to ours.
-The Tau; A seemingly benign race that welcomes all, and then chemically neuter them so they slow and quietly die out.
-The Orks; The want to burn the galaxy because it'll be fun.
-Imperium of Man; Pathologically mistrustful and extremely violent towards anything not human. They sacrifice tens of thousands daily to power the stasis chamber of the Emperor.
-Forces of Chaos; Want to destroy every living thing as a offering to the Blood God, Lord of Change, Prince of Corruption and the God of Pleasure.
-Dark Eldar; Sexual sadists who like to capture thousands to torture for years at a time.

Two words. Dark. Eldar.

Those are concepts.

I can make up stuff too; Blurb-elves, who feed on pain and employ nanobots that burrow in the skulls of their victims to cause them unfanthomable pain for all eternity.

But what I asked was what stories have been told with that stuff that elevates it from 'nasty stuff I made up on my lunch-break' to actually believable world, or at least something I'd care about.

There's a difference in saying 'I made up this alien race that are totally evil', and telling a story about them that actually makes you feel bad.

Sir, I figured you would have taken it upon yourself to research the Deldar, but seeing as I have to write this, I can assume you don't care very much, or are busy eating Cheetos. Ergo, a brief backstory:

The Eldar (before the rise of man) dominated the galaxy. Because of this domination, the Eldar had nothing better to do than coke and whores. Only their coke and whores were turned up to eleven and used by a vast majority of the empire. Some Eldar naturally took offense to this wanton hedonism and took off in worldships. However,a majority stayed behind and eventually fell into unforgivable vices (i.e. Murder, rape, babyfuck, Eldar Centipede, etc) and as a result of this galaxy wide party of awesome (and because the Eldar were an all-psyker race, look it up) their collective superorgy birthed the daemon God Slannesh. Slannesh, upon birth, claimed all Eldar souls as him/her/it's sextoys and tore a giant goatse in the Milky Way galaxy called the Eye of Terror. However, before the massive goatse, the Eldar created what is called the Webway, or in short faster hyperspace. See, up till that point you had to go through this thing called the Warp. For reference material see "Event Horizon" (it's a movie). The warp is not pleasant. Back to the webway, when the giant Goatse happened, Eldar who were in the webway at the time were same, as the webway exists outside of real space.

In the webway, the eldar who weren't nommed, snorted or raeped then nommed were free to continue partying hard. Eventually though, they felt the fistpump of Slannesh calling to their very souls. Basically, a slow death. But! Because they were free to experiment and party with impunity, they came to discover that suffering and existential highs kept them young and even reversed the progress of their souls being nommed. During this time, they established Commoragh. Basically the closest approximation of Rl'yeh you can ever get to. Here, they refined their pain harvesting and drugs to an nth degree. Now they exist to reave and rape, pillage and plunder, all to buy themselves a little more time to party.

God dammit I hate having to do your research.

And that's still nothing more than a Wikipedia entry (I can assure you, Madam, I can use Google).

You didn't understand what I was saying.
That's still nothing more than a concept (These aliens are totally bad news, yo), a piece of world-building at best. (And nothing to convince me Warhammer 40K is not a teenager's idea of dark and mature.)
There's a difference in reading Wikipedia entries about Nazis and reading The Diary of Anne Frank. One of those actually gives you a human view of the events and so has a much more impact emotionally.

The Horus Heresy series of novels would be a good example then.

See? 008Zulu gets it.
I have heard of that. The Wikipedia tells me it has a variety of authors, should I just read them in order?

 

[DarkhoIlow]

CDPR on the other hand, I would like to see and play their interpretation of a WH40k RPG.

Imagine if them and Obsidian teamed up to make a game based off the Inquisition

Couldn't agree more. Hell, the WH40k universe is so vast that you could literally milk new stories with each iteration of the game.

If only they would make a game with the stories from each Legion, there you go, 18 games aside everything else. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Any WH40K RPG would suit me just fine as long as it's properly done.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I don't think anyone could. The 40k setting just doesn't really lend itself to a good videogame concept. It's just so ridiculously over-the-top GRIMDARK that anything trying to play it straight will come off as braindead, and GW probably won't sign off on anything tongue-in-cheek enough to work.

Er, wait what? 40k not lending itself well to a video game concept? The Dawn of War games would like to have a word with you.

I think a more suitable phrase would be "40k doesn't lend itself well to a Bioware-style game". Trying to get any emotional attachment or genuine drama out of the ludicrously over the top "FURR DE EMPRAH!!!" sensibility would be next to impossible, unless you cut most of the central elements out. For example, a Spec Ops: The Line -style game with the Imperial Guard I could see working, but it'd likely have to cut out so many of the things that makes 40k distinctive it would feel pointless to use the 40k license in the first place.

But jesus christ man, 40k can be basically made into any type of game. FPS? Done. Real time strategy? Done. Third-person melee brawler/shooter? Done. Diablo-style dungeon crawler? Practically makes itself. Fighting game? You've got more characters than you can count! 40k has limitless potential for good video games, but Bioware wouldn't be my first choice for a dev to make a game out of it.

To be completely honest im not confident Bioware can pull off a good game right now.

also in terms of Warhammer 40k definitely not. Bioware simple doesn't have the writing style for it. Warhammer 40k really requires a very very dark tone with very questionable morals and bioware simply doesn't do that very well.

40k doesn't necessarily need a dark tone. IMO the most suitable would be tongue-in-cheek "Yeah, we know this is ridiculous, let's have fun with it!" type of writing. You could probably make a straight up parody game of 40k with the 40k license and it could still be great.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I have heard of that. The Wikipedia tells me it has a variety of authors, should I just read them in order?

There is an established timeline of events in the books despite the various authors, better to start in chronological order.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

Snip.

If you think about reading the Horus Heresy books, I recommend starting from the very beginning (Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames) to see how it suits you to start off with. The series, both 30k and 40k, are very hit or miss between authors. Some authors are better than others, but even then some of their books can vary in quality. The Horus Heresy franchise is something that should be read from the first to the supposed last book, but for the most part you can pick any book after the first five or six and read them however.

Now if you plan on reading 40k books, I'd say go with Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn/Ravenor trilogies, Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords trilogy, and Matthew Farrer's Enforcer trilogy. They give a good look at what some of the factions are like. Eisenhorn/Ravenor are regarding the Inquisition, basically secret police that watch the secret police with the ability to condemn entire planets to destruction. The Night Lords are a space marine legion fallen to Chaos, who are trying to survive because they lack essentially everything to even run one of their ships properly. The Enforcer trilogy is about an Adeptus Arbite, which are essentially the main police force of the Imperium, think Judge Dredd but slightly more over the top in some aspects. Now most of the space marine books tend to be rather lackluster, because many authors try to make what are essentially children soldiers medically/genetically altered to wage eternal war into humans. Some are good, some are atrocious, but most are B/C grade pulp fiction war porn really. I personally recommend reading what you can just to get a taste of what the Black Library authors are capable of by themselves.

Now on topic, while the concept sounds nice, Bioware doesn't strike me as a company that can handle galactic threats on a single solar system level as that's how most of the Warhammer 40,000 stories and such are like. It also needs to be recognized that there must always be the ever-present dread that if even one thing goes wrong, the lives of an entire solar system can be snuffed out in the most cruel, horrible ways possible. While Mass Effect tried, it felt like Bioware kept putting in 'Everything will be perfectly fine in the end!' type of situations. Say if this was a RPG and I'm an Inquisitor, me convincing the local cult leader to lay down his/her weapons and surrender peacefully won't end with the leader's followers spare, they would all still be brutally executed and the cult leader will still die, most likely at my hand.

 

[Patrick Hayes]

It always stroke me more as a teenagers idea of dark and mature, but like I said, my knowledge of the franchise is lacking, so feel free to enlighten me.

What stories does it tell?

-The C'tan; A species of aliens with the power to sap a star dry, and who can wipe out entire species on a whim.
-The Eldar; An ancient alien race whose supreme decadence gave birth to the God of Pleasure, who wants to see the Universe go out in one massive orgasm.
-The Tyranids; A hostile alien species that consumed an entire galaxy (possibly more) before finding their way to ours.
-The Tau; A seemingly benign race that welcomes all, and then chemically neuter them so they slow and quietly die out.
-The Orks; The want to burn the galaxy because it'll be fun.
-Imperium of Man; Pathologically mistrustful and extremely violent towards anything not human. They sacrifice tens of thousands daily to power the stasis chamber of the Emperor.
-Forces of Chaos; Want to destroy every living thing as a offering to the Blood God, Lord of Change, Prince of Corruption and the God of Pleasure.
-Dark Eldar; Sexual sadists who like to capture thousands to torture for years at a time.

Two words. Dark. Eldar.

Those are concepts.

I can make up stuff too; Blurb-elves, who feed on pain and employ nanobots that burrow in the skulls of their victims to cause them unfanthomable pain for all eternity.

But what I asked was what stories have been told with that stuff that elevates it from 'nasty stuff I made up on my lunch-break' to actually believable world, or at least something I'd care about.

There's a difference in saying 'I made up this alien race that are totally evil', and telling a story about them that actually makes you feel bad.

Sir, I figured you would have taken it upon yourself to research the Deldar, but seeing as I have to write this, I can assume you don't care very much, or are busy eating Cheetos. Ergo, a brief backstory:

The Eldar (before the rise of man) dominated the galaxy. Because of this domination, the Eldar had nothing better to do than coke and whores. Only their coke and whores were turned up to eleven and used by a vast majority of the empire. Some Eldar naturally took offense to this wanton hedonism and took off in worldships. However,a majority stayed behind and eventually fell into unforgivable vices (i.e. Murder, rape, babyfuck, Eldar Centipede, etc) and as a result of this galaxy wide party of awesome (and because the Eldar were an all-psyker race, look it up) their collective superorgy birthed the daemon God Slannesh. Slannesh, upon birth, claimed all Eldar souls as him/her/it's sextoys and tore a giant goatse in the Milky Way galaxy called the Eye of Terror. However, before the massive goatse, the Eldar created what is called the Webway, or in short faster hyperspace. See, up till that point you had to go through this thing called the Warp. For reference material see "Event Horizon" (it's a movie). The warp is not pleasant. Back to the webway, when the giant Goatse happened, Eldar who were in the webway at the time were same, as the webway exists outside of real space.

In the webway, the eldar who weren't nommed, snorted or raeped then nommed were free to continue partying hard. Eventually though, they felt the fistpump of Slannesh calling to their very souls. Basically, a slow death. But! Because they were free to experiment and party with impunity, they came to discover that suffering and existential highs kept them young and even reversed the progress of their souls being nommed. During this time, they established Commoragh. Basically the closest approximation of Rl'yeh you can ever get to. Here, they refined their pain harvesting and drugs to an nth degree. Now they exist to reave and rape, pillage and plunder, all to buy themselves a little more time to party.

God dammit I hate having to do your research.

And that's still nothing more than a Wikipedia entry (I can assure you, Madam, I can use Google).

You didn't understand what I was saying.
That's still nothing more than a concept (These aliens are totally bad news, yo), a piece of world-building at best. (And nothing to convince me Warhammer 40K is not a teenager's idea of dark and mature.)
There's a difference in reading Wikipedia entries about Nazis and reading The Diary of Anne Frank. One of those actually gives you a human view of the events and so has a much more impact emotionally.

The Horus Heresy series of novels would be a good example then.

See? 008Zulu gets it.
I have heard of that. The Wikipedia tells me it has a variety of authors, should I just read them in order?

I understood you perfectly, but to try and dismiss Dark Eldar's origin story is to disregard a central piece of WH40k fluff AND part of the reason the universe itself is fucked the way it is. Just because it's more "historical" than stories on the individual level does not make it any less important and warrants far more than a singular wiki entry. Shieeeeet, The Horus Heresy itself may not have happened if the Eye of Terror hadn't been fucked into existence.

What, billions of humans dying by the millions against all odds, the best and brightest humanity has to offer being reduced to cannon fodder isn't "emotional" enough for you? Knowing that a species once on the apex of existence lost themselves to dark vices doesn't have "impact?"

Fine, you want WH40k on the individual level? Go read Ravenor, because clearly you need something more subjective and acute. Imagination seems too obtuse a tool in this case.