A good 40k action game. What I have in mind is basically Deathwatch Vermintide 4 Dead. I'm kinda torn between the idea of having fixed characters or a complete build your own marine experience. I kinda like the banter that goes on between characters in L4D and Vermintide, and I'm not sure how it would work if everybody built their own marine. Maybe some fixed customizable marines from various geneseed lineages would work better. Instead of classes, it will be more loadout based so there's some overlap between characters in terms of what they can do. But maybe there can be a few characters that can completely deviate from the rest, such as a Librarian or Techmarine.
I was thinking it'd be interesting if it went with Primaris Marines, and you picked a base armour - Gravis, Tacticus or Phobos. Then based on that you could equip different weapons and gear. Like only Gravis marines can use Boltstorm Gauntlets or shoulder mounted launchers. Basically you can customize your marines into the various Primaris troop types - Intercessors, Eliminators, Aggressors, whatever-ors. Or end up with some kinda weird hybrid. And we can excuse the tech heresy and Codex Astartes breaches cause it's the bloody Deathwatch.
Depending on your geneseed lineage, your marine could have perks. Raven Guard perhaps move more silently, maybe can situationally go 'invisible'. Though I'm not sure what the more vanilla lineages would have. Maybe each marine has more of a personality and it affects what weapons they can equip.
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I was also thinking that it would be cool to have a Tau... 4X? Some sorta strategy game. You play as an Ethereal leading an expedition onto an Imperial world. Your fleet is cut off from major reinforcements and you must figure out a way to survive. Being the Tau, I was thinking diplomacy should play a big deal and converting the local populace should play a big part. But based on how overt your operations are, the Imperium will escalate their forces. At first it's just dealing with local PDF and Arbites when things come to blows, but an IG regiment can get called in and maybe even a detachment of Space Marines to serve as the ultimate challenge. I also had thoughts about making the situation even messier - maybe the world has an Ork infestation going on. And defending the locals against the Orks can be how you sway the locals to your cause. Or maybe instead of Orks, there's a genestealer cult and depending on how you deal with it - a Hive Fleet could descend upon the world. There could be all sorts of possible scenarios and endings. Maybe if you fail to cull the genestealers, you have to work with the Imperials to drive the Tyrannids off and you get a less good ending where if you survive, the Tau end up pulling their forces back from that world. If you manage to cull the genestealers, no Hive Fleet comes and a total Tau victory is possible but you probably have to deal with Space Marines at the end.
On the topic of Tau, I always thought it was a pity that they chose to make a Fire Warrior game instead of y'know - a Battlesuit game. Being an XV8 pilot should be boatloads of fun. Or maybe just go with the XV22 so you can have more personal up close engagements with stuff like Space Marines instead of dwarfing them size wise.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine not really your speed? I liked it well enough even though it's not quite what you're listing and it was a solid game, if a bit derivative.
The
L4D/
Vermintide formula doesn't quite translate well to the Warhammer 40K universe (I know, I know,
Space Hulk: Deathwing) mostly because of lore reasons, unless the Marine characters are Salamanders, as being rabidly racist doesn't allow that much variety in terms of playable races. Marine gameplay will always boil down to how much armour do you have and how big a gun you carry (and for AA/PDF just the latter, pretty much). Sure there's melee, but it's awfully dry. There'd never be the variety and the dynamic of the Ubersreik Five (even though yeah, one elf being Waywatcher, Handmaiden and Shade while an Imperial becoming a Grail Knight are massive stretches, but still).
Re: Xenos, the problem I think the universe has is that the storyline is so Imperium-centric despite other races having a longer presence and longer lasting effect on the universe as a whole (shock horror, there's a galaxy out there beyond the Imperium, whodathunkit) that virtually no-one thinks there's any money or market to be had (or rather, insufficient amounts of either) in a xenos centric game.
Fire Warrior was an aberration and it showed. Marines have always been the posterboys of the franchise and always will be, doesn't matter who else is packaged in the starter set, one faction will always be Smurfs. Thus, we'll never have anything apart from video games that are based around the Imperial forces and xenos involvement is entirely coincidental and/or antagonistic.
Then again, that's the point of the thread I suppose.
I'm still holding out hope for
TW:WH40K, divisive though that idea may be.
On that note, for a 40K action game, I'd love a game in which you play a Harlequin with career progression that kicks in about halfway in (to Troupe Master/Shadowseer/Death Jester depending on early-game gameplay choices), but have the tutorial missions as the Troupe's Solitaire. It'll never happen though since the Eldar are thoroughly unrelatable in damn near every game they're in, while the Harlequins are even more enigmatic and unrelatable, so the perception is that such a game would never be particularly popular. *dramatic shrug*
